New air raid on American skies, less than a week after that of the Chinese spy balloon.
An unidentified object the size of a car and with no people aboard was shot down by the Pentagon at a high altitude off the coast of Alaska near the Canadian border.
It was ordered by President Joe Biden because, flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet (12,000 meters), "it posed a reasonable threat to civilian air traffic," as National Security Council spokesman John Kirby explained.
"The operation was a success," commented the commander in chief.
For now, however, it is solid yellow because the American defense does not have many important details: the Pentagon, spokesman Pat Ryder reported in a briefing, does not know where it came from, who it belongs to, at what speed it travelled, if it was manoeuvrable and if had surveillance capabilities.
He was not even able to give a description of the object, which in fact remains "unidentified".
However, there is the belief that much data can be discovered from the examination of the remains, now being recovered in the icy waters in American territory.
The alarm was triggered on Thursday evening but the object was shot down on Friday at 1.45 Washington time (19.45 in Italy) with a Sidewinder missile launched from an F22 that took off from the Elmendorf Air Force base in Anchorage.
First the commander in chief wanted to be reassured that there were no people on board.
A timely action, compared to the downing of the Chinese spy balloon, but the different timing was explained by the potential threat to aviation safety and by the fact that the object flew over sparsely populated areas.
Furthermore, its dimensions are much smaller than those of the Beijing 'spy balloon'.
Meanwhile, the United States is preparing to impose sanctions on Chinese companies linked to the spy balloon.
Biden is trying to throw water on the fire of the diplomatic crisis with the Dragon so as not to compromise the prospect of dialogue with Xi.
In the last two days he said that the downing of the balloon did not deal a serious blow to bilateral relations and that the overflight of the airship "is not a serious violation" compared to what happens in the world to gather intelligence information.
But, if it turns out that the unidentified object is also Chinese, the crisis will worsen.
