Given my ongoing fascination with the topic, my interest was definitely piqued yesterday when I started seeing headlines claiming that our military had shot down a UFO over Alaska. Of course, the story probably isn’t quite as exciting as that wording makes it sound. (Emphasis on probably.) According to the National Security Council, there definitely was an “object” at roughly 40,000 feet over our coastal waters off of Alaska. And it was reportedly moving, albeit rather slowly, so it was technically “flying.” And the government either doesn’t know what it was yet or they’re not saying. Therefore, at least in the eyes of the public, it could be described as an unidentified flying object. Or at least it was flying until an F-22 Raptor blew it out of the sky under orders from the President. (The Debrief)

An unidentified high-altitude object was shot down over Alaska on orders from President Biden, White House and Pentagon officials confirmed on Friday, raising new concerns regarding possible surveillance efforts by adversary nations like China.

Speaking from the White House, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said during a press conference that the Pentagon had been tracking the object in Alaskan airspace over the last 24 hours as it traveled at an altitude of 40,000 feet.

The object was brought down after it was deemed to present “a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight,” Kirby said.

The first obvious question to address is what the object was. After the events of the past couple of weeks, people are to be excused if the idea of yet another Chinese spy balloon comes to mind. And 40,000 feet is definitely within the range of surveillance balloons, as we saw off the coast of the Carolinas. (It’s also within the altitude range of commercial airliners, making it a potential flight safety hazard, the reason that was offered for shooting it down.)

But the description offered by Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder is not a match for the previous spy balloon. He described it as being “the size of a small car,” rather than the size of “three buses” like the last one. Also, it wasn’t round. He described it as being “cylindrical and silverish gray.” You can have balloons that are sort of cylindrical such as blimps or carnival balloons. But “silverish gray” makes it sound more metallic, at least to me. That really sounds a lot more like the Tic Tac, doesn’t it?

Of course, nobody has ever shot down one of the Tic Tacs. (Or if they have, the Pentagon isn’t admitting it.) But there are reportedly an HC-130 Hercules and HH-60 and CH-47 helicopters searching for the wreckage. Weather is reportedly hampering the search effort. But the water in that region is reportedly frozen at the moment, so if it was a balloon it shouldn’t be all that hard to find. Then again, if it actually was a Tic Tac, it might have just punched through the ice and into the water. (They are reportedly transmedium in nature.)

For now, we’ll just have to wait for the search to either prove fruitful or be called off. If it turns out to be another Chinese craft of some sort, we might hear about it, though likely without many details. If it’s something more “exotic” in nature we won’t hear a peep about it for decades, I’m sure. But I’ll go ahead and speculate a bit here as to why it was shot down and the public was informed so quickly. After the fiasco of the last Chinese spy balloon and Joe Biden’s failure to have it taken down for so long, somebody wanted to make the President look more decisive and ready to take action. But for all we know, the object may have been one of our own.