Editorial: Up in the air: What are we shooting down every day?

In 1957, during the frosty years of the Cold War, Ike and Canadian Prime Minister John Diefenbaker established the North American Air Defense Command in anticipation of defending the continent from Soviet long-range bombers — Sputnik was still a few months away — and NORAD went on alert.

Joe Biden was 14 years old at the time and Justin Trudeau’s father Pierre wouldn’t make his first run for Parliament for another eight years. But on Saturday afternoon, for the first time in NORAD’s 66 years, President Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau jointly authorized the long since renamed North American Aerospace Defense Command to shoot down something out of the sky.

And so fell on the Yukon tundra was an object, following by a day another object that smashed into the frozen waters off northern Alaska, both zapped by Air Force F-22s with AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles (which cost a couple of hundred of dollars a piece). But having waited 66 years for its first search and destroy mission, NORAD was back in the skies less than 24 hours later, shooting down Object No. 3 Sunday afternoon over Lake Huron, with another Sidewinder, this off an F-16.

These objects are not the Soviet bombers, but balloons, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who was briefed by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan about Object 1 (Alaska) and Object 2 (Yukon). That Object 3 (Lake Huron) is also a balloon would make sense.

Now who could be sending high altitude balloons aloft to look down on us? We know that China had a larger spy balloon lazily cruising above the country until a Sidewinder put it in the drink off of South Carolina. Has the Pentagon thus learned how to spot these floaters and dispatch them? We hope so.

For decades, NORAD was mostly noticed for its annual Christmas Eve tracking of Santa Claus heading south from the Pole. Now it’s focused on finding other red objects, with motivations not as nearly benevolent as St. Nick’s.