Lake Huron, Michigan: F-16 shoots down small balloon-like object with AIM-9X Sidewinder

On February 12, 2023, one of two F-16CM Vipers scrambled by the Minnesota National Guard shot down a third small object with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile above Lake Huron, within the maritime territory of Michigan. The object was spherical (an early report called it octagonal) with a single string hanging from it and had first been detected on February 11 crossing northern Montana, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at 20,000 feet; video taken at the time shows it as definitely balloon-like. Airspace over the Lake Huron area was temporarily closed, and the object fell into Canadian waters. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police suspended a search for it due to weather on February 16, but some debris ('both material and a [weather-monitoring] module') was recovered on the shore of Lake Huron in early March. The wreckage indicates that the object was a weather balloon launched from a US Weather Bureau Service radar station in Michigan. The account follows the entry in George M. Eberhart's chronology UFOs and Intelligence (CUFOS) and the sources cited there; it is not an independent determination by From Beyond Space.