The United States military on Sunday shot down another unidentified flying object over Lake Huron in Michigan.
Republican Representative Jack Bergman confirmed that the US military has “decommissioned another object” over Lake Huron.
“I appreciate the decisive action by our fighter pilots,” he wrote on Twitter. “The American people deserve far more answers than we have.”
An unnamed Congressional aide told The Wall Street Journal the object was shaped like an octagon and that it was at an altitude of 20,000 feet, posing a threat to commercial aircraft.
An F-16 fighter jet shot down the object using an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile before 3pm local time, the newspaper reported.
Democrat Representative Elissa Slotkin tweeted that the object had been “downed” by US Air Force and National Guard Pilots.
“Great work by all who carried out this mission both in the air and back at headquarters,” she said.
“We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and its purpose. As long as these things keep traversing the US and Canada, I’ll continue to ask Congress to get a full briefing based on our exploitation of the wreckage.”
Earlier she noted that more would be known “about what this was in the coming days, but for now, be assured that all parties have been laser-focused on it from the moment it traversed our waters”.
The US has shot down four objects over North America in the past week, with the first being a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
The second and third are believed to have been smaller balloons, which were shot down over Alaska and Canada, respectively.
The US and Canada were working on Sunday to recover the remnants of the mysterious objects, amid growing jitters that resulted in several brief airspace closures in recent days.
Reflecting the heightened state of alert, US authorities on Sunday first announced an airspace closure over Lake Michigan, near the border with Canada, and then lifted the restriction.
A similar closure Saturday over Montana led to the scrambling of US fighter jets but it too was eventually lifted.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau meantime was heading Sunday to the western Yukon territory, where an unidentified object was shot down a day earlier.
The dramatic succession of shootdowns has roiled already tense US-Chinese relations.
A senior Republican on Sunday accused Beijing of “an act of belligerence” regarding the first balloon, shot down February 4 off the US East Coast after officials said it was engaged in spying.
“It was done with provocation to gather intelligence data, and collect intelligence on our three major nuclear sites,” Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CBS.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, among senior lawmakers who received a government briefing, told ABC the two latest objects both appeared to be balloons, but “much smaller than” the first large one.
Mr Trudeau’s visit comes a day after a US F-22 jet, acting on orders from the Prime Minister and US President Joe Biden, downed a “high-altitude airborne object” over the Yukon, about 160 kilometres north of the border.
Canadian officials described it as small and cylindrical, roughly the size of a Volkswagen car.
Recovery teams backed by a Canadian CP-140 patrol aircraft were continuing their search Sunday for debris in the Yukon, officials said.
US teams were struggling with Arctic conditions as they searched near Deadhorse, Alaska, where the second object was shot down Friday.
Operations were also continuing off the South Carolina coast, where the past week’s drama climaxed when the initial large balloon was shot down.
Culminating a weekend with the military on alert, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said on Twitter that Sunday’s Lake Michigan closure was “to ensure the safety of air traffic in the area during NORAD operations”.
“The temporary flight restriction has since been lifted,” it said.
While Saturday’s Montana event yielded no object at the time, a US congressman only fuelled the mystery of what happened.
Montana Representative Matt Rosendale tweeted Sunday that he remained in communication with military officials “and they have just advised me that they have confidence there IS an object and it WAS NOT an anomaly”.
Republicans meanwhile have harshly criticised President Joe Biden for allowing the first balloon to drift for days across the country — potentially gathering sensitive intelligence — before having it shot down.
Mr Schumer on Sunday defended Mr Biden’s handling, telling ABC an analysis of recovered debris would represent “a huge coup for the United States”.
But Mr Biden has faced bipartisan calls for greater transparency. “I have real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming,” Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC.
— with Fox News