RTWed, 29 Mar 2023 15:34 UTC
© Chad Fish via APA fighter jet flies near a large balloon drifting above the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, February 4, 2023
The Pentagon has reportedly admitted that it possesses video or still images of three unidentified flying objects that American fighter jets shot down over the US and Canada last month, but it won't make the footage public.
Videos of the UFOs are classified, and there are no plans to change that status, a Pentagon spokesman
told the UK's
Daily Mail newspaper on Monday. "I can tell you that there is not currently any images of video footage that we can release. The imagery remains classified."
The decision to keep the footage secret is in sharp contrast to the Pentagon's speedy release of a photo that a US Air Force pilot took of an alleged Chinese spy balloon over Montana in early February. US officials also were quick to provide photos of the balloon being recovered after it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina a few days later.
With tensions running high over the Chinese balloon and President Joe Biden's administration facing criticism for allowing it to traverse the continent, US forces shot down at least three still unidentified objects between February 10 and 12. One was a "car-size object" taken down over Alaska, while another was "cylindrical" and was hit over Canada's Yukon Territory. The third object was intercepted and shot down over Lake Huron. All three were taken out with Sidewinder missiles.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby
told reporters last month that the US government might never know for sure what the UFOs were. "We all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover" the wreckage of the three objects. Biden said the UFOs were likely privately owned and were most likely studying weather or doing other scientific research.
Some observers have speculated that the administration is keeping information about the downed objects secret not because of a security issue, but to avoid embarrassment. A hobbyist group in Illinois claimed that it had a small mylar balloon go missing over the Yukon around the same time that the US military shot down a UFO in the region. Such balloons cost as little as $12. Each Sidewinder missile goes for around $472,000.
Comment:
Perhaps this is what they are being so tight-lipped about. The object
described doesn't sound like a classic weather balloon:
According to the WSJ, who cited a Congressional aide, this time it was an F-16 to shoot down the object, that appeared to be shaped like an octagon and was flying at 20,000 feet, posing a threat to commercial aircraft flying in the area.
The engagement marks the fourth time an object was shot down over North America since a (supected) Chinese spy balloon was shot down on Feb. 2 over the Atlantic Ocean, after crossing CONUS from west to east.
The first one was the famous Chinese high altitude balloon shot down on February 4, 2023, at 2:39 p.m. by an F-22 Raptor, belonging to the 1st Fighter Wing from Langley Air Force Base, shot down with an AIM-9X infrared-guided air-to-air missile off the coast of South Carolina and within U.S. territorial airspace. The second one was a "high altitude object" described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and appeared to be floating, that was shot down by F-22 launched from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson on Feb. 10 over Alaska. The third object was shot down on Feb. 11 over Yukon, Canada. According to some reports, the objects shot down over Alaska and Yukon (second and third downing) were too balloon, although the size of both was smaller than the Chinese one shot down in Feb. 4.
This is how this Author commented the third object being shot down yesterday. It still applies today:
"For the moment we can't but notice the trend is concerning. What's particularly interesting is that while the first one was clearly a balloon, the second and third remain unidentified, hence possibly belonging to the category of the so-called UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Are these objects unmanned aircraft unleashed to spy on the U.S.? Maybe. For sure something is happening and after the criticism caused by the response to the China's spy balloon (that flew over the U.S. for days before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean), NORAD has engaged the "intruders" earlier (off the coast of Alaska, over territorial waters on Feb. 10; most probably over an unpopulated area in Canada, on Feb. 11)."
The number of engagement might be on a raising trend since monitoring of the airspace has been improved following the Chinese balloon incident. Most probably, ROE (Rules of Engagement) have also been changed, leading to early "decommission" of the unidentified object.
Dealing with the asset used to shoot down the "objects", the F-22s were used for very high altitude objects: as the altitude of the "zombie" (as an unidentified aircraft is called in the fighter pilot lingo) has decreased, more "traditional" fighters, namely the F-16s, could be used to destroy the "intruder".
Not only did the objects not match a weather balloon, there was this concerning piece of information:
Also, probably didn't want us to see any American marking on the objects.