US confirms fourth suspicious airborne object shot down by military, doesn't 'rule out aliens'

The US has shot down a fourth object flying over the country, officials said Sunday.
The military shot down the unidentified flying object over Lake Huron, Michigan, on the order of US President Joe Biden, the Department of Defence said in a statement.
"Its path and altitude raised concerns, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation," the statement said.
Officials would now recover and analyze the wreckage of the object, the department said.
The US also shot down an object flying over Alaska on Friday and another over Canada on Saturday.

'CHINESE'?'

The events come a week after US officials shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the Atlantic coast of South Carolina that was thought to be gathering intelligence about weapons in the US.
On Sunday morning Chuck Schumer, the US Senate majority leader and most powerful Democrat in Congress, said the two objects shot down by US fighter pilots in the last days were balloons and the Chinese government has been humiliated by the events.
Schumer, speaking on an ABC television Sunday morning news show, said he got his information from National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
Schumer said the government believes both objects were balloons "but much smaller than the... first one," referring to the balloon identified over the western state of Montana and shot down over the coast of South Carolina.
The US lawmaker said one balloon which was over Alaska on Friday and the other over Canada on Saturday were flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet which could endanger air traffic.
He called the destruction of the balloons "appropriate."
The US government accuses China of using the observation balloon to spy on military installations. Beijing, on the other hand, spoke of a civilian research balloon that had veered off course.
The US State Department accused China of running an extensive international surveillance programme and targeting more than 40 countries on five continents with a fleet of spy balloons.
Beijing rejects the accusations and accused the US government of waging an "information war" over the spying allegations. The dispute is causing additional tension in the already strained relationship between the two countries.
Schumer, a senator from New York, believes the "Chinese were humiliated.
"I think the Chinese were caught lying. And I think it's a real step back for them."
He said he thought the Chinese were going to have to halt their balloon program.
"They're probably going to have to get rid of it or do something, because they look really bad. And they're not just doing the United States. This is a crew of balloons, we saw one in South America, they've probably been all over the world."
He admitted that the Chinese might have been able to gain intelligence via the first balloon, but defended shooting it down over US waters near South Carolina, calling it "a huge coup" for the US because it will yield valuable intelligence for the country.

'ALIENS'?

The U.S. Air Force general overseeing North American airspace also said on Sunday after a series of shoot-downs of unidentified objects that he would not rule out aliens or any other explanation yet, deferring to U.S. intelligence experts.

Asked whether he had ruled out space aliens, General Glen VanHerck said: "I'll let the intel community and the counterintelligence community figure that out. I haven't ruled out anything."

"At this point we continue to assess every threat or potential threat, unknown, that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it," said VanHerck, head of U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and Northern Command.