Two weeks ago, America was obsessed with the Chinese “spy balloon” floating its way across the continental United States. It was a very weird story – the balloon was being tracked on military radar the whole time, and apparently President Biden ordered the military to shoot down the balloon when it was halfway across the country. They waited until the balloon went over North Carolina, and an F-22 Raptor shot down the balloon just over Myrtle Beach. It was said that the Coast Guard (or whoever) gathered up the remnants of the balloon for intelligence purposes. It was also said that China had been sending spy balloons over America for years, and during the Trump administration, Trump never did anything about them.

Following the mysterious spy balloon, people have simply been paying more attention to the sky. There’s something unsettling about the reality that we’re being monitored in our own airspace, and weirder still, that some of the unidentified flying objects are coming from parts unknown. All of which to say, over the past four days, three UFOs have been shot down over North America. It’s insane.

Pentagon and intelligence officials are trying to make sense of three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan that U.S. fighter jets shot down with missiles on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The latest turn in the aerial show taking place in the skies above North America comes after a helter-skelter weekend involving what at times seemed like an invasion of unidentified flying objects.

The latest object had first been spotted on Saturday over Montana, initially sparking debate over whether it even existed. On Saturday, military officials detected a radar blip over Montana, which then disappeared, leading them to conclude it was an anomaly. Then a blip appeared Sunday over Montana, then Wisconsin and Michigan. Once military officials obtained visual confirmation, they ordered an F-16 to shoot it down over Lake Huron.

There are two big questions around the episodes: What were the craft? And why does the United States appear to be seeing more suddenly, and shooting down more?

There are no answers to the first question yet. American officials do not know what the objects were, much less their purpose or who sent them.

For the second, it is not clear if there are suddenly more objects. But what is certain is that in the wake of the recent incursion by a Chinese spy balloon, the U.S. and Canadian militaries are hypervigilant in flagging some objects that might previously have been allowed to pass.

[From The NY Times]

The NYT goes on to say that after the Chinese spy balloon, NORAD adjusted their radar so they could pick up smaller objects, which has led to… all of this. Suddenly, NORAD is seeing all of these UFOs. And I’m not using “UFOs” to mean that all of these flying objects are alien aircraft. I’m saying that they are truly “unidentified” and the government isn’t giving us any explanations (yet) for what the f–k is going on. I’m not naive – I get that everyone is spying on everyone. I get that foreign governments are monitoring North America. I get that the American government monitors its own citizens. But this whole “three UFOs have been shot down in three days” thing feels very different. Right??

Did y’all watch that Unsolved Mysteries episode “Something in the Sky,” all about the UFO sightings in Michigan in 1994? That’s what I kept thinking about this weekend. What if… these are really aliens?

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.