Searches for the objects shot down last weekend over Alaska, the Yukon and Lake Huron have been suspended.
Last Friday, days after the Feb. 4 downing of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, an unknown object was shot down off the coast of Alaska. The next day, another unknown object was downed in Canada over the Yukon. On Sunday, an object was shot down over Lake Huron.
Despite the furor over the mysterious objects, the search for those downed in the U.S. is ending unsuccessfully, U.S. Northern Command said Friday in a statement on Twitter.
“U.S. Northern Command recommended that search operations conclude today near Deadhorse, Alaska, and on Lake Huron, as search activities have discovered no debris from airborne objects shot down on Feb. 10 and Feb. 12, 2023,” the statement said.
“The U.S. military, federal agencies, and Canadian partners conducted systematic searches of each area using a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans, and did not locate debris.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police issued a statement saying the search for the object shot down in the Yukon has also been suspended.
“The RCMP has decided to discontinue search efforts in the Yukon for the aerial object shot down on February 11. The highest probability area has been searched and the debris was not located,” the statement said.
“Given the snowfall that has occurred, the decreasing probability the object will be found and the current belief the object is not tied to a scenario that justifies extraordinary search efforts, the RCMP is terminating the search.”
The U.S. statement also noted that efforts to recover debris from the spy balloon have ended.
“Recovery operations concluded Feb. 16 off the coast of South Carolina, after U.S. Navy assets assigned to U.S. Northern Command successfully located and retrieved debris from the high-altitude [People’s Republic of China] surveillance balloon shot down Feb. 4, 2023.
“Final pieces of debris are being transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation, as has occurred with the previous surface and subsurface debris recovered.”
President Joe Biden has said the three objects downed last weekend were not related to the Chinese balloon.
“Nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from … any other country,” Biden said, according to CBS News.
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were mostly balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”
Story cited here.
