Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) insists the U.S. military will continue to deal with flying objects, as it has with four of them in recent weeks.
During an appearance on ABC’s “The View” Monday, Schumer said intelligence and military agencies are gaining “new evidence every hour” about the unidentified objects that were shot down.
“And they are focused like a laser on figuring out what happened and coming up with sort of a comprehensive analysis of how we deal with this,” he continued.
He added, “But I can assure the American people of this, if any of these objects present any danger to the American people or American interests, they will be dealt with appropriately as the last ones have been.”
Watch the video below:
.@SenSchumer to #TheView on the high-altitude object shot down Sunday afternoon: "If any of these objects present any danger to the American people or American interests, they will be dealt with appropriately as the last ones have been." https://t.co/cVclFZQmjA pic.twitter.com/qLtgIbwrs6
— The View (@TheView) February 13, 2023
After the spectacle of a Chinese spy balloon floating over a large swath of the continental U.S., the military appears to have decided to act quickly to shoot down potentially dangerous objects in the sky.
An unidentified object flying around 40,000 feet was shot down over Alaska on Friday. Another unidentified flying object — described as cylindrical — flying around 40,000 feet was shot down over Canada on Saturday. And a third unidentified object was shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday.
Meanwhile, on Saturday, a part of Montana’s airspace was temporarily shut down and designated a “national defense airspace.” The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) later said in a statement it “detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate.”
“Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits. NORAD will continue to monitor the situation,” the statement added.
The spate of incidents involving unidentified flying objects has sparked much speculation. Are they advanced aircraft sent by adversarial powers? Are they objects operated by research organizations that simply had the misfortune of getting picked up by radar and blown out of the sky? Or have aliens decided to pay us a visit?
And the Pentagon’s response has not been too clarifying. According to The New York Times, “There are no answers to the first question yet. American officials do not know what the objects were, much less their purpose or who sent them.”
“It is not clear if there are suddenly more objects,” the paper added.
One official told The Washington Post the apparent uptick in the discovery of flying objects came after the military changed some of its radar parameters. This explanation raises the question of how many objects have been flying around the skies apparently undetected.
Perhaps officials know more than they are sharing about the origins of flying objects. But what they are telling the public is only raising more speculation about what objects are and why they appear to move so quickly to take down these objects.
After the handling of the Chinese spy balloon, it would appear to be a positive change to see the military moving to shoot down objects.
While these items were flying at an altitude that could potentially pose a threat to aircraft, it does seem a little inconsistent to quickly shoot down objects without even knowing what they were, after the Chinese spy balloon was allowed to float over the country.