The White House said that so far there is no evidence that the three objects shot down over North America in recent days were monitoring. It is reported by the FT with reference to a briefing by the speaker of the US National Security Council, John Kirb..

At the same time, Kirby added that the Council cannot rule out the possibility of espionage..

“While we have no concrete reason to suspect that they were conducting any kind of surveillance, we cannot rule it out,” he stressed..

According to the speaker, President Joe Biden ordered the shooting down of unidentified objects - over Alaska, the Yukon Territory in Canada, and Lake Huron, one of the Great Lakes in the US Midwest - because of the risk to civilian aircraft, and also because he could not rule out.

“Their height was significantly lower than the Chinese balloon, which posed a threat to civilian commercial air traffic,” Kirby said, explaining the decision to shoot down objects with air-to-air missiles..

At a media briefing in Canada on Monday, General Paul Prevost, head of the Canadian Strategic Joint Staff, said the object that was shot down on Sunday was " Earlier, Gen. Glen VanHerke, head of the US-Canadian Joint North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), said he was "

FT sources said the Pentagon concluded two of the three downed objects appeared to be balloons..

The downing of three unidentified aerial objects occurred after an F-22 jet shot down a large Chinese balloon off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, flying over the American continent and lingering over important military installations..

Washington insists airship carrying payload the size of three school buses was surveillance balloon. Beijing claims it was a civil meteorological research balloon.

Speaking about the objects shot down since Friday, Kirby said the US is still trying to assess what it was..

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Kirby said that the US and Canada will know more about the last three objects after they collect all the debris..

U.S. officials also said that one of the reasons Norad is detecting more potential threats is because the military has recalibrated its radars to be more sensitive following the Chinese spy balloon invasion..