A US fighter jet has shot down an unidentified object flying 40,000ft over Alaska after Pentagon officials said it "posed a reasonable threat."
President Joe Biden ordered it to be erased from the skies just days after the U.S. military took down the Chinese spy balloon.
Authorities were on alert and had been tracking the object, which officials have not dubbed a balloon, over the last 24 hours.
An F-22 aircraft shot it down with a Sidewinder missile after it entered Alaskan airspace, with its remains scattering across the frozen sea.
The object, described as the size of a small car, posed a "reasonable threat" to the safety of civilian flights, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said.
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"We don't know who owns this object," he added.
"Out of an abundance of caution, and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did, and it came inside our territorial waters, and those waters right now are frozen."
A US Air Force HC-130J was sent to stalk the skies off the Alaskan coast, flying as low as 725 feet at times.
Data from flight tracking service FlightRadar24 shows the aircraft circling an area close to Prudhoe Bay at the time the unidentified object was downed.
He said the object did not have a "significant payload" like the first surveillance balloon shot down over the weekend.
Biden told CNN that the shootdown of the "high-altitude object" hovering over Alaska "was a success."
According to Politico, pilots tasked with shooting down the object described it as "cylindrical."
Officials speaking anonymously with the publication said the object did not have surveillance technology on board.
Kirby said Biden was briefed on the object on Thursday evening, as "soon as the Pentagon had enough information."
"It did not appear to be self-maneuvering."
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U.S. officials said it was too early to determine whether the object belongs to the Chinese government or a private enterprise.
Unlike the first Chinese spy balloon, officials will be able to recover the remains after it was shot down over frozen waters, Kirby said.
A US official said the military had waited to shoot down the object in daylight so it was easier for the pilots to spot it.
He added that officials did not understand the full purpose of the object, adding that it did not appear to maneuver like a spy balloon.
Kirby said the U.S. will "remain vigilant about our airspace" after the latest incident.
The Governor of Alaska, Mike Dunleavy, praised the military for "eliminating the potential threat before it was flying over our land."
RISING TENSIONS
The action comes less than a week after the Pentagon shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina.
The Chinese-origin object traveled into the U.S. from Canada early last week, spotted over Billings, Montana, on February 1.
Officials said the balloon had flown over areas in Montana containing sensitive airbases and nuclear missiles in underground silos.
Montana is home to the Malmstrom Air Force Base, which houses one of the three nuclear missile fields in the U.S.
It is home to 150 ICBM silos.
The Chinese government claimed the balloon was "for weather research" and inadvertently crossed into US territory due to wind gusts.
President Biden gave a thumbs-up sign on Saturday when asked if the U.S. planned to shoot the suspected spy balloon down - described as the size of three bus lengths.
The FBI recovered some of the airship's remains but admitted that much of the evidence remains underwater in the Atlantic Ocean.
“It’s very early for us to assess what the intent was and how the device was operating,” a senior FBI official told reporters in a briefing Thursday, according to NBC News.
“We have literally not seen the payload, which is where we would expect to see the lion’s share of the electronics,” the official said.
The Pentagon has given no indication that the unidentified object over Alaska is related to the Chinese surveillance balloon.
A State Department spokesperson said the balloon was able to collect communications and data via a satellite and had “multiple antennas” in addition to other equipment used “clearly for intelligence surveillance,” Axios reported.
The recovered remains were taken to the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia, where it is being decontaminated by removing saltwater.
'NATIONAL EMBARRASSMENT'
Former acting defense secretary Christopher Miller previously told The U.S. Sun that the Chinese spy balloon was a "national embarrassment" and ripped the president for the delayed response.
Miller told The U.S. Sun that, as someone who has been in discussions about how to deal with enemy provocation, he disapproved of the administration's handling.
"I think in the end, it created some great memes and Saturday Night Live material," he said.
"If you're a late-night comedy writer, holy cow... You got materials for ages, but it was pretty embarrassing."
Miller said that former President Donald Trump would have likely acted more aggressively against the violation of American airspace.
"I'm pretty confident though that if a situation like that would've arisen during our time, I'm pretty sure he [Trump] would've taken aggressive [action]," Miller said.
"He would have not allowed [the situation to] become a national embarrassment."
In fact, Trump called for the surveillance balloon to be shot down immediately after its presence was made public to Americans.
"SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON," Trump seethed on his Truth Social platform.
