By Andrea Shalal and Steve Holland
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A U.S. fighter jet on Friday shot down over Alaska a high-altitude object that was the size of a small car, on the order of President Joe Biden, the White House said on Friday.
White House spokesperson John Kirby told reporters many details were unknown about the object but the United States expected to recover the object after it landed in U.S. territorial waters.
It was unclear where the object came from, Kirby said. “We don’t know who owns this object,” he said.
He said the object, which had been flying at about 40,000 feet (12,190 meters), went down on the far northeastern part of Alaska near the Canadian border. He said the American pilot’s assessment was that no human was aboard.
The United States on Feb. 4 shot down off the coast of South Carolina a Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon that transited the United States. U.S. officials have been recovering the debris from the 200-foot-tall (60-meter-high) balloon and its undercarriage of electronic gadgetry.
Kirby was careful not to classify the new object as a balloon.
He said the discovery of the new object and its track first came to U.S. attention on Thursday night. He said that, unlike the Chinese balloon, this object did not appear to be maneuverable and was at the mercy of the wind.
Biden ordered it shot down earlier on Friday, Kirby said.
Fighter aircraft assigned to the U.S. Northern Command took down the object, an American official said. The official said the territorial waters where the object went down are frozen.
“The unidentified object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to safety of civilian flight,” the official said.
There had been no indications of a military threat to people on the ground and whether it carried surveillance equipment was not immediately clear, the official said.
(Reporting by Andrea Shalal and Steve Holland; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)
