10 things America said about the ‘object’ it shot down over Alaska

A US fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Alaska on Friday, the White House said, just six days after the downing of an alleged Chinese spy balloon sparked a fresh diplomatic rift with Beijing.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a press briefing that the object shot down today was different from the Chinese balloon shot down six days ago.

Here are the top quotes:

The President was fully involved in this decision. He gave this order on the recommendation of the leaders of the Pentagon. He wanted it taken down and they did.

They did this (downed the ‘object’) using fighters assigned to the US Northern Command. It was much smaller than the spy balloon we shot down last Saturday. The way it was described to me it was roughly the size of a small car as opposed to a payload the size of two or three buses. So it’s very small without any significant payload.

We’re calling it an ‘object’ because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it: whether it is state owned or corporate owned or privately owned. We don’t know yet.

We do not understand its full purpose. We have no information that confirms the stated purpose for this object… The ‘object’ was flying over a sparsely populated area and water when we ordered it down.

We expect to be able to recover the debris because it not only fell into our regional space but into what we believe is frozen water, so a recovery effort will be made. We hope that it will be successful and then we can know a little more about it

On the differences between the two: “It was a completely different shape, much smaller (than the balloon) and the debris field for it we expect to be smaller that it would have been for the other.

difference, we knew for a fact that the PRC balloon that we shot down was actually a surveillance asset and was capable of monitoring sensitive military sites and had self-propulsion and maneuverability, so There is no indication that it did so.

I wouldn’t say that the information from our surveillance of Chinese surveillance balloons provided the insight that allowed this discovery.

The object was at 40,000 feet and the President’s prime concern was the issue of safety of flight at that altitude. Last week the balloon descended from over 65,000 feet, so there was no danger to civilian aircraft. At this altitude it was a hazard to civilian aircraft.

The ‘object’ did not have the capability that the other did and was literally on a whim.

get ndtv updatesturn on notifications Get alerts as this story develops,