First Look At Mystery Object Shot Down Over Canada By F-22 Raptor Last Year

Canadian authorities have released an image of an unidentified object that was shot down over the country’s Yukon Territory by a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor stealth fighter in February 2023. This is the first image of any of a trio of still-unidentified objects that were downed over the United States and Canada that month, details about which remain scant. The new disclosure continues to raise more questions about those incidents given that the picture appears to have been declassified within days of the shootdown, but was then withheld from release until now.

Canada’s CTV News first published the image of what is also known as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) 23, seen at the top of this story and below, along with an accompanying string of partially redacted internal emails from members of the Canadian armed forces earlier today. UAP is the term U.S., Canadian, and other authorities currently use to refer to what have been commonly described as unidentified flying objects (UFOs) in the past. The outlet said it independently verified the records after recieving them from an unnamed source who had obtained them via an Access to Information request. Canada’s Access to Information Act is similar in many respects to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), but the former is only accessible to Canadian citizens.

UAP 23 was downed over the Yukon on February 11, 2023. This came two days after another unidentified object, also known as UAP 20, was shot down in U.S. airspace off the northern coast of Alaska. A shootdown of a third unidentified object as it passed over Lake Huron came on February 12. This all followed U.S. and Canadian authorities tracking a Chinese spy balloon passing through their airspace for days before deciding to destroy it as it soared out over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.

The very low-resolution and grainy image we now have of UAP 23 shows a broadly doughnut-like shape with an open center, as well as an apparent notch or gap in its circumference on one side. It is possible that what is seen is light reflecting only from certain parts and that what is visible is not truly representative of its full shape.

The quality of the picture, which CTV News notes “appears to be a photocopy of an email printout,” makes it impossible to discern any definitive details. “The image appears to have been taken from an aircraft below it, although that has not been confirmed,” CTV News‘ report adds.

“The best description we have is: Visual – a cylindrical object. The top quarter is metallic, remainder white. 20 foot wire hanging below with a package of some sort suspended from it,” one of the associated emails, dated February 11, 2023, says. Looking at the released picture again with this description in hand it looks like it might show a balloon catching the sun with a payload underneath.

At the time, Canadian authorities described what had been shot down over the Yukon as a “small, cylindrical object.”

“It is unknown whether it [UAP 23] poses an armed threat or has intelligence collection capabilities,” according to a memo provided to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on February 15, 2023, says. “The area in which the impact [after shootdown] occurred is a known (caribou) migration route, which opens the possibility of future accidental discovery by Indigenous hunters.”

CTV News published the heavily redacted document, which it also received from an unnamed source who obtained it first via an Access to Information request, in September 2023. The release of the memo had already raised new and still largely unanswered questions about what Canadian and U.S. authorities may or may not know about the trio of downed objects, as well as what other UAPs had been monitored in either country’s airspace before then, as you can read more about here.

No remains of any of the three still-unidentified objects brought down in February 2023 are known to have been recovered. The owners and/or operators of those objects, and whatever their purposes might have been, remain unknown, at least publicly. Past reports have suggested UAP 23, specifically, may have been a so-called “pico” balloon often launched by amateur radio enthusiasts.

U.S. officials subsequently said that the trio of objects appeared to be benign, which looks to have been a direct factor in withholding the image of UAP 23 from the public. The unredacted portions of the newly disclosed Emails, which you can find here, show a clear push between February 11 and February 15, 2023, including from then-Canadian Chief of the Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre, to not only declassify the image, but also proactively release it, including on social media. However, by the end of February 15, the emails have taken a decidedly different tone.

“Should the image be released, it would be via the CAF [Canadian Armed Forces] social media accounts,” Taylor Paxton, then-acting Assistant Deputy Minister for Public Affairs with Canada’s Department of National Defense, writes in one Email. “Given the current public environment and statements related to the object being benign, releasing the image may create more questions/confusion, regardless of the text that will accompany the post.”

Major Doug Keirstead, Public Affairs Officer to Chief of the Defense Staff, subsequently sent another Email to his boss, Gen. Eyre, reiterating advice from acting Assistant Deputy Minister Taylor, as well as others, to hold off on releasing the image “pending U.S. engagement.”

The War Zone has reached out to the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense and the U.S.-Canadian North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) for more information.

If the goal behind not releasing this image and any others from the Febraury 2023 shootdowns was to avoid confusion and speculation, it only appears to have had the opposite impact. The War Zone, along with others, has tried to obtain imagery from these incidents from the U.S. side on multiple occasions to no avail and we have called into question the puzzling optics of not doing so in the past.

Even before February 2023, many members of Congress in the United States with access to classified information had criticized and otherwise called into question the U.S. military’s attitude towards UAP issues, broadly. The Department of Defense did establish an All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) in 2022 as a focal point for tracking and investigating all things UAP, but significant questions have been raised since about its resourcing and authorities. There have also been as yet unsubstantiated accusations of AARO and others within the U.S. government engaging in more active coverups.

“Data release and footage is prioritized based on the geopolitical environment at the time,” then-head of AARO Sean Kirkpatrick said in response to a question from The War Zone about why imagery from the February shootdowns had not been released at a press briefing in October 2023. “So engagements with Chinese fighters, Russian fighters have a much larger priority in getting it through the review process or declassification than UAPs or other similar engagements.”

“We are however, working through those processes, which all exist and we’ve got several of them actually already declassified and ready to update on our website [which] we’ll be doing on the next update to the website,” Kirkpatrick, who left AARO in December 2023, added at that time. “And we’re putting them out as quickly as we can get them through their proper steps.”

In a report released earlier this year, the Department of Defense’s own Office of the Inspector General (DODIG) went so far as to warn that a continued “lack of a comprehensive, coordinated approach to address” UAP issues “may pose a threat to military forces and national security.” The War Zone has repeatedly highlighted the significant evidence that a substantial number of UAP sightings are not only explainable, but are likely drones, high-altitude balloons, and other uncrewed aerial assets that hostile actors are using to gather intelligence on critical capabilities and installations in and round the United States.

A more recent Congressional effort to push for more UAP transparency through an amendment to the annual defense policy bill, or National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), for the 2025 Fiscal Year looks to have collapsed, at least for now.

It will be interesting now to see whether or not the Canadian government’s decision to release the image of UAP 23, such as it is, and the accompanying emails, will lead to further disclosures about the February 2023 shootdowns by that country or the United States.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com