one object yesterday in alaska and another one today in canada. what s the latest over there? reporter: well, jim, president biden and canadian prime minister took that incredibly rare step today and jointly authorized the shooting down of that unidentified object over northern canada. this marks the third time in just the last week where the u.s. has had to shoot down an aerial object over north america. just to walk you through a bit of what we ve learned this evening about how they ve been tracking this latest object. according to the pentagon, norad first detected this latest unidentified, unmanned object over alaska on friday evening as they monitored it and tracked where it was going. it did cross into canadian airspace. at some point today, president biden and canadian prime minister justin trudeau both spoke, they had both been monitoring the situation for the last 24 hours. and they ultimately decided out
we ll let it fly over canada, we ll let it fly into idaho, montana, then into the rest of the united states all the way out to the carolinas. and see what it really can do. and once we do that, then we ll have a better chance of assessing the next systems. and that i don t think we expected it to happen that quickly, but that s the kind of thing that we re seeing right now is that assessment being put to work. now they re saying, okay c, we done enough assessing, it s time to get rid of these or find a way to prevent him from collecting data on us. and sending a message to whichever country is sending them. you can send them, we re going to shoot them down, use them as target practice. exactly. exactly. it shows off our skills, as well. absolutely. colonel leighton, thank you so much. thanks for letting us haul you back in for this expanded coverage of cnn newsroom. as we continue our coverage of the order to shoot down this unidentified object that was taken down over the s
of abundance of caution they wanted to follow the advice of their merl leader and authorize the shooting down of this object. at this point once this operation was under way it was ultimately an american f-22 fighter jet that shot down this unidentified object over canada. now there s still so many questions about what exactly this object entailed including the size, its origin, and its purpose. and a few moments ago the defense minister of canada talked a little bit about what they know at this moment. recovery operations are under way, and will be supported by the canadian armed forces in con junction with the rcmp. this coordinated operation will allow a further investigation into this object. we have no further details about the object at this time other than it appears to be a small cylindrical object and smaller than the one that was downed off
that is the latest coming into cnn at this very moment. we re learning the faa is closing more airspace over montana. natasha bertrand joins us on the phone. what can you tell us? reporter: we are just learning that the faa has restricted some airspace in montana for, quote, national defense airspace. and it is not immediately clear the reason for this, but the faa has made similar flight restrictions in recent days when operations took place to shoot down the spy balloon last week and the object on friday near alaska. now cnn has reached out to the faa, north com, and the department of defense for comment on this, but it is obviously very notable that this closure of the airspace over montana has happened roughly a few hours only after we saw that object shot down over northern canada. that object had originated over alaska and was flying toward northern canada when it was decided by president biden and
pentagon is that norad had detected the object over alaska actually late friday evening, and then two f-22 fighter jets from alaska monitored the object over u.s. airspace, and then tracked it as it went into canada. now this was obviously the u.s. and canada working very closely together because obviously we have seen these kinds of objects floating around in the area over the last several days. just yesterday the president authorized the shoot-down of yet another object that was flying over alaskan airspace. that was shot down yesterday about ten miles off the coast there. this one we re told they just wanted to wait and monitor it because it was first spotted over alaska, and they did not feel like it was the right time to shoot it down immediately. so they waited to see where it was going. itdented up going over canada it did end up going over canada. u.s. and canadian fire jets working together under the norad hat, they worked together to bring it down. it was ultimately a fight