The All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office: Detecting Unidentified Flying Objects and Other Phenomena

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a report last month about unidentified flying objects or unexplained phenomena.

“There is no – again, no — indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Monday’s daily press briefing.

Established in July, the office – officially known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office – has received “several hundreds” of reports of unidentified objects to examine, including some that go back years, said Sean Kirkpatrick, the director of the effort. Those cases are on top of the initial 144 examined in the June 2021 report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

She said that the spy balloon from the PRC was different from the others. These objects are not a problem for the military, but they could cause harm to civilians if they flew high in the air and were close to sensitive sites.

When asked if there were any reports that suggested a threat to the national security of the US, Kirkpatrick said, “Yes.”

In the absence of being able to resolve something, we assume that it is hostile so we need to take that seriously, according to Moultrie.

One of the big issues the Pentagon faced as it began to look more seriously at the issues of UAPs was the stigma around reporting. Kirkpatrick said the stigma associated with reporting sightings has been significantly reduced.

The Hunt For An Airborne Object Over Alaska During the Saturday Shoot-down, A Joint Task Force Observation of a High-Altitude Object

A deputy director for the Navy told the House Intelligence Committee that the database had grown to 400 reports. The reports keep coming in.

There is not a single answer for all of this. Kirkpatrick asked rhetorically Friday. Part of my job is to sort out all of the hundreds of cases which end up in different places.

The Pentagon and the White House confirmed on Saturday that Trudeau and Biden authorized the shoot-down and that it was spotted over Alaska on Friday.

Over the last week, US aircraft have shot down three objects in North American airspace. Saturday’s incident comes after a shoot-down of a suspected Chinese balloon in February and the downing of an unidentified object in Alaska on Friday.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command said earlier Saturday it was monitoring “a high altitude airborne object” over northern Canada, and military aircraft were operating in the area from Alaska and Canada, according to a news release from the agency.

The danger was posed to people and property if the mission were to be shot down, as officials said it was over 200 feet tall and weighed more than a couple thousand pounds.

There were two efforts to get closer to the object and evaluate it as it flew. The first engagement by fighter aircraft took place late Thursday night and the second Friday morning. Kirby told reporters that both engagements yielded limited information.

“We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby added.

The object was shot down by a F-22 fighter jet out of a base in Alaska that was fitted with an AIM-9X missile that was used to take down the balloon. A US official said the military waited to shoot the object down during daylight hours to make it easier for the pilots to spot it. Ryder said the mission was “supported with aerial assets from the Alaska Air National Guard.”

The Alaska National Guard and units under US Northern Command, along with HC-130 Hercules, HH-60 Pave Hawk, and CH-47 Chinook are all participating in the effort to recover the object, Ryder said.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. Kirby said that they weren’t sure who owned it, whether it was state-owned or corporate-owned.

The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” As soon as the Pentagon had enough information, Biden was briefed.

A Shot Down Chinese Balloon and the Deadhorse Observed by the FAA, the Interior Secretary, and the Secretary of State

The object “did not appear to be self-maneuvering, and therefore, (was) at the mercy of prevailing winds,” making it “much less predictable,” said Kirby.

The FAA put out a temporary flight restriction in the area around Deadhorse, as the military took action against the object.

Questions have been asked of the administration’s handling of the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of the Carolinas.

The president has stood by the way his administration handled the balloon; however he has been criticized by Republicans for allowing a suspected spy balloon to go over the country before shooting it down.

What if the incidents are related to the espionage programs described by the administration, for example the shoot down of the Chinese balloon and crossing of other balloons over US territory? It would be a serious twist in the relationship between the US and China if there were any more Chinese transgressions of US airspace.

It wasn’t easy for the pilots to get a lot of information since it was much smaller and the fighter aircraft themselves weren’t very powerful.

US officials said that a new object was shot down 10 miles off the coast of Alaska, but no information about the object is available.

“Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object,” Ryder’s statement said.

The main reason the Chinese balloon was allowed to cross the continental US last week was because there was no risk of damage to people or property, if the object was shot down.

While officials have given no indication so far that the object shot down over Alaska is at all related to the Chinese spy balloon, details have been scarce.

The Air Defense Identification Zone Shoot-Down over Alaska and the Recovery of a High-Mass Object, Ryder told the Lt. Gen. Justin Trudeau

The teams are in the process of finding and identifying debris on the ocean floor.

“I don’t think there’s any lessons learned from China’s balloon helped in detecting the object shot down over Alaska,” said Ryder when asked about it on Friday.

Recovery effort: “Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said. The FBI is a liaison in the effort, which includes the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The defense minister of Canada had talked about the incident with the defense secretary of the US.

The balloon was spotted after entering the US Air Defense Identification Zone over Alaska on January 28 before flying over Canada, a Department of Defense official told lawmakers last week. It then reentered continental US airspace three days later.

“Recovery activities are occurring on sea ice,” the statement said. We don’t have any further details on the object, including its purpose, origin or capabilities.

The White House said that US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both supported the shoot down.

The report from the intelligence community on the attack on AGN 12408 in San Bernardino, Calif., Oct. 30, 2014 (with commentary by Bergen)

Pilots gave different accounts of what they observed after coming near the object, a source briefed on the intelligence told CNN; some pilots said it “interfered with their sensors,” but other pilots said they didn’t experience that.

Editor’s Note: Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America, and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

The report from America’s intelligence community can shed some light on what is going on here.

The report also noted that UFO sightings “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight.” It added that the sightings could point to “adversary collection activity,” suggesting that UFOs found around sensitive US military installations could be a foreign power spying on them.

The military is learning that if you search for unexplained aerial phenomena, you will see them in US skies.

The assistant secretary of defense said they were taken down out of an abundance of caution.

Dalton said that high-altitude objects can be used by a range of companies, countries, and research organizations for “purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research.”

A US official told CNN over the weekend there has been caution inside the administration on the pilot descriptions of the unidentified objects due to the circumstances in which the objects were viewed.

Canada’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, also made mention of a “balloon” when describing instructions given to the team that worked to take down the object.

This is the Pentagon Press Secretary. General Pat Ryder spoke last Friday about the day’s shootdown, but he had no further details about the object.

Why aren’t more airplanes around the world? The case for airspace protection after a high-altitude object shot down by an F-16

The US has used a consistent technical method for the first time, thanks to the findings, which have allowed them to track balloons in near-real time across the globe.

New speculation and criticism could be premature as officials work to fully understand the sequence of events and more about the objects. CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported on Sunday that NORAD had recently readjusted the filters it uses to sift data, which had previously concentrated on spotting fast-moving objects below a certain altitude. Early warning filters had previously been set to avoid picking up other objects, including birds and weather balloons, a source briefed on the matter said.

The increase in objects that we detected over the last week is possible because we have been scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes more closely as a result of the People’s Republic of China balloon.

A high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday by an F-16 over the lake that lies between Michigan and Ontario. The Pentagon said the object was dangerous and not a military threat. The craft was connected to a radar signal in Montana, the home to US intercontinental missile silos and other sensitive sites.

The Department of Defense phoned Rep. Slotkin to say that the military has an eye on something above Lake Huron.

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill want answers. The news of more objects being shot down was met with a range of responses by politicians on both sides of the aisle.

I think this shows that we need to say that we’re going to defend our airspace. And then we need to invest,” added Turner. Some of the problems and gaps are shown here. We need to fill those as soon as we can because we know there is a threat.

Turner’s Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence panel, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had “real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows,” before adding, “My guess is that there’s just not a lot of information out there to share.”

The Chinese government’s use of spy balloons was caught on by the US, but Chuck Schumer said Congress needs to investigate why it took so long.

“The intelligence community’s considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” John Kirby, the strategic communication coordinator at the National Security Council, said Tuesday.

A political storm is threatening after three days in a row of US fighter jets shooting down three objects over the North American continent.

The intrigue is also unfolding against a tense global situation, with already difficult relations with rising superpower China becoming ever more hostile and with the US leading the West in an effective proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

“What’s gone on in the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of craziness,” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS, hours before an airborne object was shot down over Lake Huron.

NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said that recent object shot down were likely the first of a number of actions that NORAD or US Northern Command will take against airborne objects.

So the events of the last few days do provoke serious national security and political questions that stretch far beyond the often narrow political battle in Washington, and that can only be assessed once more details are understood.

If they are not related to China, are the latest strange objects flying over North America linked to some other hostile power or group, corporate or private entity? At a time of heightened awareness and tension, can they actually be connected to one another?

Speculation and partisan maneuvering in Washington are likely to continue despite the lack of specificity. This odd series of incidents is putting fresh pressure on Biden following his decision to wait until the Chinese balloon crossed the country before shooting it down, when there is a constant flow of conspiracy theories on social media.

The political blame game is heating up. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, linked the incursions of US air space to Republican claims that Biden is failing to protect the southern border and complained that senior officials were not briefing Congress enough. And he also adopted a novel critique of Biden given claims that the president didn’t act quickly enough before.

The chairman of the House intelligence committee said on CNN that he would prefer that the people be triggered-happy than allowed to be permissive.

“I think one thing that this shows is certainly the fallacy of the argument of the Biden administration saying that the height of the Chinese balloon caused them to have no concern because certainly, as we know, whatever goes up can come down.”

At the black-tie event with state governors on Saturday, Biden didn’t address the new intrusions, but he has yet to speak to Americans in person about them.

What We’ve Learned and What We Don’t Know About the Next U.S. Invasion: How We Are Seeing All These Objects

“They are getting lots of positives that they did not get before. Most of that is going to be airplanes, whatever it may be,” said Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

Is it because many of the items have been forgiven around in the skies because they weren’t a threat, or is it a plan to gather lots of stuff for whatever purpose?

On Sunday there was more confusion. The objects shot down over Alaska and the Yukon were balloons and smaller than the original Chinese invasion, according to the leader of the Senate.

Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana appeared to make a direct link Sunday on “CNN Newsroom” between the Chinese balloon and the latest objects, even if there is no confirmation so far that they are connected.

“It doesn’t give me much safe feelings knowing that these devices are smaller,” he said. “I am very concerned with the cumulative data that is being collected. I need to know what the American people need to know.

After alarms were raised in early February over an object that the US said was a Chinese balloon, the shoot downs came in a steady succession over the weekend.

That term – “objects” – is deliberately vague with regard to the three objects downed since Friday. Nobody currently knows what these things are or who they belong to.

A senior U.S. defense official told reporters that the balloons used to conduct the operations had also violated the sovereignty of other countries.

Some of the gates were adjusted so that we could see smaller objects. You can also see how high the altitude is. And so, with some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better a categorization of radar tracks now. I think you are seeing these overall.

He didn’t say anything had been ruled out. We continue to assess every potential threat that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.

The shooting death of a young, octagonal object over Lake Huron is a safety flight hazard for officials in Canada

VanHerck said that they are called objects for a reason. And while the initial incident involved a balloon, he added, “These are objects. I don’t understand how they stay aloft. It could be a balloon inside a structure, or it could be something else. They are able to stay aloft.

It is location and altitude. The object was around 20,000 feet, soaring near the eastern portion of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. It was shot down roughly 15 nautical miles to the east of the Upper Peninsula.

A senior Biden administration official said that it was an octagonal structure with strings hanging off but no discernable payload.

The North American Defense Command said that it wasn’t a military threat, but a safety flight hazard, due to its possible surveille capabilities.

Officials also disclosed that the object that was shot down over Lake Huron was first detected in Southern Alberta. Canadian officials added that out of an abundance of caution, they have deployed investigators with explosives, chemical, biological and radiological expertise.

The size and shape of a high-capacity U.S. Navy air cushion after the recent take-down: The Sun News

Size and shape: The balloon was estimated to be up to 200 feet tall. Of the payload, VanHerck said, “I would categorize that as a jet airliner type of size, maybe a regional jet,” with a weight of more than 2,000 pounds.

On Thursday morning, a U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion — basically a high-capacity hovercraft — parked on a beach to retrieve a range of supplies and food for the crew, from fresh produce to Chick-Fil-A and a birthday cake, local paper The Sun News has news.

She said that there is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with the recent take-down. I wanted to make sure that the Americans were aware of that. We have been hearing a lot about it and so we wanted to say that from here.

The government is now trying to appear engaged after scrutiny for the lack of public comment by President Joe Biden. National security adviser Jake Sullivan is set to lead a new “interagency team” to assess the UAPs.

Those intercepted over Alaska and northern Canada, she said, had balloon-like features with small cylindrical metal objects attached, and they were flying at around 40,000 feet.

The filters were only readjusted and broadened in the past week, the source said, after a high-altitude, suspected Chinese spy balloon transited the US and ignited a debate over the United States’ ability to detect and defend against any potentially threatening objects entering its airspace.

News Mysteries Objects in Sky What Matters: Beth Sanner and John King at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

The most informative interview I saw Monday was the one CNN’s John King conducted with former Deputy Director of National Intelligence Beth Sanner, who is now a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Sanner: There was a lot of discussion when we first started looking at this in 2021, that these were aliens. I think people have pulled back since then, and said that most of the things can be explained. These stories come together, right?

Because the things that pilots have been seeing – and many times were discouraged from talking about, there was a stigma with that – they could very well be spy or other kinds of threats. So it’s important to get these things out there.

SANNER: We can no longer keep scrambling F-22s if we see an object in the sky. We need to focus and look at things that are actual threats.

We’ve invested in ballistic missile defense, but not in this. That is not a secret to the US military and the Biden administration put money into the budget this year to start looking at this.

But there’s a big gap. We are only focused on anything coming over the North Pole. We might not see it in south of Alaska.

Most of our radars are from the 1980s, and that technology gap is what we have. And so, that’s when the filtering – it’s because our processors, literally the ones that are attached to the radars – don’t have the capability to look through that much material. To identify threats, we had to look at them as threats.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/us-mystery-objects-in-sky-what-matters/index.html

Searching for Chinese Objects in a Bilateral Shoot-Down: CNN Senior Law Enforcement Analyst and Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe

SANNER: We’re in a liar, liar, pants on fire moment here. You know, I think that the Chinese are going to make up things in order to cover their own tracks.

It could take some time to figure out what these objects were, according to Andrew McCabe, a CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI deputy director.

Some of them are going to harder to reach places than others. Those materials have to be brought back to Virginia and sent to the FBI laboratory.

“Then the right partners, whether they are international partners or researchers here from the United States, have to be assembled to participate in what we call the exploitation of that technology, of the equipment.

“All of that takes time. I have no doubt that we will understand the full scope of what these things are, and what they are capable of, but it might not be quickly.”

While there has been plenty of criticism of the Biden administration for not communicating about these incidents more effectively, there is bipartisan support for shooting the objects down.

The Pentagon has not sent an official memo to Capitol Hill but are still sending correspondence to relevant committees, according to a defense official.

Lawmakers and congressional aides told CNN that the consecutive shoot-downs felt on the surface like an overcorrection to the Chinese spy balloon incident, though they cautioned that it was still too early to say definitively.

We are actually looking for these with greater vigilance. We’re looking for them in different ways. We’re starting to see them in different ways,” Colorado Democratic Rep. Jason Crow said on “CNN This Morning” on Monday.

“The truth is that most of our sensors and most of what we were looking for didn’t look like balloons. Now, of course, we’re looking for them. So, I think we’re probably finding more stuff,” Himes added.

The Shot Down of a High-Altitude Object by a U.S. Senator: Schumer, Biden, and the Pentagon

The Senate is holding a classified briefing for all senators on the shot down objects on Tuesday, according to a spokesman for Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

The White House on Monday denied that President Joe Biden’s recent swift actions to take down high-altitude objects identified hovering over American airspace were the result of political pressure, following earlier critiques that he waited too long to make the call to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.

“These were decisions based purely and simply on what was in the best interest of the American people,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said Monday.

A White House office of legislative affairs memo sent to Capitol Hill and obtained by CNN said that efforts were underway “to find what is left of these objects” to better understand them.

According to the Pentagon memo, no further information is available about the object, including its purpose or origin.

US Coast Guard ships were deployed to search the site in Lake Huron where the third object was shot down, and the Pentagon memo said no additional information was available about the description of that object.

Three people briefed on the matter told CNN that the first missile fired by the fighter jet wasn’t able to hit the target.

The Pentagon and White House had not previously disclosed that the first missile did not strike the target, but NORTHCOM and NORAD Commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters on Sunday that acquiring and targeting the object was difficult because of its small size.

The pilots opted to use short-range AIM-9X Sidewinders, which are capable of seeing the heat contrast between an object and the surrounding area. But even so, the first missile failed to hit its target. The missile is not clear.

Reply to the Mitt Romney ‘Comment on Objects’ That Haven’t Come From a Hostile State

It’s possible that the objects could have come from a hostile state, but the White House wanted to assure the public that wasn’t the case. On Tuesday, a top White House official suggested they were likely harmless.

The senators were reassured that the objects were not threatening the Americans after hearing from the administration officials that they were not.

“There are a lot of these things that are up in the air from time to time, some commercial, some government and maybe there’s some things we don’t know,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, adding he wasn’t worried “in the slightest” that the objects themselves pose a threat to the American people.

“Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure,” U.S. Northern Command said.

So far, those efforts have been hampered by what he described as “pretty tough conditions,” exacerbated by the geographic challenges on Lake Huron, in the Yukon wilderness and on sea ice north of Alaska.

“Pretty tough weather conditions, let alone just geographically, just tough time of year,” Kirby said, noting that the Chinese spy balloon debris recovery off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month was also hampered by high seas in the Atlantic Ocean due to the time of year.

The government relied on information and expertise from the FAA and the intelligence community to find out what they could about the devices.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Monday the search area in Yukon was a “fairly large area” in dense wilderness. Other Canadian officials were candid Monday about the difficult task of recovering debris from high-altitude objects shot down over Canada and the US.

“We are working very hard to locate them, but there’s no guarantee that we will. The terrain in the Yukon is rather treacherous right now so it could pose some significant challenges to us in in terms of our recovery efforts the same could be said about what’s taking place in Lake Huron, the marine conditions are also not conducive at the moment,” said Sean McGillis, a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

White House Press Conference on Extraterrestrial Activity: The Case for a Test of Constraints on Cosmic Intelligence

The White House said in a press conference that the US military had not shot down aliens from outer space.

Officials are sensitive to the inherently mysterious nature of airborne objects and how ripe the recent series of events was for conspiracy theories.

One official said that everyone wanted to know what was happening at the moment and they were at risk of creating a conspiracy.

A determination was made that even in the absence of much concrete information that could be shared with the public about the three recently downed objects, it would be prudent to publicly rule out – as quickly as possible – the possibility of extraterrestrial activity, sources said.

Administration officials say that they want to provide as much information as they can, but the circumstances aren’t ideal for effective communication.

officials said that the president has acknowledged that he cannot communicate on the devices without a full picture of what they are, and thus he has expressed a desire to be as transparent as possible.

The lawmaker said on Monday that it would be wise for Biden to speak to the public because of the potential for conspiracy theories.

Recovery of an Airship from an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena After the Balloon-Balloonmania

The US government tracked several unexplained flying objects, including a number of balloons, before the balloon mania began. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a January report, for example, tracking incidents involving UFOs, which the US government calls Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs. The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office had almost 250 reports of UAPs over the course of two years. In a wider pool of 366 UAP reports that also includes newly discovered incidents that occurred before 2021, ODNI said that 163 were balloons “or balloon-like entities,” 26 were “Unmanned Aircraft Systems,” or drones, and six were “attributed to clutter.” Not every balloon is a balloon, and not every balloon is a spy balloon.

The parts of a Chinese balloon that was shot down 10 days ago were successfully recovered by crews using salvaged equipment.

The recovery operation has included the use of a crane to bring up large pieces of the airship, which was kept aloft by a balloon estimated to be up to 200 feet tall.

General Glen VanHerck, the NORAD commander and a man of many years experience, labeled the payloads size as a jet airliner type of size, weighing more than 2,000 pounds.

China says that the balloon was used for research and only blew off-course because of strong winds.

The US blew the balloon out of the sky because it had been over much of the continental U.S.

The analysts recommended that the Biden administration not allow the craft to return to China, as well as allowing the US to gain its own insight by recovering the equipment.

As for how the U.S. will handle cases of unidentified aerial objects objects in the future, Kirby said on Tuesday that the National Security Council likely will present new guidance by the end of the week.