Defense officials have had a busy year, and the calendar still only reads February. Earlier this month, a Chinese spy balloon made headlines after it traveled over much of the United States before members of the United States Armed Forces shot it down off the coast of South Carolina, waiting so as not to potentially injure any residents. Since the spy balloon was taken out of operation, US forces have downed an additional three unidentified crafts. In fact, one high-ranking defense official has even gone the length to say he hasn’t yet “ruled out” an alien or extraterrestrial presence.
In a phone call with reporters Sunday evening, General Glen VanHerck was specifically asked if he’s ruled out other-worldly threats. That’s when the head of the U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) dropped a bombshell. “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything,” Gen. VanHerck said on the call.
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He added, “At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.”
Friday, one unidentified flying object was shot down off the coast of Alaska over territorial waters belonging to the United States. Saturday, a second UFO was shot down in Canada and a third was downed over Lake Huron in the Great Lakes reason Sunday afternoon. On top of that all, a mysterious radar anomaly was detected in Montana on Saturday, which Pentagon officials suggest was tied to the Lake Huron UFO case.
“Based on its flight path and data we can reasonably connect this object to the radar signal picked up over Montana, which flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites,” the Pentagon said in a statement. “We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities. Our team will now work to recover the object in an effort to learn more.”
The latest UFO interactions comes just weeks after the Department of Defense released its now-annual report on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). This year’s report detailed a total of 510 sightings, an increase of 366 from the inaugural report last year. Out of those 366 new sightings, 163 were determined to be balloons, 26 were attributed as drones, and an additional six were listed as “atmospheric clutter.” The remaining 171 cases weren’t determined to be any of the above items and were lumped into a “requires further analysis” category.
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