3 aerial objects in 3 days, and now many questions

If your weekend was spent focused on something other than the protection of North American airspace, you might have missed that a few more maybe-balloons were taken down by military aircraft.

There was one Friday night … and one Saturday and again one Sunday. Meaning that the total number of objects shot down over North America so far this month is four.

What this probably mostly represents, though, is an increase in awareness rather than a new barrage of surveillance efforts by China. By now, the government seems confident that the large object shot down Feb. 4 near South Carolina was a surveillance craft sent by that country. The most recent three, though, are of unclear origin and, it seems, much smaller than the first.

We'll walk through all four incidents, but let's first deal with some questions that have come up often:

Are these alien craft?

It seems unlikely aliens traveled through space and then rolled up to Alaska and western Canada in small inflatable aircraft. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday the objects had nothing to do with life on other planets.

“There is no indication of aliens” or “extraterrestrial activity,” she told reporters.

Why these objects now?

It probably seems as if the continent is being inundated with flying objects at the moment. But that's in part because the military has tweaked its radar settings to better detect small, slow objects.

"Radars essentially filter out information based on speed. So you can set various gates. We call them velocity gates that allow us to filter out low-speed clutter," said Glen VanHerck, who oversees the North American Aerospace Defense Command, during a weekend press call. "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."

Imagine you're a state trooper watching a highway for speeders. You set your radar and plan to pull over anyone going at least 15 miles an hour over the speed limit. But then you get the order to pull over anyone speeding at all. The number of people being cited for speeding will spike — and you'll end up ticketing people who aren't really the problem.

Isn't it still weird to spot so many?

Not necessarily, given the analogy above. Observers are seeing a lot of small things that normally they'd have ignored.

"What we're seeing is very, very small objects that produce a very, very low radar cross-section," VanHerck said when asked about the shape of the three most recent objects.

There are a lot of things that might fit into that category. Schoolchildren, for instance, often conducted an experiment in science class in which they send up weather balloons to capture images of the curvature of the Earth.

But those will not be registered flights (the way that the scores of weather balloons released by government observers are) and could be examples of the sorts of things that NORAD is now flagging.

The White House said Monday none of the objects were manned and the last three didn’t seem to have any system for propulsion.

Here's what we know about the objects that have been shot down:

Object 1: the original spy balloon

It was first spotted over the northern part of the Aleutian Islands near Alaska on Jan. 28 at about 60,000 feet and crossed the continental United States before being shot down into the Atlantic Ocean near South Carolina on Feb. 4.

The balloon was large, the size of two or three buses, and supported an array of devices that the government believes were meant to surveil the United States. (The government also insists that its surveillance capabilities were stymied by countermeasures.) The originating point is believed to have been China, which Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton said on that same press call had "a basis in intelligence."

Object 2

Spotted by ground radar (it's unclear where) Feb. 9, the second object was shot down Feb. 10, with debris landing on sea ice off the northern coast of Alaska. This second object was the size of a small car, according to authorities, though of unclear shape. It's not believed to have carried any equipment as it drifted at about 40,000 feet — a height at which commercial aircraft can operate, contributing to the decision to down it.

Object 3

First seen flying over Alaska on Feb. 10, the third object to be encountered was shot down Feb. 11 over Canada's Yukon territory. It, too, was traveling at about 40,000 feet.

Speaking to reporters, Canadian Defense Miniser Anita Anand indicated that the third object was cylindrical in shape, something that NORAD officials didn't confirm. (VanHerck noted that the objects, drifting with the wind, are being observed by aircraft flying at much higher speeds.) The size of this object and the fourth one matched the second, according to VanHerck.

Object 4

The fourth object was probably spotted late Saturday, a bit north of the U.S.-Canada border. Observers lost contact with that object after it entered U.S. airspace, but its trajectory suggests it was the same one that was seen Sunday near Wisconsin. It was traveling at about 20,000 feet and was shot down over Lake Huron.

In the press call this weekend, VanHerck admitted another reason there are more reports of flying objects: There is "a heightened alert to look for this information."

While this isn't an admission of a political role, it's obvious the Biden administration hopes to avoid another situation in which a balloon-like object is floating over the country for a week. There's little doubt that the military has been given broader clearance to down aircraft as a result.