SoylentNews

An Anonymous Coward writes:

Radar anomaly prompts U.S. FAA to briefly close some Montana airspace [reuters.com]

Big Sky Country, they call it not for no reason! And now it is crawling with existential threats to America, like balloons, and transgenders. Montanans are such fraidy cats of sky things, expecially south of Bozeman.

WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said late on Saturday a radar anomaly prompted the temporary closure of airspace to civilian airplanes in Montana but no threatening object was detected.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) sent fighter aircraft to investigate but the aircraft "did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits. NORAD will continue to monitor the situation."

Earlier on Saturday, a U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada, the second such shootdown in as many days. Canada and the United States have been on heightened alert following an episode earlier this month where a Chinese high-altitude balloon the U.S. said was spying was tracked from Montana to South Carolina and then shot down off the coast.

The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) earlier on Saturday closed and then reopened airspace in Montana after temporarily barring flights in an area about 50 by 50 nautical miles (93 by 93 km) around Havre, Montana, near the Canadian border.

Hmm, Havre? Hot spot for smuggling hotch during Prohibition. But then again, nothing flying north of Havre is up to anything good. Not to mention satellites, and the aerial photography.

Original Submission