Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) rarely lets an opportunity go by to blame President Joe Biden for the country’s problems. Sometimes she may even be right in doing so, but this weekend took aim at the administration for “projecting weakness” by allowing a number of unknown objects to fly across the skies of the United States.
“With leaders like Biden and Trudeau, it should be no surprise foreign adversaries are invading our skies. Projecting weakness has consequences,” the Congresswoman stated in a tweet on Saturday from her official account (@laurenboebert).
A day after her comments on social media, a U.S. Air Force F-16 Fighting Falcon had shot down an airborne object over Lake Huron on Sunday afternoon. The object was determined to be a flight hazard.
“We did not assess it to be a kinetic military threat to anything on the ground, but assess it was a safety flight hazard and a threat due to its potential surveillance capabilities. Our team will now work to recover the object in an effort to learn more,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters.
It was just a week earlier that the U.S. Air Force had shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon after it had crossed the United States.
Wave of UFOs?
The operation on Sunday was actually the third day in a row that an unidentified object had been shot down over North American airspace. The first had been shot down by an F-22 Raptor in Alaskan airspace, while a second was then downed over Canada on Saturday.
The Pentagon hasn’t confirmed that the objects are from China.
“The spy balloon from the PRC was of course different in that we knew precisely what was,” Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs, told reporters on Sunday evening. “These most recent objects do not pose a kinetic military threat, but their path in proximity to sensitive DoD sites and the altitude that they were flying could be a hazard to civilian aviation and thus raised concerns.”
Officials in South America also said that an object – believed to be a Chinese spy balloon – had been sighted over Colombia earlier this month. Despite the repeated sightings, Beijing has continued to deny that its balloons had any military capability and instead were launched to monitor the weather.
In addition, China has alleged that the United States had flown high-altitude balloons through its airspace more than 10 times since the start of last year, the Wall Street Journal reported. Washington has disputed the allegations,
It is true, however, that during the Cold War, some 448 U.S. spy balloons – launched from locations in West Germany and Turkey – were used to gather information on the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China.
Though some 90 percent were eventually shot down, the remaining balloons provided invaluable information about roughly a million square miles of Sino-Soviet territory.
Author Experience and Expertise
A Senior Editor for 19FortyFive, Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu.
