Search and destroy: why the US military cannot explain the nature of air targets shot down over America

The head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the US Northern Command (NORAD), General Glen Van Herk, did not rule out the possibility of an extraterrestrial origin of flying objects shot down in recent days in the skies over the States and Canada.

“I will leave it to the intelligence and counterintelligence community to sort this out.

I don’t rule anything out,” Van Herck said at a briefing, answering a related question from a journalist.

“At the moment, we continue to evaluate every unknown or potential threat that approaches North America, trying to identify it.”

At the same time, the general noted that experts still find it difficult to determine the class and technical characteristics of the downed objects.

“We don’t just call them objects, not balloons,” the head of NORAD emphasized.

He said that unlike the case of the Chinese balloon seen in US airspace earlier, these objects are still difficult to categorize in terms of what keeps them in the air.

Van Hurk noted that they have a very small effective reflection area, which makes them difficult to detect by radar.

The head of NORAD added that all the objects shot down over the past week were similar in size and speed of movement, but the military has yet to study them in detail after the fragments found are received by the Pentagon.

The last of the objects is believed to have fallen into Lake Huron.

In turn, the assistant to the head of the Pentagon, Melissa Dalton, said that the new objects were different from the Chinese balloon that was shot down by the military on February 4.

She noted that after this incident, the United States began to monitor its airspace more closely.

troublemaker 

Recall, on February 12, an F-16 fighter of the US Air Force shot down an unidentified flying object in the sky over Lake Huron.

Earlier, another was shot down over Alaska, one over northwestern Canada.

The American media, citing official data, report that all three objects were much smaller than the Chinese balloon, were at a lower altitude and were not outwardly similar to it.

The balloon incident occurred at the beginning of the month, and then the head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, reported that the balloon was allegedly reconnaissance and was used to monitor US strategic facilities.

In this regard, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken postponed a visit to China.

In turn, the Chinese Foreign Ministry protested against the attacks by Washington.

Beijing explained that the balloon was a meteorological probe that accidentally ended up in American airspace.

• F-22 fighter jets and B-1 supersonic bomber

• © Gotham

In the US Congress, against the backdrop of recent events, a number of politicians have criticized the Joe Biden administration for the lack of clear explanations about the increasing appearance of unidentified objects in the country's airspace.

Thus, the representative of the Democratic Party in the intelligence committee of the lower house of parliament, Jim Himes, expressed concern about the actions of the White House in this situation.

“I have serious concerns about why the administration is not more willing to share everything it knows,” the congressman said.

In turn, Republican Jack Bergman also criticized the White House, saying, "The American people deserve far more answers than we have."

Looking for the truth

Recently, in the United States, the government and the military have been devoting more and more time to the study of unidentified flying objects and anomalous atmospheric phenomena.

The attention of the public and the media to this problem was attracted by the published testimonies of American military pilots about the observation of unusual objects during flights.

In the summer of 2022, the Pentagon created a special department called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), whose task is to study the circumstances and causes of unusual phenomena at military facilities, in areas of special operations and airspace.

• North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)

• Gettyimages.ru

In January 2023, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a report stating 247 unidentified air anomaly reports received, 144 suspicious air object sightings, and 119 more reports found in the archives over the past 17 years.

Of these cases, about 200 turned out to be ordinary balloons, drones, flocks of birds and meteorological phenomena.

At the same time, the nature of the rest

anomalies could not be reliably elucidated.

The report notes that "unidentified anomalies continue to pose a safety risk and potentially pose a threat to adversary data-gathering activities."

"Some of these unidentified atmospheric events appear to have exhibited unusual flight characteristics or functionality and require further analysis," the document emphasizes.

At the same time, US officials deny that these phenomena are extraterrestrial in nature.

In particular, this was stated in December 2022 by the Deputy head of the Pentagon for intelligence and security, Ronald Moultrie.

“At the moment, I have not seen anything in these materials that would allow us to talk about some kind of visit, an accident of alien origin, or something like that,” he said.

And on Feb. 13, White House National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby said the latest downing situations did not indicate extraterrestrial activity.

"Not easy to hit and hard to spot"

Experts interviewed by RT believe that the US military is deliberately exaggerating with its vague statements in order to present itself in a more favorable light after a Chinese meteorological balloon has been in US airspace for a long time.

“Hearing such statements from a commander of this level is very strange.

Such allusions are clearly references to science fiction films and are an attempt to embellish events.

All these objects, obviously, are of terrestrial nature,” said Eduard Baghdasaryan, General Director of Aerocon JSC, expert of the Aeronet working group.

As the director of the Air Defense Museum in Balashikha, a military expert, retired colonel Yuri Knutov, most likely, the new objects shot down over the United States are also high-altitude balloons.

“These are automatic drifting balloons, hot air balloons.

They are really hard to shoot down and hard to spot, especially if they are made of special materials.

Claims about their supposedly mysterious nature are an attempt to raise the profile of US air defense and NORAD after the embarrassing incident with a Chinese balloon that flew over missile bases and strategic airfields, ”the expert explained.

At the same time, he mocked that an alien object, which must have incredible technology in order to reach the Earth, can hardly be shot down with a conventional rocket using a fighter - only if this object is faulty.

Military expert Yuri Lyamin agrees with this point of view, noting that the incident with the PRC meteorological balloon dealt a blow to the prestige of the United States.

“The Biden administration found itself in an extremely uncomfortable position both in front of the domestic political opposition represented by the Republican Party, and in front of its international partners.

So now, when any objects that are potentially reconnaissance balloons are detected, they are shot down immediately and reported to the media.

This is done so that the previous situation does not repeat itself, when such a ball managed to fly around the whole of America, ”concluded the analyst.