Theories began to circulate when the Bottlecap Balloon Brigade learned that their hobby balloon vanished at the same moment fighter planes were sent to down an unidentified object over Alaska.
They spent $12 on an inflatable, which was destroyed by a $400,000 Sidewinder missile launched from a $143 million F-22 during a military operation that President Joseph Biden authorized.
They filed a “missing in action” report for their property and made contact with the FBI, but the Military has not yet determined if their balloon was a target.
Yet, their role in the recent UFO panic has raised several issues and drawn criticism of the White House.
‘To be fair, Biden is giving a tremendous disincentive for any high school scientific clubs that might try to invade America,’ Ted Cruz commented on Twitter.
‘RIP to the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade’s $80 ham radio transmitter balloon, likely the victim of friendly fire by a $143,000,000 USAF F-22 firing a $485,000 AIM-9X Sidewinder missile during the Great Balloon Panic of 2023,’ added former Republican congressman and Army reserve Peter Meijer.
At the same time that a U.S. Air Force plane shot down an unexplained object near Alaska with a $400,000 Sidewinder missile, the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) reported one of their balloons as “lost in action.”
According to NIBBB, the “K9YO” balloon last transmitted its position off the coast of southwest Alaska just before 1am GMT on Saturday, February 11 (8pm EDT on February 10).
Later on Saturday, several hundred miles from K9YO’s last known position, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a “unidentified object” had crashed over Canada’s Yukon area.
The probability that the balloon was one of the suspicious items shot down by the US military is raised by modeling data supplied by NIBBB, which suggests the balloon was traveling in the direction of Yukon before it disappeared.
Officials in Canada and the United States have variably characterized the item that a U.S. Air Force F-22 fighter plane shot down above Mayo, Yukon, as a “cylindrical” metallic balloon containing a cargo.
The balloons used by hobbyist organizations like NIBBB often meet this criteria. They often have a tiny solar-powered payload attached to them that communicates position information to ground-based listening stations. Their payloads are often little bigger than a credit card.
While NIBBB hasn’t confirmed that their balloon was the item that crashed, Aviation Week’s analysis of the circumstantial data leaves the possibility open.
The “pico balloons” released by hobby organizations like NIBBB often accomplish nothing more than convey position data, or, in some circumstances, information about the weather. They are far from presenting a military or surveillance danger.
They float about until inclement weather damages or brings them down. Prior to ceasing to transmit its position, K9YO was in the air for 123 days and 18 hours.
It completed six full orbits of the earth during that period.
The balloon used for K9YO is believed to have been a silver 32-inch mylar balloon that costs $13.33 and is often used for festivities and gatherings but is sometimes utilized by enthusiasts for high-altitude flights.
Since a Chinese spy balloon was discovered earlier this month, other hobbyists have also speculated that pico balloons may be to blame for some of the mysterious objects seen above the United States.
I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to educate them on what a lot of these things probably are, said Ron Meadows, the creator of Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS), which manufactures balloons used by amateurs. And they’ll seem to be too stupid to be firing them down.
The targets that were shot down, according to presenter of the Amateur Radio Roundtable program Tom Medlin, were “possibly” pico balloons.
He said that during his flights, he used a $12 foil balloon that is durable at high altitudes and fits the description of the “metallic” Yukon item.
According to authorities, the balloon that was shot down above Yukon was at a height of roughly 40,000 feet. The balloon of NIBBB’s was last located at a height of 37,928 feet.
On Thursday, President Joseph Biden said that the Yukon item and two other enigmatic airborne objects that US fighters had destroyed since the China balloon incident were not believed to be spy planes.
We don’t yet know precisely what these three things were, but nothing that has been discovered so far implies that they were part of China’s spy balloon program or that they were foreign monitoring equipment, the official added.
According to the intelligence community’s current judgment, these three objects were most likely balloons connected to private businesses, leisure or research facilities, or organizations engaged in investigating the weather or other types of scientific research.
When the balloon was off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, Biden gave the order to shoot it down, drawing harsh criticism for letting it to go across the whole country.
An unidentified object was shot down over Alaska on February 10. A day after the Yukon incident, on February 12, a third UDO was shot down over Lake Huron in the Midwest.
The White House and military authorities have not totally ruled out the possibility that aliens are responsible for the latest UFO sightings.
The White House has announced the formation of a new UFO task group to investigate any security threats presented by newly discovered flying objects found in American airspace.
Experts from the Pentagon, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Homeland Security, and other government agencies will collaborate in the new group, which was established on Jake Sullivan’s orders, to examine unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) and determine whether they pose a threat.
‘Every element of the government will redouble their efforts to understand and mitigate these events,’ said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby on Monday. He added that the task force would look at the ‘broader policy implications’ related to the detection and analysis of UFOs over the continental US.
The news was made only one day after an F-16 fighter aircraft from the US Air Force shot down a third UFO in as many days above the Great Lakes.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of NORAD and the US Northern Command, refused to rule out aliens at a briefing on Sunday night, which didn’t assist the UFO story.
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