F-16 Missed Its First Shot at UFO. The Missile Cost $400,000
The military on Sunday shot down an unidentified high-altitude object flying above Lake Huron. The New York Times reported that the Air Force took down the UFO with a Sidewinder air-to-air missile in a strike ordered by President Biden. Fox News reported on Monday, however, that it took two Sidewinders to bring down the object, as the first one missed. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley confirmed the whiff on Tuesday. “Yes, the first one missed,” he said from Brussels.
Sidewinder heat-seeking missiles cost over $400,000 a pop, Fox News notes. Milley said the initial errant missile “landed harmlessly” in the lake and that the military tracked it all the way down.
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“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 but make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people,” Milley explained.
The downed UFO, which had been soaring around 20,000 feet above Lake Huron, was octagonally shaped and had strings dangling from it, but carried no significant payload, officials said. It was the third high-altitude object shot down in three days, and not much is known about what the objects were or where they came from. The White House assured Americans on Monday there’s no evidence the objects are from out of this world, although when asked on Sunday if the military had ruled out they could be extra-terrestrial, Gen. Glen VanHerck, who oversees North American air space for the Air Force, said he hadn’t “ruled out anything.”
The Pentagon is confident, however, that a separate object downed earlier this month off the coast of South Carolina was a Chinese surveillance balloon. The balloon was flying significantly higher than the other three objects, at around 60,000 feet, and was deemed to pose no significant intelligence or physical threat to Americans. China has claimed the balloon was a weather research balloon blown off course, while accusing the U.S. of having sent a fleet of spy balloons over China.
The White House has denied the accusation. “Any claim that the U.S. government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false,” Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, tweeted on Monday. “It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 countries across 5 continents.”
The combined $800,000 price tag on the pair of missiles required to take down the object above Lake Huron on Sunday highlights the nation’s exorbitant defense budget, which is close to $2 trillion. Politico reported on Friday the President Biden is going to ask Congress to approve the largest Pentagon budget in American history.
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