Airspace over Lake Michigan was closed briefly over the weekend following reports of an unidentified flying object in the area, the Western Journal reported. The closure came just a day after similar closure in the Montana skies.
On Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration imposed a "national defense airspace" in response to the presence of something in the Lake Michigan area. This type of closure means the aircraft defying the order can be penalized up to and including being shot down.
The closure was lifted later that day. The situation caused a stir considering that the FAA imposed the same sort of ban in Montana on Saturday.
While that order was still in place, Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) weighed in on Twitter. "I am in direct contact with NORCOM and monitoring the latest issue over Havre and the northern border," he wrote.
"Airspace is closed due to an object that could interfere with commercial air traffic — the DOD will resume efforts to observe and ground the object in the morning," Rosendale added. On Sunday, he appeared to update his initial story with another tweet.
"I am in constant communication with NORCOM, and they have just advised me that they have confidence there IS an object and it WAS NOT an anomaly," Rosendale wrote. "I am waiting now to receive visual confirmation. Our nation’s security is my priority."
Reports later emerged that a craft was shot down on Sunday near Michigan's Upper Peninsula, NPR reported. "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," the North American Aerospace Defense Command said.
A senior official in President Joe Biden's administration described it as an "octagonal structure with strings hanging off but no discernable payload." The location was strategically chosen to minimize risk to people on the ground and preserve a debris field for further study.
It's unknown if this is related to other incidents involving flying objects shot down by the U.S. military in recent weeks. In total, four of these objects have been taken out of the skies with little follow-up information provided on what they were or where they came from.
The first involved fighter jets that shot down a Chinese spy balloon that spent days crossing the continent in American airspace. It was finally taken out on Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina and retrieved for examination.
The communist nation attempted to deflect and accused the U.S. of deploying spy balloons over China, though Secretary of State Antony Blinken called this claim false. "We do not send spy balloons over China, period," he said in the aftermath.
A second object was shot down over Alaska on Feb. 10 that officials described as the "size of a small car." Debris recovery efforts were hampered by the weather, and no further reports about the origin or makeup of the object have been confirmed.
The third incident involved an object described as a "cylindrical" object shot down on Feb. 11 over the Yukon in Canada by an American F-22. "Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object," Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised afterward.
The fact that these objects are crisscrossing North America is unnerving, especially since there isn't much information from the government about why they're here. What is abundantly clear is that the Biden administration is not able to stop them from coming in.
