Air Force took video of object downed over Yukon in 2023

Canada’s Department of National Defense has released more details and an updated image of the unidentified object shot down over the Yukon in February 2023.

According to a defense spokesperson, the image was taken from a Royal Canadian Air Force CP-140 Aurora long-range patrol aircraft before the object was shot down by a US fighter jet. F-22.

“Regarding the resolution of the image, it was captured as a cropped screenshot of a video feed, using a monochrome system, so the original image is of poor quality and no color version exists,” the spokesperson said.

Their response comes nearly two and a half months after CTVNews.ca first published the image, acquired through a freedom of information request. Thanks to a new request, CTVNews.ca also obtained the unclassified image in its “original format” – a digital PowerPoint file.

The blurred grayscale version is only slightly different from the grainy scanned image previously released. The Canadian military claims this is the best copy available. The video from which it is taken was not broadcast.

The “original” image of the unidentified object shot down over the Canadian Yukon Territory in February 2023. (Department of National Defense via access to information request)

What was shot in 2023?

The Yukon object was shot down on February 11, 2023, shortly after entering Canadian airspace via Alaska. It was one of three unidentified objects projected into the sky that month after the high-profile downing on February 4, 2023, of an apparently Chinese surveillance balloon.

Heavily redacted documents show the Yukon image was approved for public release days after the headline-grabbing incident, but was later withheld after a public affairs official expressed his concerns that its publication “could create more questions and confusion.” At the time, authorities described it as a “suspicious balloon.”

“The best description we have is: Visual – a cylindrical object,” says a declassified email from a Canadian brigadier general. “The top quarter is metallic, the rest white. A 20-foot wire hangs below with a package of some sort hanging from it.”

Additional reports and military documents suggest that the Yukon object may have been a mylar balloon launched by amateurs in northern Illinois. A recent CTVNews.ca investigation also found debris was recovered in connection with the downed object over Lake Huron, suggesting it may have been a weather balloon. Such details have never been made public.

A February 2023 report from the Royal Canadian Air Force suggests that the Yukon object may have been an amateur balloon (Department of National Defense via access to information request).

Iain Boyd is a professor of aerospace engineering and director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder.

“Having spent a lot of military time and resources shooting down harmless objects doesn’t look good, although there may be many factors we don’t yet know,” Boyd told CTVNews.ca. “Certainly, the failure to provide more information has fueled conspiracy theories, but the military will likely accept this outcome by disclosing information that could help an adversary identify its defensive weaknesses.”

In declassified documents, the Yukon object is repeatedly referred to as “UAP 23”. “UAP” generally means “unidentified aerial phenomenon”, which has largely replaced the terms “UFO” and “unidentified flying object” in official circles. According to a “secret” memo provided to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the Yukon object was the 23rd PSU tracked over North America in the first weeks of 2023.

After decades of rejection and denial by U.S. officials, the Pentagon, NASA and U.S. lawmakers have made public their recent efforts to investigate the UAP. In Canada, the Office of the Chief Science Advisor’s Sky Canada Project plans to release its own UAP report by the end of 2024, which is the first known official Canadian study on UFOs in almost 30 years.

Do you have an interesting document or observation to share? Email CTVNews.ca reporter Daniel Otis at [email protected].