The U.S. military embarked Monday on an underwater mission to collect remnants of the downed Chinese spy balloon
entered American airspace last week. “I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command The Pentagon hopes that new information about China’s surveillance practices will be collected from the operation to salvage the balloon that U.S. fighter jets shot down over the weekend off the Carolina coast.
The recovery is complicated by the potential presence of hazardous materials in the balloon, such as materials required for batteries or possible explosives. The FBI is assisting in the salvage operation “under counterintelligence authorities,” VanHerck said. Armed with the new intelligence, Kirby said the Biden Administration discovered “at least three” prior occasions where Chinese surveillance balloons traversed through U.S. air space. Two of those overflights took place during the Trump Administration, so the White House is preparing to brief key Trump officials on forensics.
How a giant balloon evades this dragnet has become a political flashpoint. “This Administration didn’t just fail here; they failed to prepare after the first time this happened” Representative Mike Turner of Ohio, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee,The Chinese balloon traveled above the Aleutian Islands near Alaska on Jan. 28, then through Canada two days later, and ultimately into the continental U.S. over Idaho on Jan. 31, U.S. officials said.
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