A few days ago, I appeared on the Angel Research Podcast, and the very first thing we had to talk about was the Chinese spy balloon. (You can see that conversation here.)
At the time of the recording, a lot of the details were murky. It wasn't clear exactly what had happened, how the balloon was able to get as far as it did, or why the incident wasn't prevented in the first place.
Now, here we are a week later, and there are even more questions.
American forces have since neutralized three more unidentified aerial objects.
The White House wants to give the impression that the objects were "benign," but if that were true they wouldn't still be unidentified.
They'd have come out and said exactly what it was they shot down.
But as of right now, they either don't know or aren't saying, so any attempts by the Biden White House to dismiss the activity ring rather hollow.
Especially since the description of one of the objects, spotted over Lake Huron on February 12, doesn't sound anything like a balloon.
It was described as having an "octagonal structure with strings hanging off but no discernible payload."
Prior to being shot down, the object was caught on radar over Montana where it "flew in proximity to sensitive DOD sites," the Pentagon said.
And when Gen. Glen David VanHerck, who serves as the commander of United States Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command, was asked if the object could be alien in nature, he didn't rule it out.
"I haven't ruled out anything," VanHerck said. "We call them objects for a reason... I am not able to categorize how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they're - they're able to stay aloft."
The object, whatever it was, still hasn't been recovered.
In another instance, on February 11, a cylindrical object was shot down in Canada's Yukon territory.
Canadian officials believe that was a balloon similar to the Chinese surveillance craft that traversed the United States. However, that's yet to be confirmed, since the area in which it was shot down is remote, mountainous, and heavy with snow, ice, and wind.
The third object, meanwhile, was shot down off the northern coast of Alaska on Feb 10. That object was "the size of a small car," and "not similar in size or shape to the high-altitude surveillance balloon" U.S. forces shot down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
Furthermore, the F-22 pilots who tracked and downed the aircraft said they couldn't identify a propulsion system and had no idea how it could possibly stay in the air.
They also said it interfered with their sensors.
In fact, some of the pilots couldn't even agree on an accurate description of the object.
What's also notable is that these objects were traveling at different altitudes. The Chinese spy balloon was floating at 60,000-65,000 feet, but the object over Lake Huron was much lower, at 20,000 feet, while the other two were at 40,000 feet.
So these objects all differ in size, shape, and altitude, and their origins are largely unknown.
And that's what makes the White House's effort to dismiss them look like lip service.
That, and the fact that the Defense Department has been increasingly forthright in acknowledging the presence and the potential threat posed by what it now calls "unknown aerial phenomena" or "unknown anomalous phenomena" - UAP, either way.