A loud sonic boom that was felt throughout the Washington, D.C., area on Sunday reportedly came from a fighter jet that was scrambled to respond to a small aircraft that entered a no-fly zone and later crashed in Virginia.

The trespassing Cessna Citation did not respond to authorities who tried to contact the plane and is believed to have been on autopilot, a source told Reuters.

The City of Annapolis Office of Emergency Management said the “explosion” that many people online reported hearing came from the fighter jet sent to intercept the plane.

“The loud boom that was heard across the DMV area was caused by an authorized DOD flight,” said the office, using the acronym for the Department of Defense. “This flight caused a sonic boom. That is all the information available at this time.”

Fox News correspondent Lucas Tomlinson said the F-16 that responded to the Cessna Citation was “cleared supersonic to respond,” meaning the jet was cleared to fly at faster than the speed of sound. The sonic boom that people heard was caused when the jet broke the sound barrier.

UPDATE: F-16 fighter jet from DC National Guard was “cleared supersonic to respond” to unknown Cessna ignoring radio queries flying on “strange flight path” outside nation’s capital, officials say. FAA says Cessna crashed near Staunton, Virginia.

— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) June 4, 2023

The F-16 deployed flares in an attempt to get the attention of the pilot, but did not appear successful, according to a statement from NORAD.

The Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement the Cessna plane later crashed into a mountainous area in Virginia. There was no word about the status of anyone who was onboard the aircraft.

“A Cessna Citation crashed into mountainous terrain in a sparsely populated area of southwest Virginia around 3 p.m. local time on June 4,” the FAA said. “The aircraft took off from Elizabethton Municipal Airport in Elizabethton, Tenn., and was bound for Long Island MacArthur Airport in New York. The FAA and NTSB will investigate. The NTSB will be in charge of the investigation and provide all further updates.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s role is “absolutely safe” despite some Republican pushback over his deal with President Joe Biden over the debt ceiling, according to Rep. Garret Graves (R-LA). 

Graves, who helped lead the negotiations, appeared Sunday on CBS News’s “Face the Nation” with host Margaret Brennan and touted the deal as a “huge accomplishment.” When pressed on comments by Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) criticizing McCarthy, Graves said the speaker is in the clear.

“I’ll tell you right now, Speaker McCarthy’s position is absolutely safe,” Graves said. “He is going to continue delivering wins for the country, changing the direction of Washington and being more representative of the priorities of Americans across the country. I have no doubt his position is safe, and we’re going to keep marching forward continuing to build upon the historic wins that he’s been able to achieve this year.”

On Republican Rep. Ken Buck saying Speaker McCarthy should be worried about his job and doesn't have the faith of the Republican caucus, GOP @RepGarretGraves says "it is not a mainstream position."

"Speaker McCarthy's position is absolutely safe," Graves tells @margbrennan. pic.twitter.com/JANadL7mjD

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) June 4, 2023

Buck told CNN’s “State of the Union” that McCarthy had “credibility issues” and that he did not “know if a motion to vacate is going to happen right away.” Graves said Buck’s position on McCarthy was not the “mainstream position.”

Under the rules adopted this session of Congress, a single House member can bring forward a motion to vacate to start the process of forcing out the speaker. A simple majority is then needed to oust the speaker.

McCarthy has signaled that he is not worried about being removed from his position. “Not at all,” he said last Sunday during a press conference when a reporter asked if he was concerned.

Buck is not the only Republican congressman criticizing McCarthy for the debt ceiling deal. Reps. Chip Roy (R-TX) and Ralph Norman (R-SC) have also been outspoken in their opposition to the deal. Seventy-one Republicans voted against the bill, half of which were made up of the House Freedom Caucus. On Saturday, after both the House and Senate passed the bill known as the “Fiscal Responsibility Act,” Biden signed it into law.

The bill suspends the debt limit until January 2025 and implements restraints on spending that the Congressional Budget Office estimated would reduce budget deficits by $1.5 trillion over the next decade.

Referring to some of the opponents of the deal, Graves said, “Folks went out and began attempting to define a deal while we were still in negotiations. There wasn’t even an agreement struck and their interpretation or definition of the agreement, as you can imagine, was flawed.”

McCarthy is “one of the best strategists we’ve ever had” who has helped bring “about 10 huge wins this year,” Graves said.