UFO Shot Down Over Canada Probably Belonged To Hobby Group From Illinois

The mysterious flying object shot down by NORAD fighter jets in Canada on Feb. 11 likely belonged to a balloon hobby club in Illinois, according to a new report from Aviation Week. But agencies like NORAD and FBI won’t confirm to the balloon club whether it was one of their balloons that caused an international incident.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade spoke with Aviation Week, which says the circumstantial evidence is strong that it was their balloon shot down by NORAD, a partnership between the U.S. and Canada to monitor the skies that’s perhaps most famous for tracking Santa Claus. The U.S. was on heightened alert at the time, after a Chinese spy balloon was spotted by civilians in Billings, Montana before it crossed the entire continental U.S. and was finally shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.

Three more flying objects were shot down in northern Alaska, in Canada’s Yukon, and over Lake Huron near Michigan. And it’s the balloon in the Yukon territory that probably belonged to the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, given its last reported location.

Known as pico balloons, they could easily be mistaken for party balloons, but measure things like humidity, pressure and temperature, while relaying all that weather information back to the hobbyists through a global network. The balloons are fitted with VHF/UHF antennas that can give information about its coordinates to ham radio operators. And, as Aviation Week points out, they can circle the globe several times before they finally fail.

“I tried contacting our military and the FBI—and just got the runaround—to try to enlighten them on what a lot of these things probably are. And they’re going to look not too intelligent to be shooting them down,” Ron Meadows, the founder of Scientific Balloon Solutions (SBS), told Aviation Week.

Due to their light weight, pico balloons used by hobbyists are largely exempt from FAA regulations, which may explain why it was difficult to immediately ascertain who was behind the flying objects.

The U.S. military only began picking up a huge number of mysterious flying objects after it started looking for slow-moving objects, which would explain why so many new objects were suddenly identified and shot down in such a short period of time. The balloons were always there, circling the globe, they just didn’t get noticed very much due to their small size and benign activity.

President Joe Biden gave a speech on Thursday about the balloons, and while it didn’t contain any new information and he refused to answer follow-up questions, he did stress that the three most recently shot down balloons were probably weather balloons.

And, yes, balloon hobbyists are indeed worried about balloons still up in the air as they approach U.S. airspace.

“I hope that in the next few days when that happens we’re not real trigger-happy and start shooting down everything,” Tom Medlin, a hobbyist who currently has three balloons up in the air told Aviation Week.

You can hope, Mr. Medlin, but it’s clear the U.S. military is going to shoot first and ask questions later at this point. You don’t want President Biden to look weak on China. Or party balloons.