The case was confusing, it could become embarrassing: the United States admitted on Tuesday that the flying objects they shot down at the end of last week, with a missed missile launch, were perhaps "harmless".
The White House has so far "no indication" that these three mysterious objects are of Chinese origin or have had spy functions, a spokesperson said on Tuesday.
This distinguishes them from the Chinese balloon shot down on February 4, which Washington still categorically claims was intended to collect information on sensitive military sites. What Beijing denies.
These "objects" "could be balloons with innocuous commercial or scientific functions", recognized John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council of the American executive.
However, he specified that it would be necessary to wait to analyze the debris to determine with certainty the nature, the use or the origin of these "objects", but the recovery operations promise to be uncertain.
What remains of the "objects" shot down Friday over Alaska (northwest), Saturday over the Yukon in northwestern Canada, and Sunday over Lake Huron, fell back to waters frosts, in remote areas or in the depths of the lake.
He also specified that on Sunday, the F-16 fighter plane sent to bring down one of them over Lake Huron, on the Canadian border, had missed its target and that a first missile had "fallen straight into the lake. A "failure" also confirmed Tuesday by the Pentagon. The "object" was destroyed by another missile.
In the other two cases, the "objects" were destroyed on the first try by the combat planes sent to meet them, of the F-22 type this time.
President Joe Biden ordered the three consecutive destruction operations in the name of transportation security, which the White House says could have been compromised by these "objects" flying at altitudes close to those of airliners.
In the case of the Chinese balloon, the Republican opposition had criticized him for having waited too long before having it shot down.
"I never said there was some sort of principled decision to shoot things down in the sky," John Kirby said Monday, saying the decision to destroy the three mysterious "objects" was based on well-established protocols and procedures.
“We have not found any debris” so far, the spokesperson also said, indicating that the information he communicated was based in particular on “observations made by the pilots” of the planes sent to the area.
The spokesperson acknowledged that these observations were "rudimentary", since they were made from fighter planes passing at very high speed "next to small stationary objects".
The confusion surrounding this affair had taken on such proportions that on Monday White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre had, at the start of her routine briefing, very officially denied any "extraterrestrial" incursion.
The United States, on the other hand, maintains their description of the Chinese balloon shot down on February 4 on the east coast, and from which they have already recovered the first debris. The aircraft, they say, was carrying surveillance equipment, and was part of China's vast global spy program.
China has vehemently denied this and accused the Americans of sending balloons into its airspace. What Washington in turn denied.
The American authorities explain that following the discovery of this Chinese balloon, they adjusted their radar systems, which led to these successive discoveries and destructions of flying "objects".
John Kirby recalled that the US government had initiated a reflection on these new detection parameters.
He estimated that initial recommendations on the parameters to be adopted could be made "by the end of the week".
14/02/2023 17:50:11 - Washington (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
