WASHINGTON — The U.S. navy shot down a second “excessive altitude object” in American airspace, this day off the coast of Alaska on Friday, the White Home introduced.

The mission occurred lower than every week after a excessive altitude Chinese language surveillance balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.

White Home spokesman John Kirby hesitated to characterize the plane as a balloon, saying “we’re calling this an object as a result of that is the most effective description we’ve got proper now.” He additionally mentioned U.S. officers didn’t but know which nation or group was liable for it.

The thing was destroyed by a missile from an F-22 fighter aircraft off the far northeastern coast of Alaska, Kirby mentioned at a White Home press briefing.

The U.S. navy first turned conscious of the thing on Thursday evening. President Joe Biden gave the order to shoot it down on Friday morning, which was carried out shortly after midday.

The craft was flying at roughly 40,000 ft in altitude, which is decrease than the balloon final week, and it was the scale of a small automobile, he mentioned.

Not like the balloon shot down on Saturday, the most recent object didn’t seem to own any maneuverability, Kirby mentioned.

Final week’s spy balloon was the scale of three faculty buses, in keeping with Pentagon officers. A complicated surveillance craft with propellers that gave it maneuverability, the balloon carried a payload the scale of a jetliner.

The most recent incident additionally differed considerably from the prior one in that this floating object was shot down inside hours of its detection.

The bigger, earlier balloon was permitted to drift throughout the USA for every week earlier than Biden gave the order to shoot it down.

The Pentagon defended that call at a Senate listening to on Thursday, telling lawmakers that the spy balloon’s main worth to the U.S. navy lay in what may very well be realized from its flight course and its particles.

“A key a part of the calculus for this operation was the power to salvage, perceive and exploit the capabilities of the excessive altitude balloon,” mentioned Assistant Secretary of Protection Melissa Dalton.

One other issue influencing the choice to let the earlier balloon stay within the air was that it was floating at roughly 60,000 ft in altitude, the place it didn’t pose a direct menace to civilian plane. Industrial airliners sometimes cruise at an altitude of 35,000 ft.

The thing shot down on Friday was floating at simply 40,000 ft, nonetheless, creating what the White Home referred to as “an affordable menace” to air security.

A Pentagon spokesman mentioned Friday that the salvage operation for the most recent object was already underway, however had been hampered by tough seas within the Arctic Ocean that made diving particularly perilous.