Pentagon shoots down unidentified object over Alaska
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BREAKING: Pentagon shoots down unidentified ‘high altitude’ object over Alaska just a week after fighter jets shot down Chinese spy balloon
- National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed Friday that an object was flying over Alaskan airspace and President Joe Biden ordered it shot down.
- “The object was flying at 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flights,” it said.
- Kirby said the military successfully shot down the object over US territorial waters, which are currently frozen.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed Friday that an object was flying over Alaskan airspace and President Joe Biden ordered it shot down.
“So I can confirm that the Department of Defense has been tracking a high-altitude object over Alaskan airspace in the last 24 hours,” he said at Friday’s briefing. “The object was flying at 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”
Kirby said that “out of an abundance of caution and on the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden directed the military to shoot down the object and they did, and it entered our territorial waters.”
The admission comes after much of the past week was spent on Biden’s handling of a Chinese spy balloon, which was spotted in Montana and then drifted up the coast of South Carolina, before the Air Force sent a F-22 to shoot it down with an AIM-9X Sidewinder Missile.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confirmed Friday that an object was flying over Alaskan airspace and President Joe Biden ordered it shot down.
The Chinese spy balloon from last week after an F-22 shot it down on Saturday over the South Carolina coast.
The Pentagon described that balloon as 200 feet tall, weighing in the thousands of pounds, and carrying a payload the size of an airliner.
The president, speaking with Julio Vaqueiro of Noticias Telemundo on Thursday in Tampa, said it was “not a major gap” that the balloon flew almost the entire length of the US.
More to follow…