Over Canada, US fighter jet destroys unidentified object

• A US fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada.
• In a coordinated effort by the North American neighbors to defend their airspace.
• The skies are an important part of life.

A US fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada, in a coordinated effort by the North American neighbors.

After a week-long saga over a rumored Chinese spy balloon, North America appeared to be on high alert.

The shootdown on Saturday was the second such move in as many days.

The shootdown was initially reported by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who also promised that his country’s soldiers will recover and examine the aircraft’s wreckage.

Anita Anand, the minister of defense for Canada, refrained from making any assumptions about the origin of the small, cylinder-shaped object.

She refrained from using the word “balloon,” but noted that it was smaller than the Chinese balloon that had been shot down off the coast of South Carolina a week earlier and otherwise similar.

When it was shot down at 3:41 EST, she said it was flying at 12,100 metres (40,000 feet) and constituted a threat to civilian aviation traffic (20:41 GMT).

“There is no reason to believe that the impact of the object in Canadian territory is of any public concern,” Anand told a news conference.

The Pentagon said the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) detected the object over Alaska late on Friday evening.

US fighter jets from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, monitored the object as it crossed over into Canadian airspace, where Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joined the formation.

“A US F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory using an AIM 9X missile following close coordination between US and Canadian authorities,” Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said in a statement.

US President Joe Biden authorized the country’s military to work with Canada to take down the high-altitude craft after a call between Biden and Trudeau, the Pentagon said.

The White House said Biden and Trudeau agreed to continue close coordination to “defend our airspace”.

“The leaders discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin,” the White House said in a statement.

Following the downing of the item at 3:41 PM (2041 GMT), aviation officials also temporarily closed down a portion of the airspace over Montana in the northwest of the United States after spotting a “radar abnormality,” according to the US Northern Command.

US fighter jets took to the sky, but Northern Command claimed they “could not identify any object to link to the radar hits” in an indication of unease over potential incursions.

Then, commercial aviation was permitted to resume in the skies.

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