Flying objects over North America: What’s going on in the sky?

Another “unidentified object” has been shot down in Canadian airspace. Within a short period of time, there were already three incidents over North America. Why are so many objects being discovered right now?

It’s happened again: within just one week, three flying objects have been shot down in the sky over North America. This time in northern Canada.

The object flew at an altitude of twelve kilometers, said Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand. “It entered Canadian airspace illegally and posed a threat to civilian aircraft.” The object was shot down about 160 kilometers from the US border.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Joe Biden jointly gave the order to shoot it down, the White House said. Both states have a joint air defense command.

Flying object with “cylindrical shape”

According to the Minister of Defense, it is not yet clear what the object was exactly. According to previous knowledge, it had a cylindrical shape. “We will try to analyze the debris to get more detailed information,” Anand said.

It is probably smaller than the balloon that the US shot down off the coast of North Carolina last week.

Balloon as big as three buses

The suspected spy balloon from China was the first of the three objects discovered – and about the size of three buses. The second object is still not officially clear what it was. The fact that there is now a third incident raises many questions, the most pressing of which is: Why are so many unknown objects being discovered over North America right now?

There is now a heightened awareness, said Cedric Leighton, a former Air Force colonel at CNN. “We had the downed Chinese spy balloon incident last week. And now we’re seeing all these other objects.” The Air Defense Command has become very sensitive to anything that looks even a little like an unusual object in the sky.

US blames China for balloon

According to the current US government, such balloons are said to have flown over the United States under Biden’s predecessor Donald Trump. She blames China for the alleged espionage in the case of the downed balloon.

Defense Minister Anand didn’t want to say whether this also applies to the object shot down in Canada: “I’m not going to speculate where the object came from. That would be too early.” One is still in the process of collecting the debris with the federal police.

It is still unclear whether the three cases are related in any way. China has rejected the allegation of espionage in the balloon and speaks of a stray weather balloon.

“We have to wait for the details”

In an interview with CNN, military expert Cedric Leighton believes that many things are possible. “Let’s look at where the second and third objects were traveling: The second was near an important US energy production area. The third is now over a resource-rich region,” he explained. “Were they weather balloons? Conceivable! Are there other possibilities? Yes! We have to wait for the details.”

When there is, however, is still unclear, as is so often the case with these incidents.