Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed Tuesday that the U.S. fighter jet sent to destroy the unidentified object flying over Lake Huron missed its first missile strike on the target.

The "first shot missed, second shot hit," Milley told reporters following a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Brussels. The admission highlights the U.S. military's challenge in safely taking down the series of unmanned craft detected over North America in recent days.

The U.S. and Canada shot down three unidentified objects over Alaska, Lake Huron, and Canadian territory in the last few days, incidents that follow the U.S. downing of a presumed Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4. The balloon had been spotted over Montana, a state that holds some of the nation's nuclear missile silos.

Asked whether the missile miss changes how the U.S. may go about downing the next aerial object over its territory, Milley said officials "go to great lengths to make sure that the airspace is clear and the backdrop is clear out to the max effective range of the missile." He added that the missile "landed harmlessly in the water of Lake Huron" and was later tracked down.

"We made sure that airspace was clear of any commercial civilian or recreational traffic. We do the same thing for the maritime space, so we're very, very deliberate in our planning. ... We're very, very careful to make sure that those shots are in fact safe," he said.

As the U.S. government continues pulling parts of the Chinese spy balloon from the Atlantic Ocean, Milley noted the difficulties in recovering the three most recently downed objects as they have all fallen into "very difficult terrain."

"The second one off the coast of Alaska is something in some really, really difficult terrain in the Arctic Circle with very, very low temperatures in the minus 40s. The second one is in the Canadian Rockies in the Yukon — very difficult to get that one. And [the] third one is in Lake Huron at probably a couple hundred-feet depth," he said. "We'll get them eventually, but it's going to take some time to recover those."

While speculation has been rampant, the White House has made it a point to emphasize there has been no indication of "aliens" or other non-terrestrial activity associated with the unidentified objects.

U.S. China