SANTA MONICA, Calif. – On Sunday, the United States military shot down a fourth balloon in only eight days that was invading U.S. and Canadian airspace. This balloon was flying over Lake Huron in Michigan. President Joe Biden ordered the balloon to be shot down because the balloon was flying at 20,000 feet and presented a danger to U.S. aircraft.
Further, on Saturday, a separate balloon invaded Canadian airspace as it flew over the Yukon. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, requested that an American F-22 shoot down the balloon. Trudeau announced on Twitter that he ordered the balloon to be taken down:
I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace. @NORADCommand shot down the object over the Yukon. Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 11, 2023
On Friday, a balloon was shot down that was flying over the Arctic Ocean in Alaska. The U.S. military is attempting to recover debris from the balloon but the cold weather and icy conditions in the Arctic Ocean are causing delays.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told ABC’s “This Week” that U.S. officials were working quickly to recover debris. Using shorthand to describe the objects as balloons, he said U.S military and intelligence officials were “focused like a laser” on gathering and accumulating the information, then compiling a comprehensive analysis.
“The bottom line is until a few months ago we didn’t know about these balloons,” Schumer said of the spy program that the administration has linked to the People’s Liberation Army, China’s military. “It is wild that we didn’t know.”
Some informational content provided by The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Twitter, The Associated Press, and Google.
