fbpx

Alien Invasion or Conspiracy Codswallop? America’s UFO Influx

For the past two weeks, Area 51 stans and simps have been having a field day. This is because on February 4, the US attacked a Chinese balloon invading their airspace and has been on a UFO shoot down spree since then. Some of the conspiracy theorists among us now believe that these UFOs were incredibly fragile alien ships, capable of being defeated Space Invaders style. 

But we’re now getting ahead of ourselves. Here’s a list of every UFO shoot down that’s happened:

  • February 10 — A UFO smaller than a car was shot down over Alaska.
  • February 11 — A small cylindrical UFO was shot down over Canada.  
  • February 12 — An octagonal stringed UFO was shot down over Michigan.

On February 12, the American General Glen VanHerck was asked if the UFO over Michigan was created or piloted by an alien. 

VanHerck responded by saying, “I’ll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven’t ruled out anything.”

“At this point, we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.”

However, since then, it’s been confirmed that none of these UFO shoot downs didn’t kill any aliens. This is because these UFOs weren’t alien spaceships.  

“There is no – again, no — indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take-downs,” said the White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre.

“I loved E.T. the movie, but I’m just gonna leave it there.”

Related: Unpacking Penny Wong’s Historic Trip to China

Related: NASA Smashed a Spaceship Into an Asteroid — Here’s Why

So, What Are These UFOs?

As of February 14, the US Government hasn’t released many details about what these UFOs are. They also haven’t asserted which country or countries they came from. However, the White House has created a task force to dive into these recent shootdowns. 

As the Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby said, “The president, through his national security adviser, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks.”

This spokesperson for the National Security Council also stated, “Every element of the government will redouble their efforts to understand and mitigate these events.”

On February 15, Kirby provided some additional info about these UFOs. He stated that the US Government hasn’t received any evidence that they were balloons from China. This is important as the US isn’t just worried that China is invading their airspace, they’re hyper-concerned that China is spying on them from the sky. 

Kirby said, “While we can’t definitively say, again without analysing the debris, what these objects were, thus far, and I caveat that by saying thus far, we haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the spy balloon programme, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts.”

But Why Has There Been an Influx of UFO Shoot Downs?

Since shooting down that Chinese balloon, America has adjusted its radars to scan for smaller, slower, and less high-flying objects. 

“Radars essentially filter out information based on speed,” said VanHerck. “So you can set various gates. We call them velocity gates that allow us to filter out low-speed clutter. So if you have radars on all the time that we’re looking at anything from zero speed up to, say, 100, you would see a lot more information.”

“We have adjusted some of those gates to give us better fidelity on seeing smaller objects.  You can also filter out by altitude. And so, with some adjustments, we’ve been able to get a better categorisation of radar tracks now. And that’s why I think you’re seeing these [extra UFO reports] overall. Plus, there’s a heightened alert to look for this information.”

Read more stories from The Latch and subscribe to our email newsletter.