The White House is finally attempting to explain the purpose of the three downed unidentified objects that have taken over the news cycle over the last week and a half.
According to NBC news, the U.S. intelligence’s leading explanation is that the shot down objects were used for “commercial or benign purposes.”
Check out what NBC reported:
That was the message National Security Council spokesman John Kirby conveyed to reporters Tuesday and said the evaluation is based on what the U.S. knows now, from visual images of the objects.
By the end of the week, the interagency team that President Joe Biden ordered his national security team to coordinate on Monday will lay out parameters regarding how the U.S. will address these objects going forward, Kirby said.
In a distinct briefing with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin in Brussels on Tuesday, Gen. Mark Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated that no wreckage from the recent objects destroyed has been retrieved. Moreover, Milley disclosed that the initial American missile failed to hit the object that was shot down over Lake Huron last Sunday.
“The first balloon, the Chinese spy balloon that went down over the Atlantic, on the South Carolina coast, that shot hit,” Milley said. “Second one, over Alaska, on the north coast of Alaska, that one hit. The third one that landed in the Yukon, that one hit. On the fourth one over Lake Huron, first shot missed, second shot hit.”
Milley stated that the initial missile, which failed to hit the fourth target on Sunday, had safely landed in the waters of Lake Huron, and had been monitored by the U.S. military during its descent.
He underscored the fact that the authorities took measures to ensure that the airspace was free of any commercial or civilian aviation traffic. Milley further revealed that the fragments from the aforementioned trio of targets remained uncollected owing to the presence of harsh terrain and challenging environmental circumstances.
“Two, three and four are not yet recovered. They are in very difficult terrain,” Milley noted. “The second one off the coast of Alaska, that’s in some really, really difficult terrain in the Arctic Circle, with very, very low temperatures in the minus 40s. The second one is in the Canadian Rockies and the Yukon. Very difficult to get that one and the third one is in Lake Huron, probably a couple 100 feet depth, so we’ll get them eventually, but it’s going to take some time to recover those.”