US Air Force Photo
- The mysterious objects shot down over the US may have been hobbyist or weather balloons.
- One balloonist club believes its low-cost balloon may have been among the objects destroyed.
- The UFOs were downed after an alleged Chinese spy balloon was detected over the US.
One of the objects downed by the US Air Force using a $400,000 missile last weekend may have been a $12 balloon released by a hobby group, a report said.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week that one of its balloons had gone missing, and that it may have been among the objects shot down by the US Air Force using a Sidewinder heat-seeking missile.
The club said that it had been tracking the course of its silver pico balloon. Its last reported position was on February 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska.
Pico ballooning involves flying high altitude balloons that resemble party balloons, then tracking their flight path as they travel across the globe. A pico balloon can cost anywhere from $12 to $180, according to reports.
—Gunter Krebs 🚀 🛰 🇺🇦 (@Skyrocket71) February 16, 2023
According to a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) tracking tool, the balloon would have been flying over Yukon Territory in Canada on February 11— the same day that the US said it had shot down a mysterious object over the territory.
The parallels are intriguing, with the US saying the object downed by its F-22 jet was "cylindrical in nature," and flying in the same location and at the same altitude as the club's pico balloon.
The balloon had circumnavigated the globe several times before it was declared "missing in action" last Saturday, the group said.
The US Air Force used Sidewinder missiles to down the object over Yukon, along with UFOs in Alaska Friday and over Lake Huron in Michigan Sunday. According to reports, the missiles cost more than $400,000 each.
US radar systems had been adjusted to detect more objects amid heightened vigilance that followed the downing of a Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina the previous week. The US said that the balloon was being used for espionage.
President Joe Biden had ordered the objects to be shot down on the advice of top military officials, who had been unable to ascertain their natire or purpose. As the military has attempted to retrieve the debris from the downed objects, the White House has sought to dampen speculation that they may have been extra-terrestrial in origin.
Experts speculated that they could have been sent by foreign powers to test the US' responses.
In a press briefing Thursday, Biden said that there was no evidence the objects had been deployed for nefarious purposes.
"Nothing right now suggests they were related to China's spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country," Biden said. "The intelligence community's current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research."
"I tried contacting our military and the FBI — and just got the runaround — to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they're going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down," Ron Meadows, whose California company designs pico balloons told Aviation Week.