The White House has not seen any indication that the three objects shot down in recent weeks were a part of the Chinese balloon surveillance program that gained notoriety in recent weeks.
The administration acknowledged that a Chinese spy balloon traversed the U.S. in late January and early February until it was ultimately shot down once it reached the Atlantic Ocean on Feb. 4, and in the two weeks since, the U.S. military has shot down three additional objects, though officials said on Tuesday they do not believe the latest three incidents are tied to the first one.
The other three objects were shot down, in order, off the coast of Alaska near the Arctic Circle on Friday, in the Canadian Rockies in the Yukon region on Saturday, and over Lake Huron on Sunday. None of these have been recovered thus far, hence Kirby's caveat, though the U.S. Navy has made progress recovering the initial one that was shot down over the Atlantic.
"The second one off the coast of Alaska, that's up in some really, really difficult terrain in the Arctic Circle," Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters on Tuesday."With very, very low temperatures in the -40s. The second one is in the Canadian Rockies in Yukon, very difficult to get down, and the third one is in Lake Huron.
The U.S., in attempting to shoot down the object over Lake Huron this weekend, missed its first attempt, and the missile landed"harmlessly" in the lake, according to the chairman, who also affirmed the other three were taken down on the military's first attempts.Kirby also noted the possibility that these objects are not the property of foreign governments.
"But just given what we've been able to ascertain thus far, the intelligence community is considering, again, a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose," he explained, adding,"We don't know of any evidence right now that confirms that they were in fact doing intelligence collection by another government."
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