Off the coast of South Carolina last weekend, F-22s shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon. On Friday, an unidentified object was shot down over Alaska by a U.S. F-22. On Saturday, an unidentified object was shot down over northern Canada.
A high-altitude item was shot down near Lake Huron on Sunday afternoon, marking the fourth time in less than a week that the United States military has shot down an object in North American airspace.
Prior to the elimination of the object near Lake Huron, a U.S. official stated that the Biden administration had been cautious about the pilot descriptions of the unidentified objects shot down over Alaska and Canada because of the conditions under which the objects were observed.
"These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on," a National Security Council spokesperson said, referring to the suspected Chinese spy balloon.
Earlier on Sunday, Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh also highlighted the differences between the two occurrences.
"These objects shot down on Friday and Saturday were objects and did not closely resemble the PRC balloon. When we can recover the debris, we will have more for you," she said Sunday
CNN was told by a source briefed on the intelligence that pilots gave differing descriptions of what they experienced after approaching the object. Some pilots claimed that the object "interfered with their sensors," while others said that this did not occur.
Sunday morning, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC News that he had been briefed by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and that the object shot down over Canada was most likely another balloon - similar to the high-altitude device shot down over Alaska on Friday.
Saturday, Canada's chief of military staff, General Wayne Eyre, referenced a "balloon" when outlining the instructions provided to the team tasked with removing the object.
Saturday's shoot-down was authorized by both U.S. President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, according to a White House statement.
Sunday's takedown of an unidentified flying object near Lake Huron is the fourth such incident within a week.
There are currently no indications that the mystery objects are related to China's surveillance balloon, but it appears that national security officials across the continent are on high alert.
Rep. Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, stated on Sunday that he remains unconvinced by the intelligence community's statements that the flight of the Chinese spy balloon across the United States did not pose a substantial threat to national security.
