President Joe Biden on Monday directed his national security team to lead a government effort to study the implications of unidentified aerial objects and their potential security risks, after the U.S. military shot three of them down in the last three days.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby announced the new process at the White House, which will focus on potential policy changes in response to the increased discovery of the objects in the last week.
The purpose of the effort, he added in an interview with Spectrum News, is to look at "whether we need to maybe change some of our policies, maybe change some of our initiatives, maybe change some of the way we are resourcing airspace opportunities and airspace management."
The number of aerial apparatus shot down in the last eight days is unprecedented in peacetime, and Kirby admitted that the increased discovery is due, in part, to the fact that “we’re looking for more,” after a hefty Chinese spy balloon was detected over the continental U.S. in late January.
The three most recent objects – one of them described as octogonal – were not manned but rather being propelled by the wind. President Biden gave the order to shoot them down because they were flying at the height typical of commercial airplanes carrying civilians.
“The real risk to safety of flight was a problem,” he said.
Kirby ruled out any idea that the three mechanisms are extraterrestrial, after a defense official this weekend said it wasn't out of the question.
“I don't think the American people need to worry about aliens with respect to these craft, period,” Kirby said.
Officials have also said the objects did not pose physical danger to Americans on the ground.
It’s unclear who owns the three objects, which are different from the jetliner-size balloon owned by China that traversed the U.S. last week until it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
That balloon was clearly a surveillance apparatus that had flown over several sensitive U.S. areas, Kirby said.
Military officials in a briefing late Sunday explained they had shifted their detection tools to look more closely.
“We have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, including enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we've detected over the past week,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs.
The object shot down over Lake Huron on Sunday was thought to have landed in very deep water, and recovery operations were underway. U.S. officials were still trying to precisely identify two other objects shot down by F-22 fighter jets, and were working to determine whether China was responsible as concerns escalated about what Washington said was Beijing’s large-scale aerial surveillance program.
An object shot down Saturday over Canada’s Yukon was described by U.S. officials as a balloon significantly smaller than the balloon – the size of three school buses – hit by a missile Feb. 4.
A flying object brought down over the remote northern coast of Alaska on Friday was more cylindrical and described as a type of airship.
Meanwhile, the full U.S. Senate will receive a Tuesday morning briefing "on what we know and do not know about where these objects come from, and what threats, if any, they pose to the United States," Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the chamber floor Monday afternoon.
"Congress is going to conduct a careful bipartisan examination at these various incidents and also look into why U.S. authorities didn't find these Chinese surveillance balloons sooner," he added.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.