Feb. 11 (UPI) — The U.S. military shot down a high altitude object over Canada’s Yukon territory on Saturday, the latest in a series of incidents involving objects being shot out of the sky.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that he ordered the takedown of “an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.”
The North American Aerospace Defense Command said that it had positively identified the object but did not offer additional details.
Saturday’s incident comes just one day after Pentagon spokesman Gen. Pat Ryder said an F-22 U.S. fighter aircraft successfully took down a high-altitude object over Alaska after it was detected by ground radar Friday.
Ryder, speaking during a Pentagon press briefing, said U.S. Northern Command is conducting debris recovery of the object and, “at this point,” the U.S. doesn’t know the origin of the object.
Ryder said the object did not appear to have propulsion capabilities. He said it was operating at an altitude that could have endangered civilian aircraft at about 40,000 feet.
“No indication at this time that it was maneuverable,” Ryder said. “It did enter U.S. airspace, and we took it down.”
He said the object first entered U.S. airspace Feb. 9. Fighter jets “further identified the object,” he said. But after reporter questioning, he declined to describe the object in detail.
Also on Friday, a U.S. official said that the undercarriage of the balloon shot down in the Atlantic Saturday had been found largely intact and will be retrieved later, according to ABC News.