The White House remains unsure whether one of the unidentified objects the U.S. military shot down was, in fact, a hobbyist balloon.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade said on Tuesday that one of its balloons is missing and was last spotted at 12:48 a.m. on Saturday along an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska, which tracks with when the Air Force shot down an object last Saturday. This incident was the second of three objects that were shot down last week, roughly a week after the military shot down a Chinese spy balloon.
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National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said on Friday that the White House was aware of NIBBB's claim but said they couldn't confirm its accuracy in part because they haven't tracked it down yet, and may not be able to at all.
"We just can't confirm those reports or what the remains of that balloon might actually end up being and we haven't recovered it," he explained, later saying, "Given the circumstances, in light of what happened with this spy balloon, wouldn't that be a better outcome? If it turns out that they were in fact civilian or recreational use or weather balloon and therefore benign, which is what the intelligence community thinks, isn't that a better outcome?"
He also warned that the U.S. may not be able to recover the object given the terrain of where it was shot down and that some questions may remain unanswered.
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“I have no information for you from NORAD on the objects,” Air Force Col. Elizabeth Mathias, a spokeswoman from the North American Aerospace Defense Command, told the Washington Examiner. "I understand the FBI spoke with that hobby group, and I expect the [National Security Council] task force to have more on the potential identification of the objects.”
It's unclear to U.S. officials what the three objects are and who they belonged to, though the leading theory is that they are not surveillance instruments. President Joe Biden said on Thursday that the intelligence community's current assessment is that they were "most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions, studying weather or conducting other scientific research."