Unidentified object shot down over Alaskan waters, US Pentagon says

The US Pentagon has changeable down an unidentified entity implicit frozen waters astir Alaska. Officials accidental they don't cognize who owns the object

Technology 10 February 2023

By Jeremy Hsu

An F-22 combatant pitchy was utilized to sprout down the object

Alamy Stock Photo

A US combatant pitchy changeable down an unidentified entity implicit icy waters adjacent Alaska connected 10 February. This comes a week aft the US shootdown of a suspected surveillance balloon from China.

The unidentified entity was archetypal detected and tracked by North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) connected 9 February. The entity was considered a imaginable menace to civilian aerial traffic, truthful President Joe Biden gave the bid for the US subject to instrumentality it down.

A brace of Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor jets were progressive successful the intercept and 1 of the combatant jets changeable down the unidentified object. The entity was travelling astatine an altitude of astir 12,000 metres (40,000 feet) and headed successful a north-east absorption implicit the Arctic Ocean erstwhile it was taken down. It had antecedently flown implicit onshore successful Alaska.

The US subject has sent helicopters arsenic portion of the effort to retrieve the wreckage of the unidentified object, arsenic it whitethorn person landed connected crystal alternatively than successful unfastened waters. A White House spokesperson described the unidentified object arsenic being astir the size of a tiny car.

By comparison, the suspected surveillance balloon from China carried a overmuch larger payload the size of a determination jet, astir 30 metres (1oo feet) successful size. That balloon initially entered Alaskan airspace connected 28 January, flew southbound implicit Canada and past reentered US airspace implicit Idaho connected 31 January earlier travelling crossed overmuch of the continental US.

Patrick Ryder from the US Air Force described the situations involving the People’s Republic of China balloon and the unidentified entity arsenic being “apples and oranges” during a property briefing connected 10 February. But Ryder besides acknowledged that “we’re each precise attuned to balloons astatine the moment”.

More connected these topics:

• military