With the number of unidentified aerial objects shot down over the North American continent in the last week, tensions and mysteries mount. No one is able to pinpoint the source of these objects and the U.S.’s increased aerial defense efforts have prompted a political storm.

The Pentagon and Capitol Hill have been busy releasing thin details about the U.S. fighter jets’ increasingly frequent attempts to shoot down the unidentified crafts. Making the international episode even more unusually baffling are questions of potential safety for civilian aviation raised by the White House, Pentagon, Canadian airspace, and U.S. spy agencies.

Republican lawmakers are turning the episode into a political argument, with unanswered questions about President Joe Biden's leadership. Meanwhile, military officials have raised the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s awareness and tightened the radar filters in search of smaller and slower objects since the well-publicized shooting down of