Biden on Lake Huron object: ‘We still don’t know’ what it was, Canadians suspend search
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President Joe Biden on Thursday gave a brief statement regarding three unidentified objects shot down by the U.S. in recent days, including one brought down in Lake Huron on Sunday, saying, “We don’t know exactly what these three objects were.”
Separately, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police sent out a statement Thursday afternoon indicating they and their international partners — presumably meaning the Americans — had suspended the search for the object, perhaps indefinitely, “due to several factors including deteriorating weather and the low probability of recovery.”
The National Weather Service said there was a potential for heavy snow, gusts of up to 30 knots and waves of up to 11 feet Thursday night on northern Lake Huron with poor conditions continuing into Friday.
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Neither the U.S. Defense Department nor the U.S. Coast Guard, both of which were involved in recovery efforts, immediately responded to questions about the search being suspended. In his statement earlier in the day, Biden seemed to suggest the search for all three objects was continuing.
In his comments, Biden said while the objects hadn’t been recovered, there was nothing to suggest so far that they were tied to any surveillance or intelligence gathering efforts from outside the U.S., including China’s surveillance program.
Earlier this month, Biden ordered the military to shoot down what his administration said was a high-altitude Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast. He gave orders to shoot down the other three objects, which were smaller and flying at a much lower altitude, out of “an abundance of caution,” he said, that they could interfere with civilian aviation or attempt to collect information on sensitive U.S. sites.
Biden said Thursday, that the U.S. intelligence community feels it’s likely that the objects — one which was downed in Alaska and another in Canada, with the assistance of the Canadian government, as well as the Lake Huron object — were “most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or scientific research.”
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The president said in recent months the U.S. began more closely scrutinizing smaller, more slowly moving objects over American skies which has resulted in more objects being detected. While he said the three unknown objects were shot down “in accordance with established parameters,” his administration is working to come up with “sharper rules” as to how to “distinguish between those (objects) likely to pose a security risk… and those that do not.”
Biden said he would share those parameters with Congress but they will remain publicly classified.
As to the Chinese balloon, which China has insisted was not part of a surveillance program, Biden said he will take any action he believes is necessary to protect the American people. “I make no apologies for taking down that balloon,” he said.
Contact Todd Spangler: tspangler@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @tsspangler.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Biden on Lake Huron object: ‘We still don’t know’ what it was, Canadians suspend search