U.S. says 1st missile shot at object above Lake Huron missed its target

U.S. officials said Tuesday that the first missile shot at an unidentified object flying over Lake Huron on Sunday missed its intended target.

And while harsh weather conditions have hampered recovery efforts, the White House says there is no evidence that any of the three unidentified objects that were shot down by the United States over the weekend were Chinese spy balloons.

Speaking at a press conference in Brussels on Tuesday, Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the first Sidewinder missile fired by an F-16 fighter jet at the object over Lake Huron missed its intended target.

“First shot missed,” Milley told reporters. “The second shot hit.”

President Biden ordered the downing of the UFO, the third such event in three days and the fourth in little more than a week.

Milley said that in each case, the U.S. military evaluates the risks to the civilian population “very, very carefully.”

“We determine what the debris field is likely to be with one of these platforms landing on the Earth's surface or in the water,” he said. “We go to great lengths to make sure that the airspace is clear and the backdrop is clear out to the max effective range of the missile.”

In this case, Milley said, the missile “landed harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron.”

“We tracked it all the way down, and we made sure that the airspace was clear of any commercial or civilian or recreational traffic,” he said.

On Feb. 4, the U.S. shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, S.C., after it had floated across the country at a high altitude for nearly a week. Navy divers began the process of recovering the balloon from a debris field stretching 7 nautical miles. The recovered debris was taken to an FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., for analysis.

On Friday, Biden ordered the downing of another object — roughly the size of a small car — spotted flying off the remote northern coast of Alaska. U.S. officials said it was flying at about 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flights. Biden called the downing of the object “a success.”

On Saturday, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a U.S. fighter jet had shot down an unidentified object that was flying high over the Yukon territory.

During a conference call with reporters on Tuesday, John Kirby, coordinator for strategic communications for the National Security Council, said officials were still working to recover and identify the three objects; it does not appear they were part of the Chinese spy balloon program.

“We haven't seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China] spy balloon program,” Kirby said.

Kirby said recovery teams still haven’t been able to recover debris from the objects because of harsh weather conditions.