Our government didn’t seem too concerned about the UFOs that floated across North America, including over BC, over the last few weeks.
It sounds like something out of James Bond, but it’s now believed the UFO’s are some kind of Chinese spy aircraft.
At least that’s one narrative. I’m sure Fox Mulder and Dana Scully and other X-Filers can come up with others.
When a UFO was spotted last month, the Canadian government determined it posed no public threats and let it drift by.
This week when US authorities spotted a similar object they took a less pacifist approach and shot it down off the coast of South Carolina.
We thought that was the end of it.
To date, three other unidentified flying objects have been detected. Some in Canadian airspace, close enough to pose a danger to aircraft.
On Saturday, Canada, working with NORAD, brought down an object over the Yukon. Sunday, another UFO was shot down over Lake Huron, which straddles Michigan and Ontario.
“Chinese spy balloon” seems to be the running storyline on all the UFOs at the moment. But apparently, that’s more speculation than proven fact.
Allen Sens, a UBC specialist in international security, told the Times Colonist that the UFOs all seem similar, but might not be connected.
“Whether they are connected to the first balloon incident is unclear at this point,” Sens said. “We cannot assume that the objects shot down recently were necessarily intelligence-gathering balloons from China.”
He added that the tension and distrust building between North America and China could be much more harmful than the balloons themselves.
Beijing, on the other hand, has accused the US of flying “balloons” over China many times in the last year.
The US, of course, denies this.
“Not true. Not doing it. Just absolutely not true,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said in an interview with MSNBC. “We are not flying balloons over China.”
But we’re definitely in uncharted territory.
“I believe this is the first time within United States or American airspace that NORAD or United States Northern Command has taken kinetic action against an airborne object,” said Commander US Gen. Glen VanHerck.
Officials say recent changes to NORAD’s filters allow them to now detect objects moving slowly and at different altitudes.
“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant defence secretary for homeland defence.
There’s almost certainly been at least one other UFO in Canada recently that didn’t hit the news.
Air Canada said in a government aviation incident report that on Jan. 31, during a flight from Vancouver to Winnipeg, there was a “large balloon about 4,000 feet above them with something hanging from it.”
But like all UFO stories, there are widely different reports about the size and shape of the objects.
Some accounts describe a balloon dangling something “the size of a small car.,” while NORAD’s Commander described it as 200 feet tall with a payload he characterized as “a jetliner type of size” weighing “in excess of a couple thousand pounds.”
Are these UFOs a coincidence, or part of the pattern?
We’ll keep you posted.
