Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says

“…Kirby also offered some nomenclature guidance on the object, which the US is not referring to as a balloon and has yet to attribute to China or any other entity.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it - whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

He added: “We don’t have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object. We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we what believe is frozen water. So a recovery effort will be made and we’re hopeful that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.”

The object was “much, much smaller” than the Chinese suspected spy balloon, Kirby said, comparing it to “roughly the size of a small car.” The balloon downed last Saturday was described by US officials as approximately the size of three buses.