4 flying objects shot down over North America: Chronology of key moments

CHICAGO — Since the end of January, four ships, including a suspected Chinese spy balloon, have been sighted in US and Canadian airspace, all of which have subsequently been shot down by the US military.

Some details link the incidents, including all occurring within days of each other, but there are also key differences: U.S. officials say objects that did not all fly at the same altitude or follow the same path did not were sure to look alike.

Although the first hot air balloon is described as a Chinese spy vessel—China has tried to disprove that assessment—the origin and purpose of the other objects have not been confirmed by the US military.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on ABC’s This Week before the fourth object was shot down that he was told three of them were balloons.

Below is a timeline of key moments involving all four properties.

One US official attributed the rise in sightings to increased military surveillance capabilities rather than new foreign objects flying over US airspace.

“Northern Command has adjusted the parameters of their radars so that they can see more than before,” the official said.

“That’s not to say they were blissfully ignorant before,” the official said, “but there are a lot of things going around, and now we’ve gotten better at it.”

First hot air balloon

28 January

The balloon entered U.S. airspace on January 28 north of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska, according to a senior military official. Photographs from later sightings show it was a huge white airship with a landing gear that one American official said was three buses.

January 30

The ship then entered Canadian airspace over the Northwest Territories on January 30, a senior military official said.

January 31

The balloon then headed south and re-entered US airspace over northern Idaho on January 31, according to a senior military official. The White House later reported that on the same day, President Joe Biden was briefed on the balloon for the first time.

1st of February

4:21 pm ET: One of the first sightings, confirmed by ABC News, was in Reed Point, Montana on Feb. 1.

From Montana, the balloon flew southeast through South Dakota and Nebraska, US officials said.

The administration later said that on February 1, President Biden first ordered the balloon to be lowered as soon as possible because the threat of harm to civilians would ultimately delay military action.

February 4

11:15 a.m. ET: The balloon was captured over South Carolina at Lancaster as it continued to move southeast toward the coast.

2:39 p.m. ET: Footage captures a downed hot air balloon over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina.

According to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the balloon was eventually shot down in US airspace over US territorial waters by a fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command.

According to a senior US Department of Defense official, the balloon was hit by an F-22 missile about six nautical miles off the coast of South Carolina.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has criticized the US for shooting down the balloon.

“China expresses its strong displeasure and protest against the US use of force to attack civilian unmanned airships,” officials said in a statement.

The ministry claimed they told the US that the balloon was an airship “for civilian use and entered the US due to force majeure, which happened completely by accident.”

February 6

US Navy ships flooded the vast debris field with divers and cranes to pick up parts of the balloon.

A senior government official said the FBI should have secured any extracted balloon payload components and sent them to its laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis and intelligence gathering.

February 8

Pentagon brigade. Gen. Pat Ryder said China had conducted four balloon surveillance missions over “sensitive targets” on US soil in recent years, but did not say when or where the incidents occurred.

February 9th

Senior FBI officials familiar with the operation said in a conference call with reporters that the evidence response team recovered only a small portion of the balloon and did not yet have enough evidence to conclude China’s intentions.

So far, only a “very limited” number of the vessel has been recovered and delivered to the FBI’s Quantico evidence lab, officials said.

Separately, a State Department spokesman said the Biden administration is considering “taking action” against China over surveillance balloons sent over US soil.

The official confirmed that the US estimated that China had flown surveillance balloons over 40 countries, as previously reported by ABC News and other media outlets.

The downed balloon “had multiple antennas, including an array that was likely capable of picking up and locating messages. It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the necessary power to operate several active intelligence-gathering sensors,” the State Department spokesman said.

Administration officials also provided more information about China’s previous balloon operations aimed at the US. In a television interview, Secretary of Defense Austin said the aircraft had been spotted over parts of Florida and Texas.

A senior U.S. official previously told ABC’s chief global affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz that incursions into U.S. airspace have also taken place over Hawaii and off the coast of the continental U.S., especially near Coronado, California and Norfolk, Virginia, where two of the largest military bases are located. naval bases of the country.

February 10

US officials said the balloon’s landing gear was in waters off the coast of South Carolina.

The official told ABC News chief international affairs correspondent Martha Raddatz that he was discovered on February 9 and was largely unharmed.

It has not yet been lifted, officials said, but it will most likely be done with a crane or winch from the ship.

Second flying object over Alaska

February 9th

Another object was spotted late on February 9, White House spokesman John Kirby later told reporters. He said it was a small object and, according to the Pentagon, it was moving “northeast through Alaska” and two F-35 fighter jets were sent to identify it.

February 10

The planes made another flight “early this morning” on Feb. 10 to try to learn more, and that flight “ended in a shootdown,” Kirby said.

According to the Pentagon, two F-22s tracked the object, and one of them fired an AIM-9X sidewinder missile near Deadhorse, Alaska, right in Prudhoe Bay.

According to Kirby, the fighters checked to see if there were people on the site and determined that they were not.

“It was difficult for the pilots to gather a lot of information,” he said, adding: “There was a limit to how much they could guess.”

According to a US official, the object was described as being “cylindrical, silver gray in color” and appeared to be floating in the air.

Asked if it was a ‘balloon’, the official said, ‘All I’m saying is that it didn’t ‘fly’ with any thrust, so if it’s a ‘balloon’, well, we just have not enough for now.”

President Biden, briefed on February 9, gave the order to shoot him down on the morning of February 10. Kirby said that the “primary” reason Biden ordered the downing was the “safety” of flying at that altitude, and the fact that being at the mercy of the prevailing winds made his flight path less predictable. “And the president just couldn’t take that kind of risk.”

“We don’t know who owns this facility,” Kirby said.

At the Pentagon, Brigadier General Ryder said the object was detected by ground-based radar. He said he was shot down at 1:45 pm ET.

Third object over Canada

February 10

The North American Aerospace Defense Command located the high-altitude object over Alaska late on Feb. 10, according to Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman. Two American F-22s were watching the object over Alaska, he said, then Canadian planes joined them as they entered Canadian airspace.

11 February

After a call from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to President Biden, Ryder said, Biden allowed a U.S. plane to shoot down a new high-altitude target and a U.S. F-22 to shoot it down with a Sidewinder missile.

The leaders authorized the destruction of the “unidentified unmanned object” “out of great care and on the advice of their military,” according to the White House transcript of Trudeau and Biden’s call. They also stressed the importance of restoring the site to determine its purpose or origin, the report said.

“Canadian and American aircraft were airlifted and an American F-22 successfully strafed the target,” Trudeau wrote.

The object was shot down about 100 miles from the Canada-U.S. border in the central Yukon, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told reporters at a February 11 press briefing.

According to her, it was a “small cylindrical object” that was flying at an altitude of about 40,000 feet.

“These objects bore no close resemblance and were much smaller than [suspected Chinese] ball, and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the wreckage we are working on, ”a White House Security Council spokesman later told ABC News.

The fourth flying object over Lake Huron.

12th of February

Another high-rise object was shot down on the afternoon of Feb. 12, this time over Lake Huron, three U.S. officials confirmed to ABC News, the latest in a string of such incidents.

According to one of the officials, the object was shot down by a US military aircraft.

A senior administration official said Biden ordered the downing of the site “out of great caution and on the advice of military leaders.”

The official said the object was detected on radar over Montana on Feb. 11 and was seen on radar again over Wisconsin and Michigan on Feb. 12.

The object was octagonal, unmanned and traveled at an altitude of about 20,000 feet, the official said. There was no indication of the possibility of surveillance, but the administration could not rule it out.

Luke Barr, Victoria Bowl, Adam Carlson, Shannon K. Crawford, Jack Date, Meredith Deliso, Layla Ferris, Justin Fishel, Sheryl Gendron, Ben Gittleson, Kerem Inal, Julia Jacobo, Chris Loft, Luis Martinez, Josh Margolin and more Matt Seiler contributed to this report.

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