A week after it crossed US airspace and set off a spectacular spying incident that deteriorated relations between Beijing and Washington, the Chinese military is suspected of sending a spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina, which the US military has shot down.
President Joe Biden claimed on Saturday that he had ordered the balloon to be deflated on Wednesday, but the Pentagon had advised delaying until it could be done over broad water to protect people from falling debris.
The balloon was traveling at a height of around 18,300 meters (60,000 ft).
Biden told reporters, “We successfully took it down, and I want to commend our aviators who accomplished it.”
One F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fired the shot at 2:39 p.m. local time (19:39 GMT) using a single AIM-9X supersonic, heat-seeking air-to-air missile, according to a senior US military official. Multiple fighter and refueling aircraft were involved in the mission.
The shootdown happened soon after the US government banned aircraft over the South Carolina coast as part of what it claimed to be a “national security operation” at the time.
A tiny explosion was seen on television, then the balloon descended toward the lake. According to the Associated Press news agency, a mission to retrieve balloon debris is currently underway in US territorial seas in the Atlantic Ocean.
The operation, according to US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, was a “planned and lawful measure” in retaliation for China’s “unacceptable infringement of our sovereignty.”
He claimed that China was using the balloon “to monitor strategic areas in the continental United States.”
By tweeting, “Canada fully supports this action – we’ll keep working together… on our security and defense,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau welcomed the operation.
Prior to going into Canadian airspace on January 30, the balloon first crossed US airspace over Alaska on January 28. Then, on January 31, a US defense official said that it had re-entered US airspace over northern Idaho. It did not return to the open waters after crossing over US territory, making a shootdown challenging.
The balloon’s location over the nation was not made public by US officials until Thursday.
The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee in the United States, Republican Representative Mike Rogers, stated that it was obvious the Biden administration intended to conceal this national security blunder from Congress and the American people.
According to Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, “allowing a spy balloon from the Communist Party of China to travel across the entire continental United States before contesting its presence is a disastrous projection of weakness by the White House.”
Biden may have made an effort to address these criticisms by emphasizing on Saturday that he had ordered the balloon to be shot down as soon as feasible.
On Saturday, defense officials also seemed to downplay the balloon’s impact on US national security.
A senior US defense source told reporters, “Our evaluation was that it was not likely to provide considerable incremental value over and above other [Chinese] intel capacity, such as satellites in low-Earth orbit. We’re going to learn more as we gather up the debris.
They continued by saying that the Chinese balloon’s overflight of US land had “intelligence value to us.”
The balloon, according to China, was only a “airship” used for weather research that got blown off course. The Pentagon outright disputed that as well as China’s claims that it was only capable of rudimentary navigation and was not being used for surveillance.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed a trip to China that was scheduled to begin on Friday as a result of the balloon’s discovery.
Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping had decided to postpone Blinken’s trip, which is a setback to those who saw it as a long overdue chance to normalize an increasingly tense relationship. A US secretary of state last visited in 2017.
Beijing has been keen for a solid relationship with Washington so it can concentrate on its economy, which has been hurt by its now-abandoned zero-COVID policy.
The Chinese foreign ministry downplayed the cancellation of the Blinken visit earlier on Saturday, claiming that neither party had made any official announcement of such a plan.
The ministry issued a statement saying, “In reality, the US and China have never announced such visit; the US making any such announcement is their own business, and we accept that.
Additionally, it emphasized that China had no control over the balloon’s course and pleaded with the US not to “smear” China as a result of the balloon.
Wang Yi, a senior ambassador for China, stated that his country “has always faithfully adhered to international law, and we do not tolerate any baseless conjecture and sensationalism.” He continued, “When faced with unforeseen circumstances, all sides need to remain composed, communicate promptly, avoid making snap decisions, and handle disputes.
On Friday, the Pentagon said that another Chinese balloon had been spotted over Latin America without specifying where.
According to Brigadier General Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, “we now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon.”
Literally a gas-filled balloon traveling fairly high in the sky, a spy balloon typically has high-end cameras and image equipment. It directs those devices downward, taking pictures and various types of images of whatever is on the ground below it in order to gather data.
