The three unidentified objects the US recently shot down over Canada and Lake Huron may have launched by non-Chinese American adversaries trying to test the military’s resolve, a former NORAD commander said.
The unprecedented military action came after the government permitted a large Chinese surveillance balloon to travel thousands of miles from Alaska to the Atlantic Ocean before shooting it down on Feb. 4.
Since then, fighter jets have been scrambled to shoot down three smaller unidentified objects; two over the Yukon Territory and one over the Midwestern Great Lake.
Officials have remained mum about the origins of the objects as they analyze the grounded payloads — even as the US Air Force general overseeing North American airspace said Sunday he was not ruling out the possibility that aliens were responsible.
Former North American Aerospace Defense Command Director of Operations General Scott Clancy said Monday that he does not think China was behind the three latest UFOs.
“It smells to me, as the guy who was directed to conduct operations to defend North America, I’d be very suspicious and I’d be on high alert to make sure that all of our adversaries are being countered,” Clancy said on “CNN This Morning.”
“I think you’re seeing the confluence of uh, two things,” Clancy hypothesized.
“Intelligence gaps that existed with our systems of detection across North America” had been “closed” since the first balloon incident, Clancy said, explaining that the military was now more aware of airspace breaches.
“The second thing, and this is just conjecture from my perspective, I think you’re also seeing the confluence of a dis … a distinctive activity by our adversaries to test our systems,” Clancy said.
“What you’re really trying to ascertain is what was the overall intent of doing this with these devices at this time; it looks to me to be a concerted effort,” he said, warning that it would be reckless to simply blame China for the latest incidents.
A member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and Armed Services Committee joined the program to say that “objects” of “unknown origin” are common over US airspace, but officials recently decided to crack down on them after the widely publicized Chinese spy balloon incident.
“So what’s happening now is we’re actually looking for these with extra vigilance, we’re looking for them in different ways, we’re starting to see them in different ways, and President Biden has made the decision that we are not going to allow those over US territory,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.).
Crow added that the Pentagon had not tipped its hand to the committee about the possible origins of the downed objects and said criticism of the government’s lack of public disclosure about the incidents was unwarranted.
“These are not posing a threat, uh, to the United States or Americans,” he said. “You know, these are benign objects, from what we can tell, and again, this is not a new phenomenon either
“We’ve had UAPs [unidentified aerial phenomena] come within the United States for years now.”
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