US missed UFO with first missile shot over Lake Huron

WASHINGTON — A US fighter pilot tasked with shooting down an unknown object over Lake Huron this past weekend missed the intended target on the first shot, sending a missile plunging into the Great Lake, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley said Tuesday.

“First shot missed, second shot hit,” Milley said of the AIM9x Sidewinder missiles fired by an F-16 fighter jet about 20,000 feet over Michigan on Sunday afternoon. “In this case, the missile landed harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron.”

The supersonic, air-to-air missiles, which boast a high-explosive warhead and infrared heat-seeking guidance system, are costly. Congress in December approved the Pentagon’s request to procure 383 of them for about $175.1 million in its 2023 budget — more than $457,000 per missile.

Asked whether the accidental miss would inform decision-making in similar situations in the future, Milley demurred.

“We go to great lengths to make sure that the airspace is clear and the backdrop is clear out to the max effective range of the missile,” he said. “We tracked it all the way down and we made sure that the airspace was clear of any commercial civilian or recreational traffic.”

The first Sunday shot was the only one the military has missed in the four recent shootdowns that started with the Feb. 4 downing of a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.

“We determine what the debris field is likely to be with one of these platforms landing on the Earth’s surface or in the water,” Milley said. “We’re very, very deliberate and our planning — [US Northern Command] does that along with the pilots themselves. So we’re very, very careful to make sure that those shots are in fact safe.

“And that’s the guidance from the President: Shoot it down and make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people,” he added.

The news came as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters that intelligence officials do not believe the UFO — along with two others struck down on Friday and Saturday — were part of China’s spy balloon program that has captivated the nation in recent weeks.

“We don’t see anything that points right now to these being part of the PRC spying program or, in fact, intelligence collection against the United States of any kind,” John Kirby said, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

Even if the most recent objects had benign intent, they still posed a threat to commercial air traffic due to their altitude, leading to the decision to take them out of the sky, Milley said. The average jetliner flies at roughly 30,000 feet.

“The most important thing for the American military is to protect the American people, so we evaluate the risks; we evaluate the risk of the balloons themselves,” he said. “Are they a kinetic threat or not? Yes, no. Are they an intelligence threat? Are they a threat to civil aviation? All those things we go through very, very carefully.”