White House: Objects Could Have Been 'Totally Benign'

The White House says three unidentified aerial objects shot down in recent days may have been "totally benign"—although it's hard to confirm anything without any debris to examine. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday that there's no evidence the objects shot down over Alaska, the Yukon territory, and Lake Huron were linked to China's spy balloon program, NBC reports. "One thing we have to consider, and we believe the intelligence community is considering as an explanation, is that these could be balloons tied to commercial or research entities and therefore totally benign," Kirby said

"I want to caveat that we haven’t found the debris," Kirby added. "We're still doing the best we can with the observations that were made by the pilots, with the flight profile data that we've tried to collect." Kirby noted that no country or organization had laid claim to the objects, unlike the Chinese spy balloon shot down earlier this month, the BBC reports. US Northern Command said search crews found "significant debris" from the site where the balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, "including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified."

The search for debris from the objects shot down Friday, Saturday, and Sunday has proved to be more challenging. Anita Anand, Canada's defense minister, said Tuesday that search crews are working in extremely rugged and remote terrain in the Yukon. The Guardian notes that the area is considered an "aircraft graveyard" and the wreckage of some crashed planes, including an American Douglas C-54 Skymaster plane that went down in 1950 with 44 people on board, has never been found. (On Monday, Kirby said there was no sign of any extraterrestrial activity.)