The first of two missiles fired from an F-16 fighter jet at an unidentified object over Lake Huron on Sunday missed the object, but landed harmlessly in the water, the top U.S. general, Mark Milley, said on Tuesday.
“First shot missed, second shot hit,” Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said in response to a reporter question at a news conference in Brussels.
Reuters reported on Monday that the first of the two missiles had missed the object, one of three unidentified objects shot down by U.S. fighter jets over U.S. and Canadian airspace between Friday and Sunday.
“In this case, the missile landed harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron, we tracked it all the way down,” said Milley. “And we made sure the airspace was clear of any commercial or civilian or recreational traffic.”
The first two incidents of the weekend occurred in Alaska and Yukon. In both cases, Milley said, the objects were brought down in the first attempt.
Spying not detected in last 3 incidents: White House
The three weekend incidents ensued after U.S. officials identified an object as a Chinese surveillance balloon and shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4. That incident led to another flare-up in the testy relations between the two superpowers, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cancelling a planned visit to Beijing.
Milley, like other officials, said he would use the term “objects” to refer to the three most recent incidents. Citing the water depth in Lake Huron, as well as the remote locations and cold temperatures in Alaska and Yukon, Milley cautioned that “it’s going to take some time to recover those.”
John Kirby, the White House national security spokesperson, confirmed the first miss over Lake Huron to reporters in Washington.
Kirby told reporters that the U.S. doesn’t yet have a firm grasp on the origin of the last three objects. The intelligence community is considering the possibility that the trio could be balloons “tied to some commercial or benign purpose.”
He said there was no indication that the trio of objects were tied to China’s spy balloon program.
Officials have said one explanation for the recent flurry since the first balloon was detected was a change to NORAD’s filters to allow them to detect objects moving slowly and at different altitudes.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he ordered the object over Yukon shot down, and an American F-22 destroyed it at 3:41 p.m. ET. Trudeau did not mention the Lake Huron miss in comments to reporters on Monday in Yukon.
An F-22 fighter from the U.S. military shot down an unidentified object said to be about the size of a small car near Deadhorse, Alaska.
Congress wants more answers
U.S. senators were reportedly receiving another briefing on the recent incidents on Tuesday.
Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said President Joe Biden, a fellow Democrat, “owes the country some answers.”
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Biden “needs to communicate and level with the American people.” He questioned what the administration knew about China’s surveillance efforts before the first balloon crossed the country.
WATCH l Most recent trio of objects not manned, lacked propulsion:
Search teams are currently scouring Lake Huron and an area of Yukon for debris from two of the three unidentified objects shot down over North America. Officials say the objects all seemed to float, were unmanned and had no known propulsion system.
Biden’s administration last week blacklisted six Chinese entities connected to Beijing’s suspected surveillance balloon program.
“China hopes the U.S. will stop unreasonable suppression of Chinese enterprises, and will take necessary measures to resolutely safeguard legitimate rights and interests of Chinese enterprises,” the commerce ministry in Beijing said in a statement on Tuesday.
China said on Tuesday that more than 10 high-altitude balloons released by the United States since May 2022 flew into its airspace and that of other countries.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin did not provide details on the other countries involved, declined to specify which parts of Chinese airspace the incursions happened in or provide photos as evidence.
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