White House: Shot-down object likely in deep waters of Lake Huron

The unidentified object shot down by an American fighter jet over Lake Huron on Sunday afternoon now lies in "what is probably very deep water," while efforts continue to locate the debris, according to the White House on Monday.

But the recovery of the object was also being hampered by "choppy" waters on the lake, said U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Lansing. “Lake Huron is choppy today, so they’re having a hard time getting ahold of it,” Slotkin said during a Monday event in Howell.

The National Weather Service warned of wind gusts of up to 30 knots Monday, with 2-foot to 4-foot waves in the morning building to 6 to 9 feet in the afternoon and occasionally swelling to 12 feet.

"The object over Lake Huron now lies in what is probably very deep water," White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters during a Monday briefing.

"We haven't found the debris. ... All three (objects) have fallen in some pretty remote, difficult areas to reach, but we're going to do everything we can to find them, and that will tell us a lot."

An F-16 fighter jet shot down the unidentified octagonal-shaped object Sunday at about 20,000 feet of altitude over Lake Huron on the U.S. side of the border with Canada after the object had flown over Michigan and other parts of the U.S. and Canada, marking the fourth such incident over North American airspace during the past eight days.

The latest object had passed over Wisconsin, Lake Michigan and the Upper Peninsula before it was shot down about 15 nautical miles east of the U.P. in Lake Huron, Pentagon officials said Sunday. Once hit, they said, the object drifted and landed in Canadian waters in the lake, where the U.S. and Canadian coast guards are working to recover it.

Slotkin, who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, threw cold water Monday on the idea that the airborne object might have had extraterrestrial or alien origins, even though U.S. military leaders declined to rule that out during a Sunday briefing.

"I have no reason to believe this is a UFO. ... I know that's gotten all kinds of excitement, but the chances are this is just a normal, run-of-the-mill thing that we in the intelligence community know how to exploit," said Slotkin, a former top Pentagon official and Central Intelligence Agency analyst. "That's what I expect to learn in the next coming couple of days."

Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and NORAD, said Sunday night in a briefing with reporters that he wasn't ruling out alien or extraterrestrial life, but White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stressed Monday there is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.

VanHerck "left it so open that it has certainly fueled a lot of Michiganders’ interest in UFOs,” Slotkin told reporters on Monday. "To be clear, I do not think this was a UFO. I have zero reason to believe that. And, in general, don’t believe too much in those conspiracy theories.” 

More:Everything we know about the unidentified object shot down over Lake Huron

Biden, Trudeau discuss object

President Joe Biden was at the White House when he gave the order to shoot down the object mid- to late-morning Sunday, which the military carried out in the afternoon, Kirby said. Biden also spoke to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau about the object on Sunday. The National Security Council spokesman stressed that while there was no perceived threat to people on the ground, there was a "very real" potential risk to civilian air traffic.

"Even though we had no indications that any of these three objects were surveilling, we couldn't rule that out," Kirby said. "So there, you want to err on the side of safety here in terms of protecting our national security interests and the impact that these objects could have and unlikely did, at some point in their path, transit over potential military sites of ours or sensitive sites."

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) has enhanced its radar since the Feb. 4 shootdown of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina. Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, said the radar enhancement "may at least partly explain the increase in objects that we've detected over the past week," leading to the shootdowns of objects in Alaskan waters on Feb. 10 and over the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11.

But Pentagon officials haven't been able to definitively assess what the three recent objects are or even what propels them to remain airborne ― which is why debris recovery is important.

Object unmanned and uncontrolled

The NSC spokesman said the object that flew over Michigan emitted no communication signals, had no self-propulsion, was unmanned and uncontrolled, and at least appeared to move with the "prevailing winds."

"I think we all need to be humble here in terms of what our ability is to positively identify stuff from fighter aircraft that are going several hundred miles an hour past, essentially — in terms of relative motion ― of a stationary object that was not very big," Kirby said.

"So we don't know what this exactly looked like and, again, we're still not sure exactly what the purpose of it was or who owned it. But we hope to be able to find out more once we can recover their debris."

Slotkin noted that the Defense Department purposely waited to shoot it down until the object was over open water, so that they could collect the wreckage afterward. The military has the ability to determine whether an object like this is carrying any type of explosives by its shape and size, and that was ruled out, she added.

"They determined that it wasn't a threat to national security. The NORAD commander has the ability to shoot down anything they want that's over the U.S. homeland if they deem it an immediate threat," Slotkin said.

"We do not know what it is right now. I've seen all kinds of speculation — from another Chinese object to an academic who put up some sort of sensing device. That's why we like to collect things. As a former CIA officer, we'd like to exploit things that we find and so that's the recovery effort that's going on right now."

She also suggested it's unlikely that the object belongs to a for-profit company that operates in space because those are generally "extremely judicious" about communicating with NORAD and also the object was not flying at an altitude considered to be "space."

"This wasn't the outer orbit, and so, I just don't think so," Slotkin said. "But look, at this point, we just don't know."

If recovered from Lake Huron, Slotkin said the object would likely be taken to a classified facility for work to determine its origin and purpose. The FBI and Royal Canadian Mounted Police have jurisdiction over that operation.

Bergman: 'They've been lagging'

Republican U.S. Rep. Jack Bergman, whose district includes the Upper Peninsula, first got a call from the Department of Defense around 3 p.m. Sunday after the object was shot down. He said he wasn't pleased with the flow of information from the White House or NORAD in recent days, saying better messaging could have kept a lid on rumors running rampant.

"They've been lagging. It's one thing to lag once. It's another thing to continue to lag. It shows you didn't learn from the last episode that you need to be better," said Bergman, a Watersmeet Republican and a retired Marine Corps lieutenant general who sits on the House Armed Services panel.

He was also frustrated that the Biden administration didn't act sooner to shoot down the initial Chinese spy balloon and suggested officials should have taken down the latest object earlier — before it reached Michigan.

"You have to No. 1 protect human life and minimize property damage, but the fact that it's that far along when we have to make that decision means we were a little bit late to the game in identifying it," Bergman said.

"I'm going to be looking for a brief from Northern Command/NORAD, as to, do they have all of the capabilities that they need technologically to deal with a potential 21st-century threat?"

'A lot of frustration'

The airborne object was octagonal shaped and was tracked initially over Montana and then traveled over Michigan at lower altitudes, said Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Caledonia, who was briefed Sunday by the Department of Defense.

Potential surveillance capabilities were a concern over northern Michigan, which hosts military installations such as Camp Grayling and the Alpena Combat Readiness Training Center, he said.

"It’s a concern because we have strategic military assets in northern Michigan, and we want to make sure we are protecting those assets and not divulging information," Moolenaar said.

Moolenaar, who serves on a new U.S. House special committee on China, stressed that the source of the object is still unknown, but he pressed for greater transparency once more is learned.

"We don’t know what the intent or capabilities were at this time, but I think that information needs to be gathered and published, publicized to a certain degree. I think the American people deserve to know what is happening," he said.

"At the same time, we need our capabilities to be assessed, earlier detection and make sure we are ahead of the game rather than responding and reacting."

Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-Holland, said the reaction he's heard from constituents and friends has been a near-universal sense of "What the hell is happening?"

"It seems everyone is making this up as they go along, rather than having a coordinated response," Huizenga said. "There is a lot of frustration and a lot of questions. People assumed they were in a safer or more secure spot, and there would be more information about what is flying in and out of American airspace."

Huizenga has heard similar complaints from his counterparts in the Canadian Parliament, some of whom he met with on Capitol Hill last week and who had "many" questions about what was happening in their airspace, as well as about NORAD. Huizenga co-chairs the US-Canada Inter-Parliamentary Group.

"Those of us who represent people aren’t getting the information that people are wanting. We’ve got to have more transparency,” Huizenga said. “This is truly a pattern and a problem we’re dealing with in terms of the security of the North American airspace.”

mburke@detroitnews.com

Politics editor Chad Livengood contributed.