Vivid News 24: Six days after the downing of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon triggered a new diplomatic schism with Beijing, a US fighter jet shot down an unidentified item that was drifting high above Alaska on Friday, according to the White House. John Kirby, a spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said the new object’s origin or purpose were unknown, but that it was taken down because, floating above 40,000 feet, it posed a hazard to civil aviation.
Kirby stated, “The president directed the military to drop the object. When questioned about the incident by reporters at the White House, Biden said that the shoot-down “was a success.” The object, according to Kirby, was far smaller than a sizable Chinese balloon that flew over the United States last week and was downed on Saturday off the coast of the Atlantic by a US fighter jet.
He described it as being “about the size of a small vehicle.” We don’t know if it’s state-owned or privately held, the man stated. “We don’t fully comprehend the purpose,” According to Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a spokesman for the Pentagon, an F-22 Raptor fired an AIM-9X missile at the target, the same weapon and aircraft that were used to shoot down the purported Chinese spy balloon.
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The event occurred as concerns over China’s alleged ongoing plans to use surveillance balloons to gather intelligence throughout the world have increased. According to US officials, such balloons have flown over 40 nations, including at least four times over US soil in the past.
The Chinese balloon that flew over places where the US maintains strategic bombers and stores nuclear weapons in subterranean silos last week caused special alarm. The event caused US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone his long-planned trip to Beijing to normalize relations between the two rival countries.
He stated, “We do anticipate being able to recover the debris. According to Kirby, Biden authorised the shoot-down because the object posed “a reasonable hazard” to civil aviation at the altitude it was flying at. According to Kirby, the US military sent a plane to check the object before it was shot down, and “the pilot’s opinion was that this was not manned.”
He observed that the Chinese surveillance balloon was clearly capable of self-propulsion and maneuvering. It was “clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard meteorological balloons,” a senior State Department source claimed on Thursday.
The person said, “It contained a number of antennas, including an array that was probably capable of gathering and geolocating communications.” The official implied that China’s People’s Liberation Army was behind the deployment of the balloon while also tying it to the PLA.
After charting the debris field left by the downed Chinese balloon, US recovery personnel “are in the process of searching for and identifying wreckage on the ocean floor,” according to Ryder of the Pentagon. The debris that has so far been salvaged is being placed into the vessels, transported onshore, catalogued, and then sent to labs for further study, the official said.
Beijing denied that it sent the balloon to snoop on the US and claimed that it had accidentally drifted into US airspace. China, however, has turned down US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s offer to speak on the phone about the situation since Saturday. The Chinese military ministry issued a statement claiming that “the US insisted on using force to attack the airship, which significantly violated international practice and sets a negative precedent.”
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