Canadian defense reveals UFO shootdown by American F‑22 Raptor
The Canadian Department of Defense declassified a photo taken during an incident involving an unidentified flying object in February 2023. The object was shot down by an American F-22 Raptor fighter jet.
8:43 PM EDT, September 26, 2024
The unidentified flying object (UFO) entered American airspace over Alaska and continued toward Canada. NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) monitors airspace over Canada and the United States and is responsible for tracking the object.
The object, flying at an altitude of 8 miles, was tracked for several days before fighter jets were dispatched. On February 11, over the Yukon near the Alaska border, an F-22 Raptor fired an AIM-9X air-to-air missile, which successfully downed the still unidentified intruder.
Space24 reports that the Raptor pilot did not know what the cylindrical object he attacked was until the very end. According to brief information from the Canadians, it was a "small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it."
According to Fox News, this incident was one of three occasions when flying objects were destroyed following the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon by the Americans on February 4, 2023. President Biden stated that none of these objects were related to the Chinese balloon.
AIM-9X Sidewinder – short-range air-to-air missile
The AIM-9X Sidewinder, used to shoot down the balloon, is a short-range air-to-air missile produced by RTX. It is a developmental version of the AIM-9 missile, first developed in the United States in the early 1950s.
Initially, these types of missiles, guided by heat sources, had limited capabilities. For the Sidewinder warhead to find its target, it had to be fired from the rear hemisphere of the attacked aircraft, where the engine nozzles were visible.
The latest missile variant, the AIM-9X, is still guided by heat sources but has no limitations; it can be launched without pre-targeting, even at an angle of 180 degrees to the target.
The missile weighs 187 pounds, is slightly over 10 feet long, and carries a 21-pound warhead. The latest Sidewinder variant has a range of up to 22 miles.
