"I'm gonna call it a balloon," one of the pilots can be heard saying in cockpit audio from the February 12, 2023 engagement.
The PURSUE release and the Lake Huron infrared video
The Pentagon has posted a tranche of declassified records through the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters (PURSUE) that includes infrared video of the F-16 shootdown over Lake Huron on February 12, 2023. The entry in the PURSUE archive describes the video with the uploader-defined title, “USAF ANG F-16C (callsign [CALLSIGN]) Shoots Down UAP over Lake Huron with [Weapon System], 12 Feb 2023,” and notes the clip was likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform operating within U.S. Northern Command’s area of responsibility in 2023. The Pentagon confirmed the video is of the well-publicized shootdown.
What the footage shows
The released clip—shot through an infrared camera, consistent with imagery from Sniper Advanced Targeting Pods seen on the jets at the time—shows an object with a roughly spherical, balloon-like shape and a single line or wire dangling beneath it. The PURSUE entry’s descriptive text says at the 11‑second mark the sensor “focuses on an area of contrast” and at the 20‑second mark “the footage appears to depict a kinetic interaction between two distinct areas of contrast, with the initial subject of the footage fragmenting in a radial displacement pattern that suggests a high‑energy event.” The description also explicitly cautions readers not to interpret it as an analytical judgment or factual determination.
Minnesota Air National Guard F-16CMs, an AIM-9X, and three February shootdowns
Records establish that a pair of F-16CM Vipers from the Minnesota Air National Guard scrambled on February 12, 2023, to intercept an object that was cruising at approximately 20,000 feet and was judged to be a potential hazard to civil aviation. One of the two F-16s fired an AIM‑9X Sidewinder and shot the object down over Lake Huron. Canadian authorities subsequently recovered debris. The Lake Huron engagement followed two other shootdowns earlier that month: one off the coast of Alaska on February 10 and another over Canada’s Yukon Territory on February 11. Those actions came after the February 4 shootdown of a Chinese spy balloon off South Carolina, which the records note had already spent days passing over parts of the United States and Canada.
Canadian recovery, RCMP correspondence, and RCAF assessments
Canadian records obtained by CTV News include an RCMP statement that “Debris has been recovered from the shores of Lake Huron but after careful analysis, it was determined not to be of national security concern.” An email from Mark Flynn, then the RCMP’s deputy commissioner for Federal Policing, to Canadian Armed Forces Brig. Gen. Eric Laforest noted a “module” among the debris and described it as being “from a company who sells weather monitoring equipment.” Flynn added: “It will be analyzed to determine if there is anything unusual with it but I suspect not given the size,” and cautioned that “Whether or not it is from the shoot down is uncertain.” A redacted Royal Canadian Air Force report included in those records further suggested the Lake Huron object might have been a weather balloon launched from a U.S. National Weather Service radar station in Michigan; that same RCAF material raised the possibility that the Yukon object had been a pico balloon.
What this means for AARO, NORAD, and civil aviation
The archive entry and related records underscore the All‑domain Anomaly Resolution Office’s (AARO) central role in collecting and managing UAP‑related materials; AARO was established in 2022 as the Department of Defense’s repository and manager for policies, procedures, and data on UAP incidents. The office has been the focus of criticism from members of Congress who have complained about stonewalling on UAP matters. In October 2023 AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick told TWZ that “Data release and footage is prioritized based on the geopolitical environment at the time,” and that imagery involving China or Russia received higher priority in the declassification process than UAP engagements. Kirkpatrick, who left AARO in December 2023, later said during an April 9, 2026 presentation to the National Capital Area Skeptics that the objects shot down between February 10 and 12, 2023, were balloons: “We scrambled jets and shot down a bunch of things. Do you know what we shot down? Balloons,” he told the audience.
The video and the Canadian analyses together align with pilot descriptions and in‑cockpit audio from the Lake Huron engagement—pilots described “lines coming down below” and at least one pilot called it a balloon—while the object’s altitude and the decision to engage underscore the episode’s stated connection to aviation safety.
The War Zone judged that the newly released Lake Huron footage “all but closes the case” that the object was a balloon, yet the records and the path they took into the public archive—an uploader on a classified network, a March 6, 2026 request from eight House members for potentially UAP‑related records—leave broader questions about timing and disclosure unanswered. Whether the release prompts further declassification or clarifications about the February 2023 engagements over Alaska and the Yukon remains to be seen.
Source: The War Zone — We Finally See The Mysterious Object Shot Down By F-16s Over Lake Huron
