A US fighter jet shot down an unidentified object over Canada on Saturday, the second such incident in North American skies since the dramatic downing of a suspected Chinese spy balloon a week ago.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a joint US-Canadian military operation led to the takedown of the object, the latest in a series of mysterious air intrusions.
“Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled, and a US F-22 successfully fired at the object,” Trudeau tweeted Saturday.
Shortly after the 3:41 pm (2041 GMT) downing of the object, aviation authorities shut down part of the airspace over the northwest US state of Montana after detecting what they called a “radar anomaly,” the US Northern Command said.
In a sign of jitters over possible intrusions, Northern Command said US fighter jets took to the skies but “did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits.” Skies were then reopened to commercial air traffic.
The object shot down in the Yukon was “small, cylindrical” in shape, said Canada’s defense minister, Anita Anand.
“The object was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet, had unlawfully entered Canadian airspace, and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” Anand told reporters.
