Washington remained confounded on Tuesday by the three unidentified objects shot down over North American airspace, as senators emerged from a classified briefing with no concrete answers about the origin and purpose of the mysterious objects.
Lawmakers said they were told efforts to recover the debris from the austere northern coast of Alaska, Canada’s Yukon territory and Lake Huron are ongoing. The White House confirmed on Tuesday that those efforts have been challenged by harsh weather conditions preventing the Pentagon from recovering the downed objects.
“They don’t know whose it is. They don’t know what it is. They can’t even tell you what it looks like,” said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
“The most important question we have to answer now is ’what are these things’?” he said. “Who sent them here and what are they doing here? And the only way you’re going to get answers to that is to retrieve whatever is left over.”
The White House has ruled out the possibility that the objects were of extraterrestrial origin. On Tuesday, National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also told reporters that there are no indications that the more recent objects shot down were part of a Chinese spy program or an intelligence operation by any other country.
“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China’s] spy balloon program or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” he told reporters.
Mr. Kirby said the “leading explanation” is that the three latest objects to be shot down belonged to a private company or research institutions.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed later Tuesday, however, that no private companies or research groups had come forward to report that one of their flying objects had gone missing.
The Pentagon also offered more details into Sunday’s takedown of an object over Lake Huron.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark A. Milley told reporters that the first AIM-9X Sidewinder missile fired from a U.S. F-16 missed its target.
“The first shot missed (but) the second shot hit,” Gen. Milley said following a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels, Belgium. “The missile landed harmlessly in the water. We tracked it all the way down.”
Each AIM-9X Sidewinder missile costs about $400,000, meaning the U.S. spent almost $1 million to take out an object described in press accounts as a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it.”
Tuesday’s classified briefing on Capitol Hill was the second in as many weeks following the shootdown of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4 and the subsequent takedowns of objects of unknown origins over last weekend.
Mr. Rubio and Sen. Mark R. Warner, Virginia Democrat and chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said it was clear from the briefing that the latest objects to be shot down were nothing like the Chinese surveillance craft.
On Monday, the White House announced that it had established an interagency team led by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to assess the broader implications of the unidentified objects.
But both senators raised concerns over information sharing between the Pentagon and intelligence community with civilian counterparts when it comes to identified aircraft in U.S. airspace.
“Observing unidentified objects over U.S. airspace, particularly over sensitive areas of the country, is not new,” Mr. Rubio said, referring to the Pentagon’s disclosure of hundreds of so-called Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon sightings in recent years. “What we heard described in there and what we’ve heard reportedly described sounds just like the stories we’ve heard before repeatedly.”
“My concern now is that the Department of Defense is not sharing that information so that you can compare the data we have on these instances, and the ones we have retroactively from the past,” he said.
Despite the lack of clear information about who is behind these objects and why they violated U.S. airspace, several senators leaving Tuesday’s briefing called on Mr. Biden to calm the public’s fears.
“The American people need and deserve to know more,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Connecticut Democrat and member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “There is a lot of information presented to us this morning that could be told to the American people without any harm to sources or methods or our national security, and the American people need to know more so that they’ll have more confidence in our national security.”
“I think there is a need for greater transparency and more facts to the American people,” he said.
Those facts should come directly from the commander-in-chief, said Sen. Tom Cotton, Arkansas Republican who serves on the chamber’s armed services and intelligence panels.
“Americans are worried. They’re concerned,” Mr. Cotton said upon leaving the briefing. “And they have the right to know why President Biden directed the actions that he did over the last week. I urge, once again, President Biden to come today, speak directly on camera to the American people just as past presidents have in similar moments.”
Asked to respond to the criticism, Ms. Jean-Pierre said the administration is “sharing as much information” as possible and is receiving regular briefings from his national security advisers.
“The president is taking this very seriously,” she said. “We do want to make sure that the American people understand that there is no need to panic.”
Still, Mr. Rubio, said the situation warrants a more concerted effort by the administration to calm fears.
“I do think that when you shoot things down over the airspace of this country for the first time in the 65-year history of NORAD, you owe the American people more than some hurriedly called press conference in the middle of the Super Bowl,” he said.
Not all lawmakers were as critical of Mr. Biden for failing to give a public address on the events.
Sen. Chris Murphy, Connecticut Democrat, said the administration is still working to uncover more details about the latest events, and that it would be best for Mr. Biden to have all information at his disposal before he makes a statement.
“We’re learning more about these objects and our ability to detect them hour by hour,” said Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, following Tuesday’s classified briefing. “What I can say is our defense and intelligence agencies are focused like a laser on first gathering the information, assessing the information and coming up with a comprehensive view of what is going on.”
“The bottom line is, I think the Biden administration is being very careful and very thoughtful,” he said. “I think some of our Republican colleagues are being at the very minimum premature and often just political.”
• Mike Glenn contributed to this report.
• Joseph Clark can be reached at jclark@washingtontimes.com.
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