JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – Concerns are mounting over the four objects that were shot down over North America in eight days.
Part of the reason for the repeated shootdowns is a “heightened alert” following a suspected spy balloon from China that emerged over U.S. airspace in late January, Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and U.S. Northern Command, said.
The extraordinary air defense activity began in late January, when a white orb the officials said was from China appeared over the U.S. and hovered above the nation for days before fighter jets downed it off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The latest brought down was first detected on Saturday evening over Montana, but it was initially thought to be an anomaly. Radar picked it up again Sunday hovering over the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and it was going over Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday.
An object shot down Saturday over Canada’s Yukon was described by U.S. officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the balloon — the size of three school buses — hit by a missile Feb. 4. A flying object brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday was more cylindrical and described as a type of airship.
White House national security spokesman John Kirby said during a news briefing Monday that the objects downed this weekend were flying lower than the original balloon and that they could not detect anything transmitting from them. The three objects were traveling at such a low altitude as to pose a risk to civilian air traffic, Kirby said. Now, he said, there is difficulty getting to them.
“The objects in Alaska and Canada are in pretty remote terrain — ice, wilderness — all of that making it difficult to find them in winter weather,” Kirby said. “The object in Lake Huron lies in probably what is very deep water.”
News4JAX on Monday sat down with retired Maj. Gen. Douglas Burnett, former adjutant general for the state of Florida. Burnett was also a NORAD intercept pilot in the 1970s who shot down objects like these. The U.S. believes the initial balloon was geared explicitly for surveillance, and Burnett told News4JAX that the target of the balloon would less likely have been military installations and missile silos but rather everything around them.
“So here’s a railroad, here’s a bridge, here’s a lake, here’s a pond, here’s a small town, here’s a huge building, here are silos — you map all that, stick it into your nav system. When that cruise missile’s coming along, it’s making its adjustments based on what it recognizes versus what is stored,” Burnett said.
Burnett doesn’t suspect China would attack, but he said the country could build a database. For example, if another country wanted information on everything around Naval Air Station Jacksonville and sent a spy balloon, it would map things like the elevation of the Buckman Bridge, the track of the St. Joghns River and any tall buildings downtown that could be a barrier.
“They’re not going to fire one anytime soon. They may never do it. But they’ve got the data to put in their navigation computers and cruise missiles to have a significantly accurate navigation system,” Burnett said.
Burnett said the initial balloon that made its way across the continental U.S. is unprecedented — typically, the military would down them as soon as they got within our air space.
He also said a balloon can provide considerably better imagery of elevations than a satellite or GPS, which can be shut down or modified by the U.S. military.
But, he said, data on towns and hills won’t change for several years.
The Associated Press contributed to this alert.