Newly released documents have revealed that Canadian police collected debris of a UFO that was shot down over Lake Huron last year.
The object was taken down on February 12, 2023 by a US F-16 fighter jet, marking the third such incident over North America that month.
Witnesses described the object as 'octagonal' with strings hanging off it before the jet fired two missiles, striking the UFO that then slowly descended into Canadian waters.
Documents obtained by CTVNews.ca stated that 'wreckage' was found on 'the shoreline of Lake Huron' weeks after search efforts were suspended.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) partnered with the American and Canadian Coast Guard to conduct a brief search following the incident.
By February 16, it was called off due to 'deteriorating weather and the low probability of recovery, according to an RCMP statement.
But the partially redacted emails acquired by CTVNews.ca revealed that the RCMP collected 'both material and a module' from the site of the incident roughly three weeks after the object was shot down.
National security officials have criticized the effort for a 'lack of transparency.'
'The module is from a company who sells weather monitoring equipment,' a senior RCMP member told a Canadian military brigadier-general in an email sent on March 13, 2023, according to CTVNews.ca.
'It will be analyzed to determine if there is anything unusual with it but I suspect not given the size. Whether or not it is from the shoot down is uncertain,' the email continued.
An RCMP spokesperson further confirmed the debris collection in a statement to CTVNews.ca.
'The RCMP confirms that debris was recovered from the shores of Lake Huron, and we continue to work in close collaboration with our domestic and international partners in furthering the investigation,' the spokesperson said Friday.
'As the investigation is ongoing, additional details cannot be provided at this time.'
The RCMP would not confirm whether the debris was ever definitively linked to the Lake Huron object, and Canada's Department of National Defense also declined to comment, CTVNews.ca reported.
Iain Boyd, director of the Center for National Security Initiatives at the University of Colorado Boulder, said that the lack of transparency could be because the US and Canadian governments were embarrassed of shooting down objects that did not pose national security threats.
'To have expended significant military time and resources to shoot down benign objects does not look good, even though there may have been many factors we are still unaware of,' he speculated to CTVNews.ca.
'I am not surprised that the Canadian government did not share more information about the Lake Huron debris.'
The incident, and three others that month, occurred just days after the downing of a Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4, which garnered widespread media attention.
The other two were downed in Alaska and Yukon, Canada.
All three were reported to be smaller than the Chinese balloon, which measured 200 feet tall, according to US General Glen D. VanHerck.
The balloon carried an underslung payload described as a 'technology bay' that was roughly the size of two to three school buses.
It flew across North America from January 28 to February 4, 2023, passing over Alaska, western Canada and the contiguous US before it was shot down by the US Air Force off the coast of South Carolina.
Analysis of the debris determined that the balloon carried intelligence-gathering equipment, but it did not appear to have sent information back to China.
The three UFO incidents that followed did not appear to be related to the Chinese balloon, and there was no evidence to suggest that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country, President Joe Biden stated on February 16.
