Trudeau orders US warplane to shoot down unidentified object flying over northern Canada

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Saturday 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.

North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD), the combined US-Canada organisation that provides shared defence of airspace over the two nations, said it had detected an object flying at a high altitude over northern Canada. It was not immediately clear how high up it was flying or what it was.

Trudeau said he also spoke to US President Joe Biden, who himself ordered the downing of an unidentified object over remote Alaska on Friday.

A spokesman, Major Olivier Gallant, said both Canadian and US jets operating as part of NORAD had been deployed. The jets were scrambled and it was a US jet that shot it down.

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

At least one of the objects downed was believed to be a spy balloon from China, but the other two have not yet been identified. Trudeau said that Canadian forces would recover the wreckage for study.

The down came a day after White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said an object roughly the size of a small car was shot down in remote Alaska. Officials could not say if it contained any surveillance equipment, where it came from or what purpose it had.