US jet shoots down flying object over Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the shootdown on Twitter and said it took place over the Yukon territory in the country's north

A US fighter jet, acting on the orders of President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, shot down another unidentified flying object Saturday, Canadian and US officials said, in the latest installment of the drama playing out in the skies of North America.

“I ordered the takedown of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Trudeau said in a statement posted on Twitter. He said a US F-22 with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is operated jointly by the United States and Canada, downed the object over the Yukon Territory.

As with the object that Biden ordered shot down near Alaska on Friday, officials said they had yet to determine just what had been blasted out of the sky over the Yukon, which borders the northernmost US state.

Read | US says it shot down object over Alaska, size of small car

Trudeau said he had spoken with Biden on Saturday afternoon. “Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object,” he said in his Twitter post.

The White House said in a statement Saturday that Biden and Trudeau had “discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin.”

The object taken down over the Yukon was picked up on radar as it passed over Alaska late Friday, Pentagon officials said earlier Saturday. NORAD sent American fighter jets, which were soon joined by Canadian fighters, to track it.

“Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace,” said Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary. The F-22 shot down the object over Canadian territory using the same Sidewinder air-to-air missile used to take down two previous flying objects, Ryder said, including a Chinese spy balloon one week earlier.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin spoke by phone Saturday with his Canadian counterpart, Anita Anand, Ryder said. Speaking at a news conference Saturday evening, Anand described the object as cylindrical, and smaller than the spy balloon taken down over the Atlantic the previous weekend.

It is believed to be rare for the United States to shoot down UFOs. But tensions in the US have been high ever since the discovery of the Chinese spy balloon in American skies about two weeks ago, prompting Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a planned trip to China. The surveillance balloon was shot down last weekend.