Bloomberg News
@Bloomberg-News·2.8M subscribers·40.1K videos
US Shoots Down Unknown Object Over Alaska, Pentagon Says
Posted
February 10, 2023
Views
1,390
Likes
17
Comments
13
Engagement
2.16%
February 10, 2023
1,390
17
13
2.16%
Every word spoken in this episode is indexed. Type any phrase to jump straight to the moment it was said.
Type any word or phrase that may have been spoken. Click a result to seek the player to that exact moment.
Try a name, a topic, or a quoted line
See what was published immediately before and after this episode.
0:53Now PlayingPresident Joe Biden ordered the Pentagon to shoot down an object spotted at 40,000 feet over Alaska less than a week after fighter jets targeted an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon that had crossed the US and provoked a national uproar.
The unidentified object, which was about the size of a car and didn’t have the ability to maneuver, “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” the White House said. The nature and origin of the craft was unknown though National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it was far smaller than the Chinese balloon downed off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday.
The Pentagon has deployed planes and helicopters to recover the object, which fell onto ice.
The object was downed off northeastern Alaska, near the border with Canada, in Arctic Ocean waters after being identified overnight. The president was then briefed. F-22 fighter jets fflew by to observe it Thursday night and again Friday before it was shot down with a Sidewinder missile — the same type used to bring down the balloon off South Carolina.
US officials said there had been no outreach to China about the latest object. There is nothing yet to indicate what it was or where it came from, and no evidence it came from China.
Its presence will, however, raise questions of whether there is any linkage to the Chinese balloon that was identified early last week and which the US argues was part of military-led espionage program in some 40 countries. US crews are working to recover the wreckage of that balloon.
In a separate briefing, Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder said the search crews had located a significant amount of debris from the Chinese balloon, though he said bad weather was keeping them from bringing most of it up from the ocean floor.
He said there was no indication that the two episodes were connected while acknowledging the apparent similarities.
“I think we are all, to include the media and the public, very attuned to balloons at the moment,” Ryder said.
--------
Subscribe to our YouTube channel
Subscribe to Bloomberg Originals
Bloomberg Quicktake brings you global social video spanning business, technology, politics and culture. Make sense of the stories changing your business and your world.
Connect with us on…
Breaking News on YouTube
Sentinel Indexing in Progress
Metadata and chapters are available. Claim extraction for this episode is pending.
All video content is delivered via YouTube embedded players in accordance with the YouTube Terms of Service. Sentinel provides research tools that promote discovery and accountability across political media.
