(CNSNews.com) - National Security Council Communications Coordinator John Kirby revealed Monday that China has “a high-altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that’s connected to the People’s Liberation Army.”

As CNSNews.com previously reported, the U.S. Air Force shot down an “octagonal” flying object over Lake Huron on Sunday. The incident is the latest involving unidentified flying objects in the past few days. 

Besides the Chinese spy balloon that made its way across the United States before being shot down by the U.S. military, an identified flying object flying at 40,000 feet over Alaska was shot down on Friday, followed by another one on Saturday, and again on Sunday. 

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced at the top of the White House briefing on Monday that there was “no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns.”

On the Chinese spy balloon, Kirby announced that “when President Biden came into office, he directed the U.S. intelligence community to do a broad assessment of Chinese intelligence capabilities and ensure we were working to detect and protect against them.”

I think for reasons you will all understand we cannot publicly go into many details on how we discover and counteract foreign intelligence collection efforts because much of what we have done and are doing is, of course, sensitive, but we were able to determine that China has a high altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that's connected to the People's Liberation Army.

It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it. We detected it. We tracked it, and we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can. We know that these PRC surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners.

We assessed that at this time these balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the PRC’s other intelligence platforms used over the United States, but in the future if the PRC continues to advance this technology, it certainly could become more valuable to them.

The president also instructed the intelligence committee to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified flying objects. Indeed, President Biden conducted the first ever daily intelligence briefing session devoted to this phenomenon back in June of 2021. 

He was briefed that this is not just an issue for the United States, but one for the rest of the world, and as I said, our friends and our partners are dealing with this as well. We worked on a bipartisan basis to stand up an office at the Pentagon to study this in partnership with the intelligence community, academic institutions and the private sector. 

These unidentified flying phenomena have been reported for many years without explanation or deep examination by the government. President Biden has changed all that. We are finally trying to understand them better.

Kirby explained that since the Chinese spy balloon made its incursion into U.S. airspace, “the United States and Canada through NORAD have been more closely scrutinizing that air space, including enhancing our radar capabilities,” which is what the the commander of NORTHCOM and NORAD said may “at least partially explain the increase in the objects that have been detected.”

Slow moving objects at high altitude with a small radar cross section are difficult to detect on radar. Even objects the size of the Chinese spy balloon, a payload of roughly the size of three school buses were not picked up by previous administration's or other countries. 

We also know a range of entities, including countries, company, research and academic organizations operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious at all, including scientific research. 

That said, because we have not been able to definitively assess what the most recent objects are, we acted out of abundance of caution to protect the security, our security, our interest and flight safety.

In Saturday's case, we acted in consultation with the Canadian government, the president speaking personally with Prime Minister Trudeau. The spy balloon was of course different because we knew precisely where that was. 

As we have said, we do not assess the most recent objects posed any direct threat to people on the ground, and we are laser focused on confirming their nature and purpose, including through intensive efforts to collect debris in the remote locations where they have fallen. 

In each instance, we have followed the same basic course. We assessed whether they posed any kinetic threat to people on the ground. They did not. We assessed whether they were sending any communication signals. We detected none. 

We looked to see whether they were maneuvering or had propulsion capabilities. We saw no signs of that, and we made sure to determine whether or not they were manned. They were not. 

We did, however, assess that their altitudes were considerably lower than the Chinese high altitude balloon and did pose a threat to civilian commercial air traffic and while we have no reason to suspect they were conducting surveillance of any kind, we could not rule that out. 

That is why the president, at the recommendation of the Secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and NORTHCOM NORAD commander gave the order to shoot them down. 

These missions were completed successfully and safely. Efforts are actively underway right now at all sites to find what is left of those objects so we can better understand and communicate with the American people what they are.