Latest three UFOs shot down likely not Chinese spy devices: US

WASHINGTON — US intelligence officials do not believe the three UFOs shot down over the weekend were tied to China’s spy balloon program, a National Security Council spokesman told reporters Tuesday.

“Our initial assessments here, based on talking to civil authorities in the intelligence community, is that we don’t see anything that points right now to these being part of the PRC spying program or, in fact, intelligence collection against the United States of any kind,” John Kirby said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

The US Air Force downed airborne objects over Alaska on Friday, northwestern Canada on Saturday and Lake Huron on Sunday. None has been tied to China or any other country, but Kirby said more information will be gleaned once their remnants are retrieved.

“It will certainly help us home in on [the objects’ purpose and origin] if and when we can get the debris, but that’s where we are now,” he said. “… We’re still doing the best we can with the observations that were made by the pilots with the flight profile data that we have tried to collect.”

While intelligence officials don’t yet know what the mystery objects were, Kirby said they are confident they did not belong to the American government.

“In checking with the FAA, they do not appear to have been operated by the US government, so we’re pretty comfortable and ruling out that they were a US government objects,” Kirby said.

The recent spate of UFO sightings came after NORAD officials changed their radar settings to be more sensitive to objects at high altitudes after discovering that China deployed a surveillance balloon in airspace above Alaska on Jan. 28.

President Biden allowed the balloon to cross the US for a week — passing over sensitive military sites along the way — before ordering it to be shot down on Feb. 4.

Unlike the spy balloon, the three UFOs were not maneuverable, meaning they could not change direction and moved largely at the whim of the wind. Conversely, the spy balloon could move “left, right, slow down, speed up” and “loiter” over targets to collect more information, Kirby said Monday.

If the objects were not Chinese spy balloons, they could have been any number of different craft used for benign research and monitoring, Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said Sunday.

“A range of entities — including countries, companies, research organizations — operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research,” she said.

As of Tuesday afternoon, no private companies or nations had come forward to claim any of the recently downed objects, Kirby said.

“The intelligence community is going to keep looking at this and certainly they will not dismiss as a possibility that these could be balloons that were simply tied to commercial or research entities and therefore benign,” Kirby said. “That very well could be or could emerge as a leading explanation here.”

Intelligence officials gave senators a closed briefing on the mysterious objects Tuesday morning. After its conclusion, lawmakers from both parties reiterated calls for Biden to provide more detail about the shoot-downs.

“President Biden needs to get up in front of the people of the United States and tell them what he knows and let’s get this thing over with,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.). “Get out there and tell the people we’re in good shape, we know what’s going on and let’s go on with our lives.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) agreed, saying “the American people need and deserve to know more.”

“There’s a need for greater transparency,” said Blumenthal, who added, “I am not in any way afraid that we are under a threat of attack or physical harm.”

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) suggested that Biden ordered the latest three shoot-downs because he was stung by attacks on his handling of the larger Chinese spy balloon:

“I think he didn’t want to suffer that criticism again,” Cotton said of the president, after dismissing the briefing as “nothing that … one couldn’t learn from reading your newspapers and watching your news channels.”

“Americans are worried, they are concerned, they are interested and they have a right to know why President Biden directed the actions he did over the past week,” Cotton went on.

Aside from a brief mention of downing the Chinese spy balloon during his State of the Union address on Feb. 7, Biden has not spoken publicly about any of the mysterious incidents.

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) expressed skepticism that the US would ever recover the other three objects, telling reporters that his takeaway from the briefing was “they are lost. They can’t find them. The remnants are in difficult terrain — low temperatures, lots of inclement weather — and they’re looking, but they haven’t been able to find them, except for the spy balloon.

“At a minimum, our director of national intelligence should go in front of the American people and explain what we know and what we don’t know without divulging any classified information,” Kennedy added. “But it’s clear to me this is not a recent phenomenon.”