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WASHINGTON — The U.S. military shot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron Sunday, a congressional source briefed on the matter and two U.S. officials told NBC News — the fourth in less than two weeks to be downed over North American airspace.
The officials all said there are no indications of any collateral damage and that the object went down in the lake and officials expect to recover it.
Sunday’s shoot down of an object in the skies over North America is the third in as many days, and the fourth this month.
The FAA briefly closed some airspace over Lake Michigan on Sunday to support Department of Defense activities, the agency said in a statement. The airspace has since been reopened.
Michigan Reps. Jack Bergman and Elissa Slotkin both tweeted earlier Sunday that they spoke to the Department of Defense and an “object” above Lake Huron was shot down.
After the Chinese surveillance balloon was downed this month, the U.S. military is now looking at a wider range of radar data as it monitors North American airspace, and is looking at more objects and smaller objects that it might have filtered out as clutter in the past, two U.S. Defense officials told NBC News. The Washington Post was first to report this shift.
It remains unclear if the military is now spotting objects that have been present but not noticed, or if there are new aerial objects that were not present before.
One U.S. Defense official said that the North American Aerospace Defense Command is looking at more raw radar data than previously.
“The easiest comparison is an online search for a car, when you use filters for color, model, etc, and see the search results, then go back and say turn off the color filter and you see more options,” the official told NBC News. “The data was always there, but due to how we process radar data into visualizations for decision-making, some of that data was screened out. We’re actively adjusting that process now to refine how we see, which of course affects what we see.”
“We don’t yet know whether these phenomena have been there for a while and we’re just now seeing them, or if this is new,” the official added. “Between data from object recovery and going through or technical radar data, we are working toward better understanding.”
On Feb. 4, a balloon traveling at an altitude of 60,000 feet was shot down by an F-22 Raptor with a Sidewinder missile off the coast of South Carolina near Myrtle Beach, officials said.
Then, on Friday the U.S. military shot down a “high-altitude object” flying over Alaskan airspace and Arctic waters. National Security Council official John Kirby confirmed at the White House described the object flying at an altitude of roughly 40,000 feet as “roughly the size of a small car.”
A day later, a U.S. fighter jet shot down another unidentified object in the skies over Canada on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s orders.
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