A U.S. fighter jet yesterday shot down a fourth object detected moseying into U.S. airspace. There's no word on what the latest mysterious thingy was—balloons of some kind being the obvious guess, but one defense officials are cool on—let alone a photo. It was intercepted over Lake Huron, said the White House, and downed by an F-16 using an air-to-air missile.
U.S. Air Force General Glen VanHerck, who is tasked with safeguarding U.S. airspace, told reporters that the military has not been able to identify what the three most recent objects are, how they stay aloft, or where they are coming from. "We're calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason," VanHerck, head of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command, said.
This was was reportedly "octagonal" in shape, unlike last week's Chinese surveillance balloon and the two other mystery thingies.
There's obviously plenty to speculate about, but at least we know these objects are definitely not atmospheric probes released into decaying orbit by the interstellar object Oumuamua in late 2017 during its uncannily close gravitational slingshot around Earth.
