There are no plans right now to release videos of U.S. fighter jets shooting down unidentified flying objects (UFOs) over North America last month, according to the Pentagon.
Footage of the “high altitude objects and the takedown of those objects exists,” a Department of Defense (DoD) spokesperson told Fox News. However, imagery of the flying objects “remains classified, and I have not received any information as to the potential timeline on a change in classification,” a DoD representative explained to the Daily Mail.
Early last month, after U.S. jets shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina following a flyover of the United States, at least three mysterious UFOs were reported to have been blasted by missiles over Alaska, a remote part of Canada, and Lake Huron.
Just what these three objects were remains a subject of some mystery, though there is speculation that at least one of them was an Illinois hobby club’s balloon. U.S. and Canadian officials said the UFOs were blasted out of the sky over concerns that they endangered civilian aircraft and possibly were conducting surveillance.
While imagery of the objects may not be released, The Drive published cockpit audio from the F-16 fighter jet pilots sent to intercept the UFO over Lake Huron. In their communications, the pilots described seeing a small object, possibly a balloon, with strings attached.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, revealed that one missile fired by a U.S. fighter jet missed the UFO over Lake Huron and that missile landed “harmlessly” in the lake. A second missile from an F-16 brought down the flying object.
U.S. and Canadian officials conducted searches for debris from the flying objects, but these expeditions were eventually called off due to complications such as winter weather and wild terrain, raising the prospect that the UFOs would never be found and identified.
During a public address on February 16, President Joe Biden said intelligence officials assessed that the three objects were most likely balloons “tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research,” and probably not surveillance balloons from another country.
In stark contrast to what happened with the three UFOs, the U.S. military completed a salvage operation of the Chinese balloon in the Atlantic Ocean and even released a selfie taken by the pilot of a U-2 spy plane that was monitoring the vessel before it was shot down.