One Spy Balloon, Three Shootdowns: The Week North America Fired at the Sky

On the afternoon of Saturday, February 4, 2023, an Air Force F-22 fired a missile at a huge white balloon drifting at high altitude off the coast of South Carolina.

The balloon fell into the Atlantic about 9 kilometers offshore, in roughly 14 meters of water. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called it "the high altitude surveillance balloon launched by and belonging to the People's Republic of China," and the shootdown a response to an "unacceptable violation of our sovereignty."

That should have been the end of the story. It was the beginning.

Over the next eight days, U.S. fighter jets would shoot down three more objects over North America. Nobody could say, at first, what any of them were.

The balloon everyone saw

The Chinese balloon was not subtle. NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said it was about 60 meters tall and wide, with a payload of more than 900 kilograms, The National reported.

It crossed Alaska, western Canada and the continental U.S. before it was downed, according to reporting compiled by Wikipedia from the Associated Press and Reuters. President Biden later said the military advised against shooting it down over land because of its size. "The violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable," he said.

Beijing had a different story. It called the craft a civilian airship used mainly for weather research that had drifted off course. A foreign ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, said it entered U.S. airspace because it was "affected by the weather and because it has limited self-steering capability." Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng protested the "US attack on a Chinese civilian unmanned airship by military force."

The diplomatic damage was real. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a planned trip to Beijing.

Friday: Alaska

Then the radars started finding more.

On Friday, February 10, an F-22 shot down an object over Alaska's far north, above the Beaufort Sea. It had been tracked since the night before at about 40,000 feet, high enough to threaten civilian air traffic, CNN reported. The Pentagon described it as roughly the size of a small car.

Pilots gave differing accounts of what they saw. Some said it "interfered with their sensors," according to CNN.

Saturday: the Yukon

The next day, Saturday, February 11, it happened again. This time the object was over Canada.

An American F-22 operating under NORAD shot it down over central Yukon, about 100 miles from the U.S. border, at about 40,000 feet. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand called it a "cylindrical object" smaller than the Chinese balloon, CNN reported.

It was the first time in NORAD's 64-year history that the command had shot down an aerial object.

Sunday: Lake Huron

On Sunday, February 12, a third object was tracked across Montana, Wisconsin and Michigan's Upper Peninsula at about 20,000 feet. At 2:42 p.m., an F-16 fired an AIM-9X and brought it down over Lake Huron, NORAD said.

It was described as octagonal, with strings hanging off it. And the first shot missed. Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, confirmed two days later that the first missile "landed harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron," CNN reported. The second hit.

"I haven't ruled out anything"

That Sunday, VanHerck took questions at the Pentagon. He said the military couldn't yet tell how the objects stayed aloft, what propelled them or where they came from, Reuters reported.

"We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason," he said.

Then a reporter asked whether he'd ruled out an extraterrestrial origin.

"I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything."

A separate U.S. defense official told Reuters there was no evidence that any of the objects were extraterrestrial. The line still went everywhere.

The White House steps in

By Monday, February 13, the White House was in damage-control mode. "There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns," Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, according to LBC. She added: "I loved ET the movie but I am just going to leave it there."

A Pentagon memo sent to lawmakers described the Yukon object as a "small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it," CNN reported.

Then, on Thursday, February 16, President Biden addressed it himself.

He said the intelligence community's current assessment was that "these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions." He said "nothing right now" suggested they were related to China's spy balloon program.

He also explained why there were suddenly so many. "We don't have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky," Biden said. He tied the jump in detections in part to adjustments to U.S. radar after the Chinese balloon.

And he ordered his team to come back with "sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward." Those rules, he said, would stay classified.

The hobby-balloon suspect

While officials talked, hobbyists did math.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, a club north of Chicago, said one of its small silver Mylar "pico" balloons, K9YO-15, had gone silent on February 11 after 123 days aloft, NPR reported. "For now we are calling Pico Balloon K9YO Missing in Action," organizer Cary Willis wrote.

Stratospheric balloon consultant Dan Bowen told NPR he was about 98% certain one of the downed objects was the club's balloon. He estimated it cost under $100. The club itself was more careful, saying "any assertions or claims that our balloon was involved in that incident are not supported by facts."

A military spokesperson told NPR that the FBI had spoken with the club. The administration said it could not confirm any identification.

No wreckage, no final answer

The searches came up empty. Canadian police suspended the Lake Huron search, citing weather. By February 18, the U.S. and Canada had abandoned searches for all three objects, the BBC reported.

The Chinese balloon got a later update. In June 2023, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said: "It's been our assessment now that it did not collect while it was transiting the United States or overflying the United States," CBS News reported.

And in November 2024, Canadian police records obtained by CTV News showed that debris had been recovered from the shore of Lake Huron in March 2023. A March 13 email said: "The module is from a company who sells weather monitoring equipment," but noted it was uncertain whether it came from the object that was shot down, according to WCMU. The RCMP said the debris was not of national security concern.

What we know, and what we don't

What we know

• A Chinese surveillance balloon was shot down off South Carolina on February 4, 2023. The Pentagon later said it did not collect intelligence while over the U.S.
• Three smaller objects were downed over Alaska, the Yukon and Lake Huron on February 10, 11 and 12. The Lake Huron shot took two missiles.
• The White House said all three were most likely balloons tied to companies, hobbyists or researchers, with no link found to China's program.

What we don't

• What any of the three objects actually were. None was publicly identified.
• Whether debris found on Lake Huron's shore came from the object that was shot down.
• What the classified rules for future unidentified objects say.

The week the sky got crowded

The official explanation is mundane and plausible. Radars were tuned to look for smaller, slower things, and they found what was probably already up there: hobby balloons, research balloons and other clutter.

But consider what that means. For a week, the world's most advanced military fired missiles at objects it could not identify, over its own territory and its neighbor's, and then couldn't find the pieces.

So here's the question: is "most likely balloons" a satisfying answer to you, or does an air defense system that can't name what it shoots down worry you more than any UFO? Tell us in the comments.

Sources

• Remarks by President Biden on the U.S. response to the high-altitude balloon and other unidentified aerial objects — The American Presidency Project, 2023
• General hasn't ruled out anything, even aliens, after 3rd unidentified object shot down — Reuters via Times of San Diego, 2023
• Here is what we know about the unidentified objects shot down over North America — CNN via ABC30, 2023
• 1st missile fired at object shot down over Lake Huron missed; Canada UFO a 'small, metallic balloon' — CNN via ABC13, 2023
• Officials: Another object shot down over Lake Huron by U.S. aircraft — WKOW, 2023
• Fighter aircraft brought down balloon off Carolina coast: Defense secretary — ABC News / Good Morning America, 2023
• US shoots down Chinese spy balloon over 'unacceptable' violation — The New Arab, 2023
• Beijing accuses Washington of damaging relations after balloon shot down — The National, 2023
• No indication of aliens or extra-terrestrial activity, White House says — LBC, 2023
• Did an F-22 shoot down an Illinois hobby group's small radio balloon? — NPR via OPB, 2023
• Chinese spy balloon didn't collect information while flying over U.S., Pentagon says — CBS News, 2023
• Canadian officials found debris in Lake Huron after object shot down in 2023 — WCMU, 2024
• List of high-altitude object events in 2023 — Wikipedia (timeline, NORAD first use of force, search abandonment per BBC)