US Navy
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A Chinese surveillance balloon captivated the citizens of the U.S. last week when a man in Montana spotted it floating in the sky over the northern part of the country.
China called it a “civilian airship” and claimed it was a weather balloon that veered off course, but Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters that it was indeed a surveillance balloon.
After the balloon reached the Carolina coast on Saturday, an F-22 raptor shot it down with a single missile. The balloon was approximately 60,000 to 65,000 feet in the air at the time of its demise.
Just hours before the military operation, President Biden told a reporter, “We’re gonna take care of it.”
A few days later, the U.S. Navy shared images of the suspected Chinese spy balloon. The pictures show debris from the balloon as it is loaded onto a boat to be transported to an FBI facility for evaluation.
CNN reported: “On Monday, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters that the balloon was roughly 200 feet tall and carried a payload weighing more than a couple of thousand pounds.“US officials had been tracking the balloon for several days by the time it appeared in the skies over Montana. President Joe Biden said over the weekend that he’d directed the US military to shoot down the balloon as soon as it was safe to do so, but officials said it posed a risk to civilians and property on the ground.”
“[F]rom a safety standpoint, picture yourself with large debris weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds falling out of the sky. That’s really what we’re kind of talking about,” the general said.
“So glass off of solar panels, potentially hazardous material, such as material that is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment as this and even the potential for explosives to detonate and destroy the balloon that could have been present.”
“[T]his gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed, and I think you’ll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value to collect over,” he said.
“US officials also determined that the balloon did not pose a significant risk in its ability to gather intelligence,” the report said.
“A senior defense official said last week that the balloon had ‘limited additive value’ from an intelligence collection perspective. Nevertheless, VanHerck said Monday that he and the commander of US Strategic Command took “maximum precaution” to prevent China’s ability to collect intelligence,” it said.
“Nevertheless, VanHerck said Monday that he and the commander of US Strategic Command took “maximum precaution” to prevent China’s ability to collect intelligence,” it said
Former Vice Chief of Staff of the United States Army and retired four-star General Jack Keane spoke to Fox News after the balloon landed in the Atlantic Ocean.
Keane said that the Biden administration had ample time to take the balloon down over the Pacific Ocean before it reached the U.S. on its way from China.
John Parachini, a senior international and defense researcher at the nonprofit RAND Corporation, said that even if the balloon was doing non-military research, it still would have the capability and opportunity to provide useful information to the Chinese military.
