SO WHY DIDN’T THEY DO THIS LAST TIME? US shoots down unknown ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says. “President Joe Biden ordered the shootdown, spokesman John Kirby said, adding that the origin of the object has yet to be determined.”

What, Gen. Mark Milley didn’t overrule him?

But I hope we don’t start an interstellar war, because it sounds like a flying saucer:

ABC News Chief Global Affairs Correspondent Martha Raddatz first reported that when fighters were scrambled, the pilots did visuals, got images and said there was no sign the object had propulsion.

It was described as “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said.

Asked if was “balloon-like,” the official said, “All I say is that it wasn’t ‘flying’ with any sort of propulsion, so if that is ‘balloon-like’ well — we just don’t have enough at this point.”

“It came in, inside our territorial waters, those waters right now are frozen, but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters. Fighter aircraft assigned to U.S. Northern Command took down the object within the last hour,” Kirby said.

Klaatu barada nikto.

UPDATE: From the comments: “So US government and Gibbering Joe shot an object out of the sky without first identifying what the object was? That’s highly irresponsible.”