US fighter jet shoots down object flying over Canada's Yukon

The North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the "unidentified object", taking it down on Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's order.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that on his order a US fighter jet shot down an “unidentified object” that was flying high over the Yukon, acting a day after the US took similar action over Alaska, TRT World reports.

North American Aerospace Defense Command, the combined US-Canada organisation that provides shared defense of airspace over the two nations, detected the object flying at a high altitude Friday evening over Alaska, US officials said. It crossed into Canadian airspace on Saturday.

Trudeau spoke with President Joe Biden, who also ordered the object to be shot down. Canadian and US jets operating as part of NORAD were scrambled and it was a US jet that shot down the object.

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told a news conference in Ottawa that the object, flying at around 12 kilometres, had been shot down at 3:41 pm EST (2041 GMT), approximately 160 kilometres from the Canada-US border in the central Yukon.

A recovery operation was underway involving the Canadian Armed Forces and the RCMP.

Hours later, in the US, the Federal Aviation Administration said Saturday night it had closed some airspace in Montana to support Defense Department activities.

NORAD later said the closure, which lasted a little more than an hour, came after it had detected “a radar anomaly” and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. The aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, NORAD said.

F-22 fighter jets have now taken out three objects in the airspace above the US and Canada over seven days, a stunning development that is raising questions on just what, exactly, is hovering overhead and who has sent them.