The Fortnight America Shot at the Sky
A Chinese surveillance balloon came down off South Carolina. Then, over eight days, U.S. and Canadian fighters destroyed three more objects nobody has ever identified.
On February 4, 2023, an F-22 destroyed a large Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina. Debris recovery confirmed what the administration had said: a surveillance platform, carrying electronics and optics. 57
That case was solved. What followed was not.
Over the next eight days, American and Canadian aircraft shot down three more objects: one near Alaska on February 10, one over the Yukon on February 11, and one over Lake Huron on February 12. 123 The Lake Huron object was described as octagonal with strings hanging from it and no discernible payload. 79
None of them was recovered. Systematic searches by the United States and Canada found no debris from the Alaska or Lake Huron objects, and the recovery effort was called off on February 17. 5
What the government concluded, without evidence
President Biden told the nation on February 16 that the three objects were not connected to the Chinese surveillance program. 4 The intelligence community's assessment was that they were most likely balloons belonging to private companies, recreational flyers or research institutions. 7
Most likely. Based on no wreckage.
Three objects were destroyed by air-to-air missiles over North America, and the official account of what they were is an inference drawn after the physical evidence was lost. That is the entire evidentiary basis, and it has not improved since.
The thing that actually changed
The shootdowns did not happen because the sky got busier. They happened because, in the aftermath of the balloon, NORAD adjusted its radar filters — the settings that normally screen out slow, small, high-altitude returns as clutter so operators can see aircraft.
Turn those filters down and North America turns out to be full of objects. Fighters scrambled again the following Sunday and found balloons. 8
That is the most important and least reported finding of the entire episode: the number of unidentified objects in American airspace is partly a function of how the radar is configured. For decades the systems were deliberately tuned not to see this class of object, which means the historical baseline everyone argues from was never a measurement of what was up there. 6
SOURCES
This report was written by UFONN from the reporting and primary documents below. Numbers in the text correspond to this list. Every link goes to the original publisher.
- 1U.S. Downs 3 Unidentified Flying Objects Nearly a Week After Chinese Spy BalloonUSNI News
- 2US jet shoots down unidentified object over northern CanadaCNN
- 3NORAD shoots down unidentified object over YukonCBC
- 4Biden says three recently downed aerial objects were not linked to Chinese spy programCNBC
- 5US military calls off recovery for spy balloon and objects downed over Alaska, Lake HuronCNN
- 6What you need to know about the four high-altitude objects shot down over North AmericaNBC News
- 7What we know so far about the Chinese spy balloon and the other objects the U.S. shot downCBS News
- 8F-16s Find Balloons, Not UFOs, After Sunday Scramble: NORADThe War Zone
- 92023 Lake Huron high-altitude objectWikipedia
- 102023 Yukon high-altitude objectWikipedia
