U.S. military officials have detected high-altitude balloons across the Middle East on multiple occasions over the last year, according to a senior Air Force general.
“So there certainly are balloons in the CENTCOM [area of responsibility],” Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said Monday. “They have not been a threat. They’ve flown through a few times since I've been in command, but nothing that I would be concerned about in any way.”
Grynkewich took command of U.S. Air Force Central, the Air Force component for U.S. Central Command, which focuses on 21 countries across the Middle East and Central Asia, in July. His revelation of past detections adds context to a mystery that has erupted since an apparent Chinese spy balloon traversed the continental United States earlier this month, a violation of American airspace followed quickly by the downing of four other mysterious “objects” in U.S. or Canadian airspace that Pentagon officials have not yet been able to identify.
“The spy balloon from the PRC was, of course, different in that we knew precisely what it was,” Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton, the lead Pentagon official for homeland defense, told reporters on Sunday. "These most recent objects do not pose a kinetic military threat, but their path in proximity to sensitive DOD sites and the altitude that they were flying could be a hazard to civilian aviation and — and thus raised concerns.”
A UFO INVASION? OR SHADOW BOXING WITH ‘SKY TRASH’?
U.S. fighter pilots have shot down several unidentified “objects” since Feb. 9. The downed objects are not the same as the now-famous balloon that U.S. officials have described as a Chinese surveillance platform.
“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,” Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, who commands North American Aerospace Defense Command, told reporters on the call with Dalton. “I'm not going to go into detail about shapes or anything like that really because it's really, really difficult for pilots at the altitudes we're operating. These are very, very slow object in the space, if you will, going at the speed of the wind essentially. And our pilots are (inaudible) 100 miles per hour to give us what I would consider a factual scientific-based description of what we see.”
The objects were detected due to changes in the way the U.S. military monitors American airspace, according to VanHerck and Dalton.
“Following the track of the PRC balloon last week ... we have been more closely scrutinizing our airspace at these altitudes, enhancing our radar, which may at least partly explain the increase in the objects detected,” Dalton said. “But we also know that there are range of entities out there, whether they're private companies, research organization that operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate research.”
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
Grynkewich, the Air Force Central commander, evinced more certainty that his team had detected balloons, as opposed to some other object, but he was ambiguous about the purpose of the balloons.
“Even though we have seen high-altitude balloons in the region before, they have not been a threat,” he said during a Center for New American Security event on Monday. “I would not even characterize them necessarily as some particular type of balloon. The level of concern that I have about them is extremely low. I understand why people are asking the question in the current context, but it's not something that I lose sleep at night over whatsoever.”