not saying this is a sign of who was behind this object, but remember the balloon last week flew down over the aleutians, it's very plausible this was on a similar track to the one that we just saw last week. another question that we'll be asking. another big difference here, the balloon from last week, we were told the u.s. was tracking it prior to this. >> the pentagon briefing is about to begin. we're going to listen in and hear anything more on these answers. >> first of all, to add to information already provided earlier by the white house at the direction of the president of the united states, fighter aircraft assigned to u.s. northern command, successfully took down a high altitude airborne object off the northern coast of alaska at 1:45 p.m. eastern standard time today within u.s. sovereign airspace over u.s. territorial water.