US shoots down another object, this time over Lake Huron

Another flying object was brought down by a US warplane on Sunday, this time over Lake Huron near the US-Canada border. This was the fourth dramatic incident since a suspected Chinese spy balloon was brought down a week earlier.

Although only the first object has thus far been linked to Beijing, concerned Americans have been watching the skies as the mysterious incursions unfolded against a backdrop of severe tensions with China.

According to a senior administration official, President Joe Biden ordered an F-16 fighter to shoot down the most recent object "out of an abundance of caution."

It was determined that this new device, which was described as an octagonal structure with strings hanging off of it, did not pose a military threat to anything on the ground, but the official said it might have presented a risk to civil aviation as it flew at a height of about 20,000 feet (6,000 metres) over Michigan.

"We have no indication that it has surveillance capabilities but nor can we rule that out," the official said on condition of anonymity.

Before the most recent item was shot down even closer to the Canadian border on Sunday, US authorities briefly blocked the airspace over Lake Michigan to reflect the increased alertness.

The new object was followed visually and radar by the US aerospace command NORAD, and it was shot down over the lake "to avoid impact with people on the ground while boosting possibilities for debris recovery," according to a statement from the Pentagon.

Regarding the first object, a Chinese balloon that was shot down on February 4 off the US East Coast after American officials said it was spying, a senior Republican charged Beijing on Sunday with "an act of belligerence."

It was a weather balloon that got blown off course, according to China.

"It was done with provocation to gather intelligence data, and collect intelligence on our three major nuclear sites," Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told CBS.

Among the senior lawmakers briefed by the government was US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who told ABC that the second and third objects, which were shot down over Alaska on Friday and Canada's Yukon territory on Saturday, both appeared to be balloons but were "much smaller than" the first large one.

On the instructions of the US President Joe Biden and the prime minister, a US F-22 jet downed a "high-altitude flying item" there, around 100 miles (160 kilometres) north of the border.

It was characterised by Canadian officials as being compact and cylinder-shaped, around the size of a Volkswagen vehicle. Officials said Sunday that recovery teams supported by a Canadian CP-140 patrol aircraft were still looking for debris in the Yukon.

Search efforts by US troops near Deadhorse, Alaska, where the second object was shot down Friday, were hampered by arctic weather.

Operations were also going on off the coast of South Carolina, where last week's drama culminated in the shooting down of the first big balloon.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command announced on Twitter that Sunday's Lake Michigan closure was the culmination of a weekend that saw the military on alert "to guarantee the security of nearby aviation traffic while NORAD operations are underway. Since then, the brief flight prohibition has been repealed."

Republicans, meanwhile, have fiercely attacked Biden for allowing the first balloon to drift across the nation for days before being shot down, perhaps gathering important information.

According to Schumer, an analysis of the recovered wreckage would be "a major coup for the United States" on Sunday, when defending Biden's handling of the situation to ABC.

Biden, though, is the target of partisan requests for more transparency.

"I have real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming," Jim Himes, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told NBC.

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