U.S. F-16 Shoots Down An Unidentified ‘Octagon Shaped’ Object Over Lake Huron

It’s the fourth engagement in little a couple of week.

A U.S. F-16 has shot down one other “unidentified object” within the Canadian airspace above Lake Huron on Feb. 12, 2023. The downing was introduced by a Congressman on Twitter.

I’ve been involved with DOD concerning operations throughout the Nice Lakes area in the present day.

The US army has decommissioned one other “object” over Lake Huron.

I respect the decisive motion by our fighter pilots.

The American individuals deserve much more solutions than now we have.

— Rep. Jack Bergman (@RepJackBergman) February 12, 2023

The one “decommissioned” on Sunday, was the identical unidentified object that NORAD had tracked on Saturday above Montana and Lake Michigan. After a Short-term Flight Restriction was issued within the space and later lifted, NORAD stated it had detected a “radar anomaly” and scrambled the fighters to the world, the place no object was discovered. Nevertheless, the search continued…

UPDATE: All indications counsel NORAD continues to be searching *one thing* close to the U.S./Canadian border within the Lake Michigan–Huron space.
A brand new NOTAM was simply issued by TCCA over Lake Huron, and U.S. army plane proceed to canvas the world. pic.twitter.com/F1mor3bbg6

— Tim McMillan (@LtTimMcMillan) February 12, 2023

In response to the WSJ, who cited a Congressional aide, this time it was an F-16 to shoot down the thing, that seemed to be formed like an octagon and was flying at 20,000 ft, posing a risk to industrial plane flying within the space.

New TFR – Short-term Flight Restriction activated over Lake Huron, one other KC-135 MOLSON01 departed Bangor, Maine because the NORAD op continues 1930 Zulu pic.twitter.com/TnoqyC9VC7

— Thenewarea51 (@thenewarea51) February 12, 2023

The engagement marks the fourth time an object was shot down over North America since a (supected) Chinese language spy balloon was shot down on Feb. 2 over the Atlantic Ocean, after crossing CONUS from west to east.

The primary one was the well-known Chinese language excessive altitude balloon shot down on February 4, 2023, at 2:39 p.m. by an F-22 Raptor, belonging to the first Fighter Wing from Langley Air Power Base, shot down with an AIM-9X infrared-guided air-to-air missile off the coast of South Carolina and inside U.S. territorial airspace. The second was a “excessive altitude object” described as “cylindrical and silver-ish grey” and seemed to be floating, that was shot down by F-22 launched from Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson on Feb. 10 over Alaska. The third object was shot down on Feb. 11 over Yukon, Canada. In response to some stories, the objects shot down over Alaska and Yukon (second and third downing) had been too balloon, though the dimensions of each was smaller than the Chinese language one shot down in Feb. 4.

That is how this Creator commented the third object being shot down yesterday. It nonetheless applies in the present day:

“For the second we will’t however discover the development is regarding. What’s notably attention-grabbing is that whereas the primary one was clearly a balloon, the second and third stay unidentified, therefore presumably belonging to the class of the so-called UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). Are these objects unmanned plane unleashed to spy on the U.S.? Possibly. For certain one thing is going on and after the criticism brought on by the response to the China’s spy balloon (that flew over the U.S. for days earlier than being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean), NORAD has engaged the “intruders” earlier (off the coast of Alaska, over territorial waters on Feb. 10; likely over an unpopulated space in Canada, on Feb. 11).”

The variety of engagement is likely to be on a elevating development since monitoring of the airspace has been improved following the Chinese language balloon incident. Likely, ROE (Guidelines of Engagement) have additionally been modified, resulting in early “decommission” of the unidentified object.

I might make an informed guess that that is extra of a change in coverage/ROEs and particularly an intelligence assortment marketing campaign at this level then a brand new invasion of unidentified craft. They must give an evaluation now. The dam might have lastly broke. This can be a large deal.

— Tyler Rogoway (@Aviation_Intel) February 11, 2023

Coping with the asset used to shoot down the “objects”, the F-22s had been used for very excessive altitude objects: because the altitude of the “zombie” (as an unidentified plane is known as within the fighter pilot lingo) has decreased, extra “conventional” fighters, specifically the F-16s, may very well be used to destroy the “intruder”.

Apparently, no images of the engagements have been launched but, however pilots have actually shot some images and pointed the concentrating on pods of their plane on the objects.

David Cenciotti is a journalist primarily based in Rome, Italy. He’s the Founder and Editor of “The Aviationist”, one of many world’s most well-known and browse army aviation blogs. Since 1996, he has written for main worldwide magazines, together with Air Forces Month-to-month, Fight Plane, and plenty of others, overlaying aviation, protection, conflict, trade, intelligence, crime and cyberwar. He has reported from the U.S., Europe, Australia and Syria, and flown a number of fight planes with completely different air forces. He’s a former 2nd Lt. of the Italian Air Power, a personal pilot and a graduate in Pc Engineering. He has written 5 books and contributed to many extra ones.