In a decisive action directed by President Joe Biden, a U.S. F-16 fighter jet successfully shot down an unidentified airborne object over Lake Huron on 12th Sunday 2023 afternoon. According to the Pentagon, this object was found at an altitude of about 20,000 feet with a potential threat to civil aviation and had surveillance capabilities.
“We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities.” Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said. The object had been tracked visually and via radar since Sunday morning and was associated with a radar anomaly detected over Montana the previous day.
The operation marks the third consecutive day that U.S. forces have neutralized unidentified objects in North American airspace. An object had been downed over Canada’s Yukon territory on Saturday, while another had been intercepted over Alaska on Friday.
The Assistant Secretary of Defense, Melissa Dalton, who works for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, underscored that these latest steps have been taken out of “an abundance of caution.” She spoke about how additional scrutiny of airspace at those altitudes was now, in part, showing up more objects with improved radar capability.
The object over Lake Huron was described as “octagonal” with strings hanging off and no discernible payload, shot down by an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. The first missile fired by the F-16 missed its target. A second missile hit the object and neutralized it; the first landed harmlessly in the lake.
For the record, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Representative Elissa Slotkin were among two prominent public figures to comment publicly in support of the operation. “Our national security and safety is always a top priority,” Whitmer tweeted. Slotkin called the operation “an incredible feat by the talented pilots and brave men and women on the ground who supported this mission.
Recovery efforts for the downed object are ongoing, with teams working to gather debris for better knowledge of its origin and purpose. The Canadian Coast Guard has deployed assets in support of these search efforts, given the difficult conditions on Lake Huron, which is mostly frozen over at this time of year.
This pattern of detection and interception of unidentified objects in North American airspace highlights, as vigilance and the sensitivity of U.S. and Canadian radar continue to be enhanced, both the changing nature of the aerial threat and the need for defense capabilities to be maintained in a robust state.