US jet shoots down flying ‘unidentified object’ over Canada

New Delhi: A US military jet shot down an ‘unidentified object’ over North American airspace, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said.

It was the second day in a row in which the US military shot down an unidentified airborne object.

“I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau said in a tweet on Saturday afternoon.

I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 11, 2023

According to Guardian, a US F-22 fighter plane with the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), which protects Canadian and American airspace, shot down the object over Yukon, Canada.

The object was “cylindrical” and smaller than the suspected Chinese balloon shot down last weekend, CNN quoted Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand as saying.

Trudeau said that he had spoken with the US president, Joe Biden, on Saturday afternoon and that Canadian forces will recover and analyse the object.

Canadian defence minister Anita Anand declined to speculate about the origin of the object, which she said was cylindrical in shape.

 “There is no reason to believe that the impact of the object in Canadian territory is of any public concern,” Anand told a news conference.

She added this marked the first time in the history of Norad that jet fighters shot down an object.

Norad was a central part of the U.S. and Canadian military’s Cold War deterrence strategy against the former Soviet Union.

The object was first spotted late Friday, according to Norad. Two American F-22 Raptor jet fighters based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, were scrambled and monitored the object over U.S. airspace first, tracking it “closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object,” Norad said.

The downing of the object over Canada comes just over 24 hours after the US military shot down another airborne object that was in Alaskan airspace.

 An American F-22 fighter jet shot down the high-altitude object off Deadhorse, Alaska, along the northern coast of the state, on Friday afternoon. Officials said the object entered US airspace but was heading toward the north pole at 20 to 40 mph.

At a White House press briefing on Friday afternoon, US national security council spokesperson John Kirby described the object as being the size of a small car and said it was flying at an altitude of 45,000 ft, the level of a commercial plane.

The shooting down of the objects over Canada and Alaska comes a week after the US military took down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February.