Recently declassified files and video show the U.S. Air Force used a $500,000 Sidewinder missile to shoot down a Boy Scout balloon over Lake Huron in 2023. It was one of four mysterious UFOs that were shot out of the sky by the United States military over the course of a week.
During that time period, people speculated that the objects were Chinese spy balloons after a high-altitude balloon originating from China flew across North American airspace and the military shot it down off the coast of South Carolina.
Following the incident, government officials said during a briefing that they had not concluded with any certainty what the UFO was or where it originated. Shortly thereafter, officials released audio recordings of the in-cockpit communications from the two F-16 fighter jets that were involved in the UFO takedown over Lake Huron.
In the audio, one F-16 pilot can be heard saying, “I wouldn’t really call it a balloon … I don’t know what … I can see it outside with my eyes. Looks like something … there’s some kind of object that’s distended… it’s hard to tell, it’s pretty small.”
Last month, the U.S. government released a second batch of previously classified UFO files, revealing never-before-seen video from the 2023 Lake Huron incident. Initially, the U.S. government had refused to release the video.
The Air Force used over $900,000 worth of missiles to shoot down two balloons
Now it has been revealed that a U.S. Air Force F-16 used a $500,000 AIM-9 Sidewinder missile to shoot down a balloon that ended up being linked to a Boy Scout research project.
“The F16 shot at a balloon over Lake Huron. After the [Chinese spy] balloon embarrassment, DOD was shooting at every [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena] they detected,” Tim Phillips, a former interim director of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), told the New York Post.
According to Sean Kirkpatrick, also the former head of the AARO, “The balloon had circumnavigated the globe eight times before we shot it down with a half-million-dollar missile. You can imagine the response on the Hill when I briefed that.”
Around that same time, a U.S. Air Force F-22 shot down another balloon over Alaska using a missile that reportedly cost around $400,000. That balloon turned out to be a star-shaped Mylar balloon purchased at Walmart, carrying a “Happy Birthday” message, that had been released by a hobbyist group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade.