The United States said Monday it still does not know the origin or purpose of three aerial objects that its military shot down over the weekend, as Washington and Beijing traded allegations about the high-altitude balloons.
While American and Canadian officials struggled to explain the objects’ presence, a White House spokesman insisted that there was no reason to believe they were anything other than man-made.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “With these recent takedowns, again, there is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity.”
The saga began with a suspected Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the United States and was shot down by the US military off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
Since then, US warplanes have shot down three more mysterious objects over North American airspace since Friday.
“We are not yet able to assess with certainty what these most recent objects are,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told a news briefing.
US military fighter jets shot down an octagonal object over Lake Huron on Sunday, the Pentagon said. On Friday, an object was splashed onto sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska, and a third, cylindrical in shape, was destroyed on Saturday over Canada’s Yukon.
Kirby said the debris of the objects, which have not been found, “tells us a lot”.
He said that flying objects between 20,000 and 40,000 feet were considered a risk to air traffic, although they did not pose a danger to people on the ground. He said he was also killed because US officials could not deny that he was spying.
The close scrutiny of the airspace may partly explain why so many new objects have been found. US officials told Reuters the military is adjusting the way it examines radar data to identify small, slow-moving objects.