WASHINGTON. The head of the US North American Command, Gen. Glenn Van Herk, explained last week that the failure to locate the balloons was due to a “knowledge gap” on the part of the authorities. “My duty is to identify threats to North America. I must tell you that I did not notice these threats,” General Van Herck said. Press reports indicated that the relevant military departments initially classified reports of unidentified flying objects as unexplained phenomena.

The China balloon crisis has convinced Washington to reconsider its jet and other drone doctrine. White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan explains, “We’ve expanded our ability to see what the Trump administration couldn’t see.”

The US has already changed the way it collects data and analyzes information from radars and sensors in US airspace. Sensors “absorb” data before it is filtered for analysis. The new tactic removed the filters. “Our new strategy reminds us of a search website where we have removed almost all barriers so you can search everywhere,” according to the Washington Post.

However, despite the innovative approach, US officials warn that the abundance of data does not mean that the mystery has been solved. It remains unclear whether the removal of the filters and the associated flooding of data is the cause of the many sightings in recent days.

“Each object is slightly different in shape from the previous one. This all complicates and makes it difficult for the detection sensors to work, ”a US official told the newspaper.

White House spokesman John Kirby said the object shot down over Alaska was much smaller: “The way it was described to me made me imagine it was about the size of a small car, and not like two or three buses, like the one that in the Atlantic.” Canadian and US officials described the object that fell over Alaska’s Yukon Territory as cylindrical and much smaller than a balloon that fell after it was hit by a US fighter jet over the weekend.