Gen. Milley Confirms 1st Missile Fired At UFO "Missed... Landed Harmlessly" In Lake Huron
Update (1130ET): In a news conference, Joint Chiefs of Staffs Chairman Mark Milley confirmed anonymously sourced reports that emerged on Monday that the first missile did not make it to its intended target.
The missile “landed harmlessly” in the waters of Lake Huron, he said. But, “Yes, the first shot missed,” he stated.
“We’re very very careful to make sure that these shots are in fact safe,” Milley told a news conference while in Brussels, to “make sure we minimize collateral damage,” reported The Associated Press.
The top general said the U.S. military also went to “great lengths” to ensure that the missile strikes over American territory did not put civilians or property at risk.
Milley also said the Department of Defense also works to make sure that the airspace is clear and evaluate whether the missile strike and taking down of the object would leave a sizable debris field.
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A fourth airborne object which strayed into US airspace on Sunday afternoon over Lake Huron resulted in the Pentagon scrambling a F-16 fighter jet, as these potential balloons have been deemed hazardous to civilian aviation.
But what US defense officials described as an unidentified "octagonal" object wasn't taken down so easily, with the first Sidewinder missile fired from the F-16 reportedly missing its target. Each AIM-9x Sidewinder missile costs the American taxpayers a cool $400,000.
"The first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile missed the target," a US official confirmed. It's additionally unclear where that errant missile ultimately landed. Another obvious question is why an advanced heat-seeking missile would have to be deployed at all, and not another weapon.
According to details released in a Pentagon briefing, it was the fourth object to be shot down since the Feb.4 downing of the alleged Chinese spycraft off the South Carolina coast:
None of the debris from the object has been found in the lake, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Monday. The Defense Department, or DOD, said President Biden, just before 2:42 p.m., directed an F-16 to fire an AIM-9x missile to shoot down an airborne object flying at nearly 20,000 feet over Lake Huron.
From all of those intercept incidents, the US and Canadian militaries are still working to recover all of the downed debris, in order to analyze it, with active recovery operations still ensuing in Alaska, Canada, South Carolina, and Michigan.
As for the first 'spy' balloon being recovered in the Atlantic, officials say a significant portion of the balloon's undercarriage - believed to contain surveillance equipment - has been recovered as of Monday.
Flying objects, or likely balloons, shootdown map locations and altitudes:
"A crane ship on the scene where a Chinese surveillance balloon went down in waters off South Carolina has raised from the ocean bottom a significant portion of the balloon’s payload, a U.S. official said Monday," ABC reports.
Naturally, all of this raises many more questions than answers...
The Lake Huron "balloon" (octagonal object) was at just 20,000 feet. So why did our fighters use heat-seeking $400,000 sidewinder missiles to shoot it down when a few cannon rounds could have done the job? Balloons don't have a heat signature and a missile is overkill.
— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) February 14, 2023
A… https://t.co/EuCRr0TEVT
