WASHINGTON: The U.S. said it does not know the origin of the three high-altitude objects it shot down over the last few days as they drifted in the winds over North America.
The government said it does not believe the objects were surveillance aircraft, though it is leaving open the possibility that they may be.
“They didn’t have propulsion,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters at the White House. “They were not being maneuvered. They didn’t have surveillance [capability], but we couldn’t rule it out.”
“We’re sort of in uncharted territory here,” Kirby said.
He said parts of all three objects fell “in remote, difficult places to reach” — ice off the coast of the far northwestern U.S. state of Alaska, the Yukon territory of northwestern Canada and the depths of Lake Huron on the U.S.-Canada border.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said U.S. personnel have not yet recovered any debris from the three objects.
Austin told reporters Monday in Brussels, where he is scheduled to meet with NATO defense ministers this week, that weather is hampering recovery efforts in Alaska while the remote terrain in Canada is affecting the search there.
He said the priority for the Pentagon is “debris recovery so that we can get a better sense of what these objects are.”
Kirby declined to refer to any of the three airborne objects as balloons.
“We don’t know who owns them,” he said, in contrast to the Chinese spy balloon the U.S. shot down February 4 over the Atlantic Ocean just off the coast of the southern state of South Carolina after it traversed the U.S. mainland for eight days. China is continuing to claim the balloon was an errant weather-monitoring aircraft that drifted off course. But U.S. officials say the parts they have recovered from the ocean floor show the balloon was on a surveillance mission.
(VOA)
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