A first missile shot at an unidentified flying object over Lake Huron on Sunday missed its target, the Pentagon’s top general said Tuesday, highlighting the U.S. military’s challenge in safely taking down a series of unmanned craft detected over North America in recent days.
“Yes, the first shot missed,” Milley said.
The most important aspect of these operations, he added, is to protect the American people. In such instances, senior defense officials assess whether the detection of an unidentified object poses a threat and, if so, how best to shoot it down.
“We determine what the debris field is likely to be with one of these platforms landing on the Earth’s surface or in the water,” Milley said. “So we go to great lengths to make sure that the airspace is clear and the backdrop is clear … to the max effective range of the missile.”
The development, reported earlier by Fox News, was not disclosed by the Pentagon to the public during news conferences Sunday or Monday. The Pentagon has not addressed why. The missed shot highlights a dilemma facing U.S. military commanders as they detect and evaluate whether to and how to take down such objects over populated areas.
Another senior U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity citing ongoing sensitivity surrounding the issue, said Tuesday that a pair of F-16 fighters were involved in the shoot-down over Lake Huron. Each jet launched one AIM-9X Sidewinder, a heat-seeking missile. The first missile did not detect the airborne object, so it lost track of the target and “did not fuse,” the official said.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of U.S. Northern Command, touted the Sidewinder as the weapon of choice to reporters after the operation, saying the AIM-9X was “very, very effective” because it could distinguish the infrared contrast between the objects and the environment.
The encounter, first disclosed publicly by two of Michigan’s congressional representatives, was the fourth such occurrence this month. Other aerial objects were shot down Friday off the North Slope of Alaska and on Saturday over the Yukon territory of Canada. The White House said Tuesday that all three objects downed in recent days, while their wreckage have not been recovered, are believed to be commercial devices and that U.S. intelligence officials suspect they had no nefarious intent.
A suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was downed off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4 after transiting much of the continental United States. That incident touched off a wave of political blowback against the Biden administration while deepening the long-simmering standoff between Washington and Beijing.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, asked if it is now U.S. policy to shoot down unidentified flying objects on sight, said military leadership would “evaluate each and every event on its own merits.”
The incidents have left commanders to rethink what they look in skies over North America and how they determine whether certain objects pose a threat. These recent objects are smaller, slower and have relatively tiny radar signatures compared to missiles and enemy aircraft, and detection systems have previously filtered out innocuous objects like flocks of birds or weather balloons. As much as 98 percent of radar data was left out of routine military analysis, VanHerck said in 2021.
That has changed since China’s incursion late last month, officials said.
“We have adjusted some of those gates to give us better fidelity on seeing smaller objects. You can also filter out by altitude. And so, with some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better a categorization of radar tracks now,” VanHerck told reporters Sunday. “And that’s why I think you’re seeing these overall. Plus, there’s a heightened alert to look for this information.”
The focus in recent days has been solving another problem. Fighter jets were scrambled in response to these incidents so pilots could put eyes on the objects. But their aircraft move much too fast to adequately inspect the objects, some of which have been detected at night moving at the speed of wind, VanHerck said.
There is a conversation underway now about whether drones that can travel slower and capture better imagery of the objects are more ideal for initial response, another U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Military leaders also have discussed whether other equipment might need to be recalibrated to pick up smaller radar signals, the official said.
Further complicating the issue, this official said, are radar blind spots. The military relies in part on radars operated by the Federal Aviation Administration, which has said it needs to upgrade its infrastructure.
The object shot down over Lake Huron was previously tracked in Canada and then Montana, and fighter pilots were sent up Saturday night to get a visual identification of the radar hit. They flew for an hour and half and could not find anything, the second U.S. official said, and radars lost the trail until another hit was detected Sunday.
“We know in certain places in the country there are not great radars,” the official said. “We know that they don’t always talk to all the systems in the same way that can be helpful. Some of that is a capability question. Some of it’s just a calibration and programming question. And then some of it is how that data moves through the system to the various places where people are looking at it.”