An Illinois hobbyist club says one of its high-altitude balloons disappeared off the coast of Alaska on Feb. 10, offering a potential explanation for one of the three still unidentified objects shot down over North American airspace the past week.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade, as the group is known, said its silver-coated pico balloon last reported its position Feb. 10 at 38,910 feet off the west coast of Alaska.
Using a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration forecasting tool, the group estimates the cylindrically shaped balloon would have drifted above Canada’s Yukon territory Feb. 11, the same day the U.S. scrambled F-22 fighters to shoot down an object matching a similar description and altitude.
Details of the group’s missing balloon were first reported by Aviation Week.
Pico balloons are small, moderately priced high-altitude balloons of varying sizes and payloads. The hobby combines ham radio with high-altitude ballooning.
The group says it has no definitive proof that its balloon was shot down, but other enthusiasts in the tight-knit pico-ballooning community have raised suspicions.
“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, a Silicon Valley, California, company that makes purpose-built pico balloons for hobbyists, educators and scientists, told Aviation Week.
Tom Medlin, who co-hosts the “Amateur Radio Roundtable” ham show, said he guesses the objects shot down were pico balloons.
Federal officials have not said whether they are considering hobby balloons in their investigation into the unknown objects.
“I have no update for you from NORAD on these objects,” a North American Aerospace Defense Command spokesman told Aviation Week.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby declined to weigh in on the missing hobby balloon, adding that the administration would be unable to confirm what was shot down until the debris is recovered. The task has proved challenging for the Pentagon.
“We all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover [the objects],” he said.
Mr. Kirby also defended the president’s decision to shoot down the objects, when pressed on whether doing so could be perceived as an overreaction.
“Given the situation we were in, the information available, the recommendation of our military commanders, it was exactly the right thing to do at exactly the right time,” he said.
President Biden addressed the shootdowns Thursday after facing bipartisan pressure to allay public fears over the objects.
Mr. Biden said the objects were likely not linked to China. He said he gave the order to shoot them down “out of an abundance of caution.”
He said the intelligence community still doesn’t know what the three unidentified objects over North America were, but it is not believed there was anything nefarious about them.
“The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting scientific research,” he said.
Efforts to recover the debris are ongoing.
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