president biden ordering the u.s. military to take down another high altitude object that was hovering over the u.s. we re told it was flying about 40,000 feet making it a threat to commercial airplanes. this coming less than a week after the u.s. shot down that chinese spy balloon. i want to bring in cnn national security reporter natasha ber trn, military analyst and retired air force colonel cedric leighton. great to have all of you. natasha, tell us what your latest reporting is on what happened today. yeah, alisyn, this was a big surprise by u.s. officials today. white house official john kirby he came to the podium and went through all his talking points and in the middle of the briefing he kind of sprung on everyone this had happen. essentially what happened off the coast of alaska on thursday night there was an object that was spotted, and it was unclear what that object actually was, but it was flying at a very concerning altitude, around 40,000 feet, just at that
maneuver by itself and it was pretty much at the mercy of the winds. there was no surveillance equipment detech on this object, so it was not deemed to be a national security risk but was deemed to be potentially dangerous it civilian aircraft. so the u.s. really did not feel like it had any other choice but to take it down. so around 1:45 p.m. today is when we saw them actually send-up those fighter jets and actually use the same kind of missile that was used just last week for that chinese spy balloon to take it down. now, we still don t know where this object came from or what it even is. it is a lot smaller than the chinese spy balloon, only the size of about a small car as opposed to the payload of that chinese spy balloon being about three buses. now what we re going to see is this recovery effort. this apparently landed on solid ice just about 10 miles north off the coast of alaska. and the recovery effort has already begun, and the next step it s going to be taken to an fbi lab