After spotting a Chinese balloon in American airspace, the United States changed its radar settings, which were initially set to detect fast planes and missiles, in order to search the skies for smaller, slower objects.

This new information made it possible to monitor 3 objects - the nature of which is still unclear - and then drop them in the skies of North America last Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

While these tools won't be able to clarify what UFOs have been spotted in the past, they can reveal the nature of more UFOs in the atmosphere in the future, and potentially limit wild speculation.

For a long time, the US authorities had reservations about reports of flying saucers and dishes, leaving the door open to strange theories, especially with regard to the possibility of observing objects that came from outside the planet.

But after US military pilots spotted inexplicable phenomena, the Ministry of Defense decided years ago to take the matter seriously, especially with its fear of not being able to detect Chinese spy devices.

And in 2020, Washington set up a task force that specializes in assisting the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

The team quickly identified some of these objects as weather balloons and sun reflections, but some remain a mystery, such as a video taken by a military pilot of an object faster and more maneuverable than a US Navy plane.

Former President Barack Obama said in 2021, "It is true that there are pictures and reports of objects in the sky that we do not know what they are."


Hundreds of cases

After the first report in June 2021, a second US intelligence report - published a month ago - indicated that hundreds of unidentified flying objects had been detected.

Of the 510 cases studied, about 200 of them can be explained as drones, or sometimes a group called "air pollution", which includes birds, certain weather events, plastic bags, and others.

But other cases remained unexplained, according to the summary contained in an unclassified copy of the report provided to Congress.

In the first report for the year 2021, out of 144 cases monitored, 18 cases raised questions;

For example, an object maintaining a fixed position in the wind at a very high altitude, or moving very quickly without visible means of propulsion.

The January 2023 report notes that "unidentified weather phenomena continue to pose a safety risk to aviation and potentially pose a threat to intelligence gathering."

The US military changed the radar monitoring settings, which made it possible to detect new objects (Reuters)

Change settings

Fear materialized a few weeks later with the discovery of the Chinese airship, which the United States said was for espionage, but Beijing denied this.

It appears that the object, which arrived from northwestern North America, adopts technology that allows it to move and carry out monitoring activities, as it is believed to have flown over strategic US military sites.

And the US Department of Defense said that there are at least 4 other similar cases of Chinese balloons that have been spotted since 2017, and that they may have been considered unidentified flying objects at that time.

After this case, during which the airship shot down an F-22 in the Atlantic Ocean;

The US military changed the radar settings, allowing the three objects to be detected over Alaska, the Canadian Yukon and Lake Huron.

But unlike the Chinese balloon, the US government said it did not know its nature and if it was also shot down.

The US administration hastened to say that it was not about increasing the number of UFOs, but about better detection of them.

US National Security Council spokesman John Kirby was keen to reassure his compatriots, saying, "I don't think the American people should worry about aliens in relation to these flying objects."