Chinese spy balloon

Pete Buttigieg says president 'considered safety of American people' after Marco Rubio criticizes eight-day wait.

“The message embedded to the world is: ‘We can fly a balloon over airspace of the United States of America and they won’t be able to do anything about it … We should not have let the People’s Republic of China make a mockery of our airspace … The Pentagon has acknowledged reports of a second balloon over Latin America. Blinken said he told a senior Chinese diplomat sending the balloon was “an irresponsible act … President Biden missed the opportunity to defend our sovereignty, send a message of strength and bolster deterrence.” “This puts a big dent in moving that forward in a constructive way, which we really need to do.” The balloon was spotted on Wednesday over Montana, home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, which has fields of nuclear missile silos. and the operation was put in place without pain, damage or injury to any Americans, lives or property”. The Chinese knew this was going to be spotted. It crossed Idaho on Tuesday, the day the White House said Biden was briefed. Marco Rubio of Florida, the Republican vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, was unmoved, telling the same network: “Why didn’t they take action? “The debris field that was created by this balloon which was shot down, it’s about seven miles long.

As a Chinese spy balloon made its way east across the United States last week, a military and diplomatic crisis played out on the ground.

“The balloon never posed a military or physical threat to the American people. officials push back, saying the balloon is clearly used for surveillance and the breach is a clear violation of U.S. The president directs the Pentagon to come up with options to shoot down the balloon as soon as it is safe to do so over U.S. The amphibious ship USS Carter Hall, destroyer USS Oscar Austin and cruiser Philippine Sea are in the area to aid with recovery. He flashes a thumbs up to reporters when asked if the military was going to shoot it down, as he boards Air Force One at Hancock Field Air National Guard Base in New York. The Chinese Foreign Ministry releases a statement acknowledging the balloon is Chinese but claims it’s a civilian airship used to collect weather data. The balloon re-enters U.S. This was “straightforward,” a senior administration official said, “because we could track the exact path of the balloon and ensure no activities or sensitive unencrypted comms would be conducted in its vicinity.” Defense officials estimate debris from the balloon, which is the size of three buses, could fall in at least a seven-mile radius. The balloon is first detected over U.S. The balloon is part of a Chinese fleet developed for spying, which over the past few years have been spotted over countries across five continents, including Asia and Europe. officials, all of whom asked not to be named due to the sensitivity of the situation.

A huge underwater search is now taking place to find the remains of the balloon, which the United States is confident will show the Chinese were lying about ...

They will be able to prove this clearly wasn't a weather balloon". The Blinken visit will go ahead, but maybe in a couple of months or more. The balloon was then seen above Kansas City and later York County, where the sheriff's department had to remind the public to not shoot at it with their own guns: "Your rifle rounds WILL NOT reach it. Although they are sensitive, there is nothing new happening there." "You have an aircraft circling 10,000 feet under the balloon - you are in a position to either jam all the signals it is sending or receiving or to simply suck out of it whatever it has got on it," he added. American aircraft began circling the balloon as soon as it first appeared, and would have been using military equipment "either to download whatever the Chinese had or to interfere with it in some way". What goes up will come down, including your bullets." He said it was likely "somebody in Beijing thought it would be a good idea" in retaliation for America announcing it would reopen military bases in the It is a relic of the Cold War era of spying and a "stunt gone wrong," according to Prof Clarke. The fact the US military was able to shoot the balloon down with a single missile is significant. "It's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the Russians, Chinese, or somebody would have a couple of aircraft up to be nosy and see what was going on." [US](https://news.sky.com/us) successfully [down it with a single missile](https://news.sky.com/story/us-shoots-down-chinese-spy-balloon-off-carolina-coast-12803499) - and what intelligence are they now hoping to find in the wreckage?

US fighter jets shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance device on Saturday; Republican lawmakers have used the spying scare to re-energize the push to ...

shooting down the balloon as an 'overreaction.' Meanwhile, the U.S. 'Both have nefarious intentions, are controlled by the CCP & shouldn't be allowed to operate in the US. Mike Flood of Nebraska said on Twitter after the balloon was downed, 'The CCP continues to expand its surveillance operations beyond its borders. The U.S. 'There are a number of U.S. They noted that a proper salvage vessel won't be on the scene for days as the race is on to secure the wreckage The downing of the suspected Chinese spy balloon by a missile from an F-22 fighter jet created a spectacle over one of the state's tourism hubs and drew crowds reacting with a mixture of bewildered gazing, distress and cheering In this photo provided by Chad Fish, the remnants of a large balloon drift above the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, with a fighter jet and its contrail seen below it, Saturday, Feb. The alleged surveillance device was shot down off the coast of South Carolina by American fighter jets after crossing over multiple U.S. 'The Biden Administration is projecting weakness by dragging its feet to stop their plans. Now, it’s floating balloons to spy on Americans in full view.'

Yet another balloon entered US airspace previously during Mr Biden's time as president, the Associated Press reported. Mr Trump appeared to be outraged at the ...

Do you remember during the Trump administration, when photographers on the ground and commercial airline pilots were talking about a spy balloon over the United States that people could look up and see, even with the naked eye, and that a media that hated Donald Trump wasn’t reporting? “I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left either.” I don’t remember that either because it didn’t happen.” “If a balloon had come up, we would have known. “They are only good at cheating in elections, and disinformation — and now they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the ‘heat’ off the slow moving Biden fools. [ told NBC News on Saturday. “The American people can refute it for themselves. None of the earlier balloons has been reported to have been shot down. Chris Miller, the former acting Defense Secretary, told Fox that he “never heard a whisper and I have to think if anything like that happened that would have been a huge issue”. “It’s disinformation.” “This never happened. “I don’t know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018,” he said.

U.S. defense officials are working to recover the wreckage of a Chinese balloon downed near South Carolina, as relations between the two countries are ...

But the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Shullman said China is hoping to repair its relationship with the U.S. and flex its power on the world stage. "We watched this thing and its capabilities and then took it down where it was safe and maximally recoverable for [counter-intelligence] purposes. at the very moment it was set to host the country's top diplomat. [said](https://www.state.gov/secretary-blinkens-call-with-peoples-republic-of-china-prc-ccp-central-foreign-affairs-office-director-wang-yi/) he was still prepared to "visit Beijing as soon as conditions allow." airspace scuttled a planned meeting of high-level officials from the U.S. Now the U.S. Authorities said they may use uncrewed underwater vessels that can lift the structure up to the surface and place it on a salvage ship. The balloon's intrusion into U.S. "We don't know exactly all the benefits that will derive. The debris splashed down in 47-foot-deep water, making the recovery effort easier than had been originally expected.

Recovery of the wreckage could give the United States insight into China's spying capabilities, officials say.

That’s exactly what happened,” US transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN’s State of the Union program. Rubio said he doubted that the balloon’s debris would be of much intelligence value. “China firmly opposes and strongly protests against this,” China’s vice foreign minister Xie Feng said in remarks to the US embassy in China on Monday. VanHerck said the incident took place over US territorial waters. “The debris is in 47 feet of water, primarily. We planned for much deeper water,” the official said adding that the wreckage “would have fallen at least in a seven-mile radius”.

The US sent divers to salvage what they believe is spy equipment from the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina, as pressure mounted on President Joe ...