Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) said on Sunday there is a possibility of an object flying over Montana’s airspace after a search for a radar anomaly was called off yesterday due to darkness, but added the alert could be a “false alarm.”
“There was an anomaly and they’ve investigated … I think it got dark last night so they couldn’t fully check it out,” Tester said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.” “There may still be something up there, it may be a false alarm.”
Tester’s comments come after airspace was temporarily closed over central Montana on Saturday after surveillance spotted a radar anomaly over the state.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, also known as NORAD, said in a statement late Saturday that it detected a “radar anomaly” and sent fighter aircraft to investigate but the aircraft could not identify any object “to correlate to the radar hits.”
The U.S. shot down two more aerial objects over American and Canadian airspace on Friday and Saturday. It is so far unknown what the objects were and where they came from.
But speculation has whirled in the aftermath of the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month.
Tester said if there is an object flying over Montana, his expectation is that it would be shot down by the military after determining potential damages.
“My guess is it’ll get shot down, but the military will make an assessment as to potential collateral damage,” Tester said.
Tester admitted that he did not know whether the objects shot down in the last few days belonged to China. NORAD said it had no further update on the situation in Montana on Sunday.