By Tim Binnall
In a developing story with far more questions than answers, U.S. fighter jets shot down three UFOs that had been detected over North America this past weekend, fueling all manner of speculation, including the possibility that the objects were alien in nature. The mysterious series of events reportedly began on Friday afternoon when the Pentagon announced that they had downed an unknown object spotted at an altitude of around 40,000 feet over Alaska. At a press conference detailing the incident, White House spokesperson John F. Kirby indicated that the UFO was "roughly the size of a small car" and ABC News later reported that the object was "cylindrical and silver-ish gray."
As the world was processing this strange news on Saturday and wondering what exactly had been shot down over Alaska, the unfolding drama got even weirder when it was revealed that, at the behest of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, U.S. fighter jets had shot down a second object detected flying in Canadian airspace over the Yukon earlier that day. Similar to the oddity taken out on Friday, this UFO was also described by a Canadian official as being cylindrical. The curious spate of incidents reached its current crescendo on Sunday when it came to light that yet another object had been shot down that day.
The third UFO was reportedly first spotted over Montana on Saturday, but then vanished from radar before being picked up again on Sunday and the decision was made to shoot it down over Lake Huron. The object has been described as being octagonal in shape with strings hanging off of it, though it did not appear to possess any payload. Since all three UFOs were shot down over remote, frozen locations, their debris is currently being collected for analysis in order to determine their purpose and origin. As one might imagine, the uncertainty surrounding the literal UFOs sparked considerable conversation over the weekend as the serialized drama unfolded.
Coming quickly on the heels of the highly publicized Chinese spy balloon drama that occurred earlier this month, it has understandably been suggested that the three UFOs were similar in nature, though it would appear that the trio of objects downed this weekend were smaller, differently shaped, and flying at lower altitudes. What does seem to be the case is that the earlier incident caused NORAD to change their tactics as DoD official Melissa Dalton explained at a Sunday evening press conference that "we have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we’ve detected over the past week."
Of course, reports of UFOs being shot out of the sky over North America led to many people raising the possibility that the objects were extraterrestrial and social media was ablaze all weekend with serious theorizing and amusing perspectives on what may have been a very unfortunate form of 'first contact.' The proverbial ET hypothesis was even raised at Sunday's press conference and, when asked if the objects could be alien, Gen. Glen D. VanHerck raised eyebrows by replying that "I haven't ruled out anything at this point." That said, it would seem that the general consensus within the government at this time is that the objects are of a terrestrial origin.
What happens next is anyone's guess as the events of the last few days may wind up being a brief blip in the news cycle, should nothing further happen over the next few days, or this may be the start of such highly publicized shoot downs of unknown objects becoming a regular occurrence. To that end, China has already reportedly asserted that the United States has sent several spy balloons over their country since last year and that they were actually poised to shoot down one that had recently been detected. With that in mind, one imagines that these incidents are likely to continue for a while with the worrisome possibility that, if aliens really are visiting us, they could get caught in the crossfire.