The Biden administration said it's navigating "unchartered territory" after being pressed for an explanation on three unidentified flying objects (UFOs) shot down by the U.S. Air Force since Friday.
During Monday's White House press briefing, John Kirby, President Biden's National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, told Fox News White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich it was unclear if there were any releasable images of the three downed UFOs. He added that he couldn't say what the standard would be going forward on handling further incursions into U.S. airspace, and was unsure if it was indeed "strange" that no country had yet to claim responsibility for the UFOs.
"I don't know what kind of imagery might exist, and they'd be wanting to talk about whether they're releasable or not," Kirby said, referencing possible photos of the UFOs the Department of Defense might have. "Obviously, certainly with respect to the spy balloon, we want to make sure that we are gleaning what we can from this imagery so that we can answer your questions better."
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"And so to what degree there will or will not be public release, I do want to stress that, you know, we're going to want to make sure that we have had a chance to analyze that imagery for ourselves as much as possible," Kirby added.
Heinrich then asked why the U.S. was "all of a sudden" shooting such a high volume of objects down following the days long trek of the Chinese spy balloon across the country, noting that it seemed the protocol had changed.
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Biden faced sharp criticism for waiting days to take down the balloon once it was over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina.
"I kind of feel like I took care of that in my opening statement, but I'm happy to revisit it," Kirby said, going on to argue there were differences in the situation with the Chinese spy balloon compared to the UFOs, including it flying at a higher altitude away from commercial aircraft and enhanced knowledge about its purpose.
"Really the option of shooting that down over land wasn't a legitimate option because somebody really could have gotten hurt. And we use the time available to us knowing what this thing was all about. We use that time to study it, to learn from it, to collect on it, then taking it down at the earliest opportunity in the water," Kirby said.
"These other three, they didn't have propulsion. They weren't being maneuvered. It was basically they were being driven by the wind. We don't think – we don't know for sure whether they had a surveillance aspect to them, but we can't rule it out. So there was a little bit, there was enough uncertainty there that, again, out of all abundance of caution, doing the prudent thing, the president directed that they get taken down," he said.
Kirby added that the administration was going to "learn from these three events," and "continue to study what happened" in order to decide what the standard would be going forward in handling such objects.
"We're going to have an interagency effort that helps us get around the policy implications here. And we'll see where this goes. But bottom line for President Biden is going to do the right thing for the American people, for our safety and security," he said.
Heinrich went on to ask whether Kirby thought it was "strange" no country had claimed responsibility for the three UFOs yet.
"I can't say whether that's strange or not, since we're sort of in uncharted territory here, no pun intended," Kirby said.
