U.S. Calls Off Search for Unidentified Objects It Shot Down

DEADHORSE, Alaska — The United States on Friday called off the search for two of the unidentified flying objects that the military shot out of the sky this month, raising the possibility that the devices will never be collected and analyzed, according to a U.S. military official.

The floating craft above North America have been a steady source of intrigue since an American missile took down a Chinese spy balloon on Feb. 4. But President Biden said this week that the three objects shot down since then were most likely research balloons, not spy craft, and the military used comparatively fewer resources to try to recover them.

The punishing terrain and weather conditions were part of the reason. American authorities had been trying to reach remote areas of Alaska and Lake Huron for two of the objects, but on Friday a U.S. official said the conditions made it too difficult to pinpoint the objects. The Canadian search for the third object over the Yukon was still continuing, the official said.

Ships in Lake Huron had searched above and below the surface and found nothing. The Coast Guard stopped operations there on Thursday, and the entire search was called off on Friday.

Twenty miles off the coast of northern Alaska, military pilots fruitlessly circled on Friday, temporarily imposing flight restrictions. Pilots were surveying the surrounding region of the Arctic Ocean, which was frozen except for slashes of cold water cutting through the ice sheets, with the air temperature dipping below minus 27 degrees. The slow churning of the sea ice in that area can suck objects under the water or grind them up.

On Friday, pilots used aircraft equipped with radar to see through the ice but found no trace of the object, believed to be about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, the official said. The object over Alaska was floating at about 40,000 feet when it was shot down by a F-22 fighter jet pilot using a Sidewinder air-to-air missile.

Mr. Biden has said the intelligence community’s assessment is that the three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific studies. And John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the National Security Council, suggested earlier Friday that the objects might never be recovered.

Asked about reports that a group called the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade believed that one of the downed objects could be its balloon, Mr. Kirby said: “It’s very difficult until you can get your hands on something to be able to tell, and because of where it is over Lake Huron, we all have to accept the possibility we may not be able to recover it.”

The club reported its balloon missing after last logging its position at 38,910 feet on Feb. 10, the same day pilots shot down the object over Alaska.

Asked if the Biden administration overreacted in shooting down the objects or had any regrets, Mr. Kirby said the craft were at altitudes that could affect civilian aircraft and could have flown over military spaces.

“Absolutely not,” he said when asked if the United States had regrets. “Given the situation we were in, the information available, the recommendation of military commanders, it was exactly the right thing to do at exactly the right time.”

“You make decisions based on the best information that you have,” Mr. Kirby added. “And ultimately you have to come down to some core principles when you’re making decisions as commander in chief.”

As for the Chinese spy balloon, Navy divers recovered debris this week off the coast of South Carolina and sent it to the FB.I.’s laboratory in Quantico, Va., for further analysis.

On Friday, the Pentagon did not respond to questions about how much the recovery operations had cost, but an official said that much of the recovery had included already scheduled flight time.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting from Washington.