Out of Sight, Out of Mind

On Sunday, 12 February 2023, as the larger part of America’s citizenry made ready to watch the Kansas City Chiefs take on the Philadelphia Eagles in Super Bowl LVII, an altogether darker matter of greater historical significance was playing out over Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, where the third mystery aerial object identified in as many days was being tracked by NORAD.

A senior White House official disclosed in the hours preceding the big game that the latest mystery object had been initially detected by NORAD and NORTHCOM as it traversed Montana on the night of Saturday 11 February. Fighter aircraft were dispatched to investigate, but failed to identify any target correlative to the anomalous radar signatures previously detected. The White House official set forth also that the object—an octagonal contraption evincing trailing strings but no discernable payload—had been tracked to the vicinity of northern Michigan, drifting eastbound toward the shores of Lake Huron at an approximate altitude of FL200.

NORAD reported in a subsequent statement that the object had been brought down over Lake Huron at 14:42 EST by a Sidewinder missile fired from a USAF F-16 fighter jet.

“Its path and altitude raised concerns, including that it could be a hazard to civil aviation," NORAD stated. "The location chosen for this shoot down afforded us the opportunity to avoid impact to people on the ground while improving chances for debris recovery."

On 02 March 2023, the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) made public details pertaining to its efforts to recover the remnants of the downed Lake Huron object. In a statement, the service reported that it had deployed vessels ranging from heavy ice-breakers to airplanes, the crews of which spent nearly sixty-hours looking for the object—albeit unsuccessfully.

Over a three-day timeframe, the Coast Guard conducted 23 discrete searches covering four-thousand-square-miles of northern Lake Huron. USCG searchers were assisted by personnel and vessels of the Canadian Coast Guard and Royal Mounted Police.

Eschewing autonomous underwater vehicles, the search was predicated largely upon subsurface radar scans, the effectiveness of which is contingent upon time of day, available light, and the state of the sea.

U.S. Northern Command has yet to confirm whether the object remained intact upon striking the lake’s surface or if it was destroyed on impact.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) advised Michigan news outlets the rescue mission had been called off insomuch as the object was deemed “no longer worth the time or effort.”

FMI: www.defense.gov