A Third UFO/Balloon Shot Down by US over Lake Huron

Another high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday afternoon, this one over Lake Huron, three U.S. officials confirmed to ABC News, marking the latest in a string of such incidents.

The object was shot down by a U.S. military aircraft, according to one of the officials. Further details were not yet available about the object or how it had traveled into the U.S.

“The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard. Great work by all who carried out this mission both in the air and back at headquarters. We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and [its] purpose,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., tweeted.

“As long as these things keep traversing the US and Canada, I’ll continue to ask for Congress to get a full briefing based on our exploitation of the wreckage,” Slotkin wrote.

The downing is the fourth time in recent days that a high-altitude object was shot down over U.S. or Canadian territory.

The first one, a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon, was tracked across the continental U.S. and then shot down off the coast of South Carolina by a U.S. fighter jet on Feb. 4. The balloon caused bipartisan concern in Washington after it floated across Alaska, Canada and then through the U.S., passing over sensitive military installations, including at least one housing intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The military waited to shoot it over the Atlantic Ocean out of concerns that downing it could risk people on the ground being injured by debris, officials have said. The delay in downing nonetheless sparked criticism from Republicans and some Democrats that President Joe Biden and the Pentagon waited too long to handle the balloon.

Since then, two more objects were shot down before Sunday — one over Alaska and one over Canada — both by U.S. F-22 fighter jets.

The military has not confirmed what kind of objects they were, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday they too were balloons, though smaller than the first one.

Schumer linked them to the Chinese, who initially claimed the first balloon was a civilian craft.