US shoots down another aerial object in Alaska

Washington, February 11

Advertisement

A US fighter jet shot down an unknown object flying at the height of about 40,000 feet off the northern coast of Alaska on orders of President Joe Biden, officials said, less than a week after the military brought down a Chinese spy balloon that had flown across America.

According to Pentagon Press Secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the object, which was about the size of a small car, was first detected inside American airspace on Thursday. The object, whose origin is not known so far, posed a “reasonable threat to civilian air traffic”, he said.

“US Northern Command is beginning recovery operations now,” Ryder said, adding the F-22 fighter jet deployed an AIM-9X missile to take down the object.

This came almost a week after the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina in the Atlantic Ocean. It hovered over continental America for several days after entering the US airspace on January 30 in Montana.

China has acknowledged that the balloon was theirs but denied it was for surveillance purposes rather than for weather monitoring and that it had drifted off course.

About the unidentified object over Alaska, Ryder said, “On the directions of the President of the United States, fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command successfully took down a high-altitude airborne object off the northern coast of Alaska on Friday within US sovereign airspace over US territorial water. We have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose or origin.” The object was not similar in size or shape to the high-altitude surveillance balloon that was taken down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, he said. — PTI

Blacklists six Chinese entities

Beijing: The US on Friday blacklisted six Chinese entities it said were linked to Beijing’s aerospace programmes as part of its retaliation over an alleged Chinese spy balloon that traversed the country’s airspace. The move is likely to further escalate the diplomatic row between the US and China sparked by the balloon. AP