US Senate Majority Leader “US government rules objects shot down in Alaska and Canada as balloons”

US security officials are looking at balloons as “high-altitude flying objects” have recently shot down in the airspace of Alaska and Canada, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the 12th (local time).

Schumer said on ABC News’ This Week that day that he had received a report like this from White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan the day before. The US government announced on the 4th that it had shot down a Chinese reconnaissance balloon in South Carolina airspace, but the plane shot down in Alaska and Canadian airspace on the 10th and 11th had not yet been identified. such as reconnaissance balloons.

Schumer said the two balloons that were recently shot down were much smaller in size than the first, but posed a different threat by flying at similar altitudes to commercial airlines. Schumer also argued that he believes China may have been operating a “balloon corps” around the world.

US military authorities took a cautious stance on Schumer’s comments. Sabrina Singh, a deputy spokeswoman for the Department of Defense, said, “The two downs don’t look very much like Chinese reconnaissance balloons. We’ll be able to say more after the wreckage is collected and analyzed.”

Previously, on the 11th, US and Canadian fighters tracked an unidentified flying object in the airspace of Canada’s northern Yukon, and an F-22 fighter was able to shoot it down. On the 10th, the day before, the US military shot down a high altitude object over the northeast coast of Alaska.