A Chinese spy balloon hovering over the US for multiple days has been annihilated.
Top News Today :
Late last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken unexpectedly postponed his highly anticipated diplomatic visit to China, prompting concerns that some major event had to have happened to cancel a meeting of this magnitude that was months in the making. Those concerns were confirmed when the American public learned that a Chinese spy balloon had been sailing across the US — and was reportedly stopping to hover over sensitive military bases and secret nuclear sites.
According to CNN, the US military confirmed that the balloon was the size of 3 school buses, was powered by a set of solar panels, and was remotely maneuverable.
The Chinese spy balloon became national news last week after residents in the northwest region of the US began calling authorities to warn that a dubious object was seen floating in the sky.
“I had seen some news reports of some airspace restrictions here in Billings, and so I thought that was a little suspicious,” Chase Doak told Reuters after hearing of something going on above his home in Montana.
“And I was looking out the window like I normally do, and I just happened to spot it out of the corner of my eye and at first, I thought it was a star, but I thought that was kind of crazy because it was broad daylight and when I looked at it, it was just too big to be a star.”
Mr. Doak went out to his driveway and immediately took photos of what he saw in the sky.
“Not gonna lie. First, I thought this was a #ufo. Then, I thought it was @elonmusk in a Wizard of Oz cosplay scenario. But it was just a run-of-the-mill Chinese spy balloon!” he said on Twitter.
As news of the balloon broke, Donald Trump predictably inserted himself into the matter by chastising President Biden for not immediately ordering that it be shot down out of the sky. However, the president was well ahead of him in his planning.
On Wednesday, President Biden ordered the US military to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon — but, to only do so once they could assure the debris would not be harmful to American citizens on the ground. He also wanted the operational mechanics of the balloon collected for analysis.
By Saturday morning, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin devised a plan to shoot the balloon down once it was safely over the Atlantic Ocean.
US airspace along the eastern seaboard was closed as military jets scrambled and locked onto the balloon mechanics via radar. Then, with a precision blow, the balloon was destroyed and its contents fell somewhere into the Atlantic. Soon thereafter, military officials retrieved the remains at the request of the president and they were taken to Quantico for analysis by the FBI.
“They decided — without doing damage to anyone on the ground — they decided that the best time to do that was when it got over water within our 12-mile limit,” Mr. Biden said while en route to Camp David. “They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.”
Secretary Austin and military officials had been hopeful China did not have the capabilities to wipe the data it was stealing from the US if the balloon were ever struck down. Now, he is glad the balloon debris appears to have provided a plethora of valuable information about what exactly the Chinese were wanting to spy on and why.
“The surveillance balloon’s overflight of US territory was of intelligence value to us,” a senior defense official said during a briefing on Saturday. “We were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment, which has been valuable.”
OK WASSUP! discusses the Top News Today:
Chinese spy balloon is shot down over the US.
The Hill: Leon Panetta, a former defense secretary in the Obama administration, questioned the Biden administration’s response to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the U.S. before being shot down off the Carolina coast on Saturday. During an appearance on “CNN Newsroom,” Panetta told host Jim Acosta that U.S. officials should’ve taken steps sooner and been more transparent with the American public about the balloon as President Biden “allowed it to simply cross over the country.” “So the question obviously is — Pentagon said that there were risks here. I understand that argument that there were debris risks,” Panetta said. “At the same time, I think we should have acted earlier if our suspicions were valid that this was in fact on an intelligence mission.” Biden reportedly ordered the balloon to be shot down on Wednesday, but those orders were not carried out until it was above the… Read more »