Objects flying over US and Canada believed to be balloons, US official says

US military have shot down three mysterious aircraft in one week

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks during a news conference at the Capitol in Washington. AP

US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Sunday the two latest unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets over Canada and Alaska were high-altitude balloons, although smaller than the China balloon downed over the Atlantic Ocean last weekend.

Mr Schumer, who was speaking on This Week on ABC, said he was briefed on Saturday night by White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan.

One of the objects was downed over Alaska on Friday and the other was brought down over Canada on Saturday, following the highly publicised shooting down of an alleged Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on February 4.

Asked whether the two latest objects were balloons, Mr Schumer said: “They believe they were, yes. But much smaller than the first one.”

“Both of those — one over Canada, one over Alaska — were at 40,000 feet” and were determined to pose a risk to civil aviation, Mr Schumer said.

Mr Schumer said teams were recovering debris from the objects and would work to determine where they came from.

“The bottom line is until a few months ago we didn’t know about these balloons,” Mr Schumer said.

“It is wild that we didn’t know. … Now they are learning a lot more. And the military and the intelligence are focused like a laser on first gathering and accumulating the information, then coming up with a comprehensive analysis."

In response to Mr Schumer’s comments that US officials believed the unmanned objects were balloons, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council told Reuters the objects downed over Alaska and Canada in recent days did not resemble the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina and were much smaller.

“These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon and we will not definitively characterise them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” the spokesperson told Reuters.

There has been no Chinese reaction to the latest two drownings.

All members of Congress were briefed on Thursday on the suspected Chinese spy craft that was shot down off the South Carolina coast on February 4.

Some Republicans criticised President Biden for waiting too long to down the first balloon.

But Mr Schumer defended Mr Biden's handling, telling ABC News an analysis of the recovered balloon debris would represent “a huge coup for the United States”.

Reuters and AP contributed to this report