president biden ordering the u.s. military to take down another high altitude object that was hovering over the u.s. we re told it was flying about 40,000 feet making it a threat to commercial airplanes. this coming less than a week after the u.s. shot down that chinese spy balloon. i want to bring in cnn national security reporter natasha ber trn, military analyst and retired air force colonel cedric leighton. great to have all of you. natasha, tell us what your latest reporting is on what happened today. yeah, alisyn, this was a big surprise by u.s. officials today. white house official john kirby he came to the podium and went through all his talking points and in the middle of the briefing he kind of sprung on everyone this had happen. essentially what happened off the coast of alaska on thursday night there was an object that was spotted, and it was unclear what that object actually was, but it was flying at a very concerning altitude, around 40,000 feet, just at that
balloon yet because it was round which means a super high pressure balloon. usually if it s a weather balloon it ll have a teardrop shape. if anything that size got into the engines of an airplane it wouldn t bring it down. it s not like it would ripoff a wing anything like that, but if it got into an engine it most definitely would shutdown that engine. i don t know understand, david. it s a size of a car. if an airplane hits something the size of a car, why wouldn t it ripoff a wing? because of its structure. because it s lighter than air, alisyn, that means it s of a really fine fabric or it s a light object so i m presuming that would be that. but, again, you who knows what it could do to an airplane when it hits. but i don t think it would cause any structural damage. airplanes are made to go through the air 5, 6,000 miles an hour. i really don t think that was a