Justin Trudeau’s secret memo on the Canadian response to the February 11 Yukon incident was sent after the three unidentified object shootdowns in three days in Alaska, the Yukon, and Lake Huron. A week earlier a Chinese spy-balloon had been shot down off the coast of South Carolina. In addition, it stated the “full exploitation” of whatever the U.S. Air Force shot down over the waters of Alaska on Feb. 10 had “not yet been completed.” Reports a few days later stated that the U.S. had called off the search for wreckage of the downed object. Uncertain is what sort of intelligence exploitation was being referred to.
The “Memorandum for the Prime Minister,” transmitted Feb. 14, was obtained by the Canadian CTV News The news outlet received a Freedom of Information Act request from a source that it said was verified by its own request. According to the memo, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) numbered unknown objects sequentially “to track every detected object that is not immediately identified: upon cross-examination most objects are found to be innocuous and do not meet the higher threshold for higher reporting or engagement.” However, the object the memo identified as “UAP #23” – meaning it was the 23rd unidentified radar track by NORAD over North America at that point in the year that was classified as UAP – did rise to a higher level of concern, given that it was shot down.
The memo stated that “the function, method of propulsion, or affiliation to any nation-state” of the unidentified object shot down by a U.S. Air Force F-22 Raptor on Feb. 11 “remains unverified. It is unknown whether it poses an armed threat or has intelligence collection capabilities.”
The memo stated that there was little hope of finding the object.
“…the mountainous terrain, existing snow cover and expected new snowfall make prospect of recovery unlikely.”
The memo expressed concerns that indigenous hunters could accidentally discover the object while hunting caribou. It also explained that while CAF CF-18s Hornets had been scrambled to intercept the object, “F-22s were better located based on time, space and fading light.”
The memo was sent to Trudeau and his national security advisor, Jody Thomas, by a Canadian official named Janice Charette, who then served as “the powerful clerk of the Privy Council,” CTV News explained. The council “is a centralized hub that directs the country’s public service and is responsible for providing non-partisan support to the prime minister and cabinet as they make policy decisions,” the news outlet said.
Charette questioned whether the object was a threat to national security or capable of gathering intelligence, three days after Canadian authorities and media reported on its description.
During the Feb. 11 press conference as we noted at the time, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said the unknown object was a “small, cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese spy balloon shot down off South Carolina on Feb. 4. According to reports, the object was flying at 40,000 feet.
The day before, The Wall Street JournalAccording to an official report on the subject, the object in question was a metallic small balloon with a payload attached. That seemed to correlate with Canadian Chief of Defense Staff Gen. Wayne Eyre’s statement at the aforementioned press conference when discussing cooperation between U.S. F-22s and Canadian CF-18s.
“The instructions that were given to the team was whoever had the first, best shot to take out the balloon had the go-ahead,” Eyre said at the time.
Charette’s memo also briefly addressed the Feb. 10 UAP shootdown by an F-22 over the water in the northeastern corner of Alaska near the border with Canada described as “UAP #20.”
“The full exploitation of UAP #20, which was engaged by the U.S. on February 10, 2023, has not yet been completed,” Charette wrote.
On February 11, The New York Times reported that the fallen object “broke into pieces” on hitting the frozen sea ice off Prudhoe Bay.
Three days after Charette delivered her memo, The New York Times reported that “the U.S. called off the search” for both the objects mentioned in Charette’s memo, “raising the possibility that the devices will never be collected and analyzed, according to a U.S. military official.”
It is also unclear what the memo meant about the “full exploitation” of the UAP shot down over Alaska on Feb. 10. She could have meant a variety of things.
The intelligence services, along with the U.S. military, conduct what’s called Foreign Material Exploitation (FME) of targeted crash sites of aircraft and missiles to learn more about how they are build, operate, and their actual capabilities. This has been a long-established and shadowy practice which has played a critical role in major intelligence revelations by adversaries over the years. You can read all about crash retrievals and their ‘cloak and dagger history’ in our story here.
The wreckage was actively and intensively searched over this remote area of Alaska. If the U.S. government is correct, and no wreckage was discovered, then it could refer to data from sensors that were collected by various assets tracking the object. Aviation platforms in particular would have been closest to the object and recorded the visual information it was displaying as it traveled across Alaska’s frontier.
Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s top spokesman, told reporters that a two-ship flight of F-35s conducted the initial intercept and identification of the object.
The F-35s will have a full video view of the object day or night using their Electro-Optical Targeting System and any infrared information collected by their Distributed Aperture System. This is in addition to its myriad of radio-frequency-based sensor systems.
The mystery surrounding the Feb. 10, Alaska incident remains a mystery, and the information that is available contrasts sharply with the other objects shot in various ways.
John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said that debris reportedly sat atop sea ice. He added that efforts were made to retrieve it and analyze it. He said that the object was not easily maneuverable and did not have a large payload.
Ryder said the object, traveling at about 40,000 feet, was “about the size of a small car.” It was shot down because at that altitude, it was perceived as a threat to aviation.
ABC News reported that the “object” shot down off the coast of Alaska was “cylindrical and silver-ish gray,” according to an unnamed U.S. official. “All I say is that it wasn’t ‘flying’ with any sort of propulsion, so if that is ‘balloon-like’ well – we just don’t have enough at this point.”
Those details differed greatly from we’d learned so far about the Chinese spy balloon, which was ultimately shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4. The balloon was said to be able to maneuver, and its payload, described by U.S. officials as the size and weight of a small airliner, was reportedly thousands of pounds. It had been flying at a height of between 60,000 to 70,000 feet.
In the absence of any confirmed information, many unconfirmed and exotic claims have been made regarding the Alaskan object. These range from pilots’ accounts to reports that this object interfered with certain aircraft sensors.
The Charette Memo does not mention UAPs #21 or #22, which might have been innocuous objects picked up by radar. As we mentioned earlier, on February 12, a U.S. Air Force F-16 destroyed a UAP above Lake Huron. Although it is not clear if that was UAP #22, or UAP 21 since officials said at the time the object was identified for the first time on February 12.
According to intercepted radio communication, the object that was shot down over Lake Huron appeared to be a small balloon.
We contacted several agencies to get more information on the details in the Charette Memo. Charette was also contacted via her LinkedIn page, and several government email addresses to see if she had received any responses. If Charette responds, we will update the story.
NORAD spokeswoman told The War Zone on Wednesday that it would not be able to “address the memo specifically.”
“I would caution that one internal document from Feb. 15 may not present the most accurate information about events or processes during that period,” Air Force Col. Elizabeth Mathias said in an email to The War Zone Wednesday. “But we’ll be happy to provide more information about our operations and procedures. More to follow, and thanks.”
We also reached out to the Canadian Defense Ministry, U.S. National Security Council and the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) – the Pentagon unit that tracks UAPs – for additional responses. This story will be updated with any new information.
There have been numerous requests for information from the Congress, media outlets and other stakeholders. The War ZoneThe Pentagon is yet to release any of the imagery taken from the three aircraft that were shot down over North America. Questions are raised about what the Pentagon may be hiding. The data and imagery collected from the observations and destruction of these objects was extensive.
The U.S.’s ability to defend its airspace from such objects was raised by the discovery of a Chinese spy balloon and the subsequent shooting down of it on February 4. This is something. The War Zone In fact, these events were predicted years before they happened. Following this bizarre string of incidents, major steps were taken to improve the detection of unidentified objects and the way they are dealt with. Major upgrades to NORAD’s sensor ecosystem are also in the works as are demands from Congress for the multi-national military organization to better understand its own vulnerabilities.
Pentagon’s perception of these events is a source of frustration, as the Pentagon has been left in the dark about the details. Public is still in the dark about what exactly was known regarding these objects, how they were different from one another, and when this information was available.
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The Drive published the article Secret Memo Raises Questions About UFOs Shootdowns over Alaska and Canada.
