NEW YORK TIMES
WASHINGTON — The U.S. government and Canada have been busy intercepting unidentified flying objects in the skies, shooting down one on Friday over Alaska, another on Saturday over the Yukon Territory and a third over Michigan on Sunday.
White House officials said on Monday that the military had not yet identified the source of the objects or their purpose, adding that there was no indication that civilians on the ground were in danger and that the government would redouble efforts to understand the nature of the objects and where they came from.
The incidents over the weekend have transfixed the public — long fascinated by encounters with flying objects that defy explanation, as well as government efforts to study them — and spawned multiple theories as officials try to make sense of the devices.
The White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed that the administration does not believe aliens are involved. “There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” she said.
The incidents came a week after an American F-22 brought down a Chinese spy balloon that had floated over the continental United States for several days. NORAD, the military command that keeps watch over American and Canadian airspace, has since adjusted its radar system to make it more sensitive. In other words, NORAD is now picking up more incursions because it is more actively looking for them.
“Anybody that’s operated a radar will know,” said John F. Kirby, a White House spokesman, that “if you set the parameters in such a way to look for a certain something, it’s more likely that you’re going to find a certain something.”
Here is what we know about the four episodes.
What happened over Alaska, the Yukon and Michigan?
On Friday, the U.S. military shot down an unidentified flying object over the Arctic Ocean near Alaska. Troops with U.S. Northern Command were working near Deadhorse, Alaska, with Alaska National Guard units, the F.B.I. and local law enforcement to recover the object and determine its nature, Defense Department officials have said. Mr. Kirby said the United States was conducting aerial surveillance over the site where the object landed.
Then on Saturday, an American F-22 with NORAD downed another object over the Yukon Territory. NORAD had sent American fighter jets, which were soon joined by Canadian fighters, to track the object. Mr. Kirby said the Canadian government was monitoring the site where the object crashed.
The F-22 used a Sidewinder air-to-air missile on the object over Canadian territory, the same type that was used to down the two previous flying objects.
The United States took down the fourth device on Sunday over Lake Huron using an F-16 fighter jet that also shot the object with a Sidewinder air-to-air missile.
Why were the unidentified objects shot down faster than the balloon?
White House officials have said that the three objects shot down since Friday posed a “very real” threat to civilian air traffic.
The Chinese spy balloon that traversed the country before it was taken down this month was flying at 60,000 feet, and didn’t pose a danger to commercial aircraft flying nearby. But Mr. Kirby said the objects over the weekend flew much lower than the Chinese balloon, with altitudes ranging from 20,000 feet to 40,000 feet; transcontinental air traffic flies at about 30,000 feet, he said.
Pentagon officials also said that falling debris from the spy balloon could have hit people on the ground. But the other objects were downed over water or sparsely populated areas, minimizing the risk from falling debris.
But Mr. Kirby deflected a series of questions about whether the Biden administration had a new policy on when to shoot down unidentified aerial objects.
“We are going to dive into this,” Mr. Kirby said, promising to study the policy implications of the incidents. When asked what that would mean going forward, he acknowledged, “I think we just don’t know right now, in terms of whether there needs to be threshold changes.”
How are the latest objects different from the Chinese balloon?
American officials are unsure what the latest objects are, much less their purpose or who sent them. Beijing has acknowledged that the balloon was China’s but said it was for weather research.
American officials said that China had at least a limited ability to steer the balloon, and that it maneuvered on Feb. 3 before it was shot down the next day. The three unidentified objects were not sending out communications signals, White House officials said. The objects were also unmanned, had no propulsion, weren’t being maneuvered and most likely were “being moved by the prevailing winds,” Mr. Kirby said.
Mr. Kirby has said that the object shot down near Alaska was “much, much smaller than the spy balloon that we took down” and that “the way it was described to me was roughly the size of a small car, as opposed to the payload that was like two or three buses.”
U.S. and Canadian officials have described the object over the Yukon as cylindrical and said it too was smaller than the spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic the previous weekend.
The object that was downed on Sunday had an octagonal structure with strings hanging off but had no discernible payload, U.S. officials said.
The top military commander overseeing North American airspace has described the Chinese balloon as about 200 feet tall and weighing thousands of pounds.
What was the spy balloon collecting?
This remains a big question. Officials do not yet know what information the balloon was supposed to be stealing as it made its way across the country.
The balloon had a signals intelligence array — fancy spy speak for an antenna that can locate communications devices and listen in to them. But officials do not yet know if that array was meant to gather calls made on military radios or from ordinary mobile phones or something else altogether.
How many spy balloons have there been?
Balloons are hard to pick up on radar. Many of the first Chinese spy balloons that were observed near U.S. military exercises or bases were not identified as surveillance tools. Instead, they were classified as unidentified aerial phenomena, modern-day Pentagon jargon for U.F.O.s.
Over the past 18 months, the United States began learning more about the Chinese spy balloon program. As officials reviewed some previous cases of unidentified aerial phenomena, they determined that they were spy balloons. A review of the old data showed that at least three spy balloons entered U.S. airspace during the Trump administration. There was at least one additional visit during the Biden administration.
But all of those previous incidents were relatively short — not the dayslong transit of this month’s balloon.
Was this part of a wider Chinese surveillance program?
China has developed a spy balloon program as a complement to its fleet of reconnaissance satellites, American officials said, with a mission to collect information across the world.
Because the capabilities of the spy balloons are not yet perfectly understood, it is not certain if they gather different information from China’s satellites. Nevertheless, officials said, at the very least the balloons can linger longer over a site than a satellite. And while reconnaissance satellites are often focused on imagery, the balloons appear to be mostly about collecting communications.
Some officials say the spy balloon program has been focused in the Pacific region, collecting information on American bases and allied military operations.
And of course, the Chinese do not just use balloons to conduct surveillance at military bases. Some classified reports suggest they are also using advanced technologies to collect information about the U.S. military.
Is the spy balloon a big deal or not?
Yes.
To be clear, the balloon saga is not comparable to an earthquake in Turkey that killed more than 35,000. Nor is it comparable to the war in Ukraine, which is set to enter a second year.
That said, the episode will complicate the relationship between the two most powerful countries on Earth.
Some policymakers and lawmakers in Washington have been arguing for years that the American public has not taken the challenge of China seriously enough — prioritizing the country’s cheap mobile phones and entertaining videos on its TikTok platform over concerns about an authoritarian state that bolsters its power through the intrusive surveillance of its people.
But the balloon ordeal was a big enough deal for the State Department to cancel Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s planned trip to China — the first by a Biden cabinet secretary to Beijing — without rescheduling it. When he canceled the trip, Mr. Blinken said the entry of the balloon was a “clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law.”
What is the plan for recovering debris?
Navy divers have been working to gather debris of the balloon since Feb. 5 for America’s own intelligence-gathering purposes, Pentagon and F.B.I. officials said. The recovery effort is expected to take days.
The balloon itself was quickly retrieved, as well as some wiring that was floating on the ocean surface. But most of the electronics were in the balloon payload, carried underneath. The remains of that are scattered across the ocean floor, albeit in the relatively shallow waters off the South Carolina coast.
The dive teams are handing over the recovered material to the F.B.I., which will take it to its lab in Quantico, Va. What state it will be in, and how much can be learned from it, remains an open question.
It is likely that the debris from Alaska and the Yukon will also be taken to the F.B.I.’s high-tech laboratory in Quantico to be examined by experts in the U.S. intelligence community. The U.S. Coast Guard is also working with Canadian authorities to recover debris from the object that was traversing Michigan and landed on the Canadian side of Lake Huron.
What happens next?
The Biden administration has continued to declassify and share information it has learned about the spy balloon, bringing in allied and partner nations for briefings about China’s surveillance programs.
The diplomatic push is a sign that the administration intends to use the incident to rally allies and convince them that China’s global ambitions could involve infringements of their sovereignty.
Beijing was angry over the United States’ decision to shoot down the balloon, which the Chinese Foreign Ministry described as “excessive.” China has maintained that the balloon was a civilian device for meteorological purposes.
On Monday, China accused the United States of regularly sending balloons into its airspace — more than 10 times since the start of last year, a Foreign Ministry spokesman said. But the United States rejected the idea.
“Any claim that the U.S. government operates surveillance balloons over the P.R.C. is false,” said Adrienne Watson, a National Security Council spokeswoman, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Points of friction between Beijing and the United States are becoming increasingly common. China fired a barrage of missiles after last year’s visit to Taiwan by Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Representative Kevin McCarthy said before succeeding her this year that he would also like to visit the self-governing island, which China considers its territory.
