The United States they shot down the Chinese balloon that flew over their national territory this week and which the Department of Defense says has been used for spying. The balloon was over the ocean Saturday evening above US territorial waters off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and after air traffic was disrupted in the area an F-22 fighter jet hit it with a missile making it falling into the sea: the navy then moved to recover the remains of the balloon and attached equipment.
A civilian’s video captures the moment the US shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday, after it spent the last week traversing the country. https://t.co/vWuXqxk8xr pic.twitter.com/8EY9tQmr38
— The New York Times (@nytimes) February 4, 2023
#WATCH: video of US fighter jets taking out suspected Chinese spy balloon: pic.twitter.com/ZRW0cGg1oe
—Jeff Vaughn (@JeffVaughn) February 5, 2023
China’s foreign ministry has protested the shooting down of the balloon. China had admitted that the balloon was Chinese, but continues to maintain that it had no surveillance function but was used for meteorological research purposes and ended up in US airspace by mistake, due to an accidental deviation from its trajectory.
The US Department of Defense said that intelligence information could be obtained from the balloon’s equipment and that it was possible to analyze it by shooting it down.
US President Joe Biden had already approved the plan to drop the balloon on Wednesday, but it was decided to wait until it was above the ocean to proceed in order to avoid damaging people or things with the falling debris. Meanwhile, the balloon affair and the media attention it received following its sighting by civilians in Montana led to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to China being postponed this weekend. It would have been the first official trip by a US secretary of state to Beijing since 2018.
The US Department of Defense said on Friday that a second balloon was flying over Latin America and had been sighted in both Costa Rica and Venezuela. On Saturday, the Colombian Air Force said it had detected the presence of a flying object at an altitude above 16,000 meters and tracked it until it left the country’s airspace. China has not yet commented on this second balloon.
The first balloon entered American airspace for the first time on January 28 over the Aleutian Islands, which are part of Alaska; then moved over Canada, and returned over the United States on 31 January.
