by While the Senate is protesting the scant information it has received from the White House about the four objects shot down in the past ten days by the US Air Force, the military has claimed to have recovered “significant debris from the site [onde o primeiro balão foi abatido]including all identified priority sensors and electronic components’.
According to the Pentagon, this first balloon, which was shot down on February 4 over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina, and which Washington identified as Chinese (which China admitted, saying it was a political aircraft deflected by winds), was 60 meters high and had a base the size of three buses. The FBI is already examining the recovered components and sensors – which Washington says were used to spy on sensitive military installations.
The Chinese balloon was detected by US radar on January 28. Over the next few days, it entered US airspace via Alaska and flew over the entire west coast of Canada until it reached the US state of Idaho.
After the downing of the balloon on February 4, between Friday and Sunday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command shot down three more “unidentified objects” — one over Alaska, another over Canada’s Yukon Territory and a third over Lake Huron, in the US. state of Michigan, in the Great Lakes region, near the border with Canada.
Explaining that the Armed Forces Northern Command, the Coast Guard and the FBI are “initiating operations to locate the wreckage [junto ao Lago Huron] in close cooperation with the Canadians,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin stressed that the three latest objects detected and shot down “are very different” from the balloon that crossed the US days ago.
“I want to be clear, the three objects that were brought down over the course of last weekend are very different from what we were talking about last week,” he said. Austin, on Monday night. “We knew exactly what it was – a DPRK spy balloon [República Popular da China]”. Regarding the last three, the White House reiterated that it does not know their origin or purpose.
Regarding the object that was shot down over Canada, a Pentagon memo obtained by CNN describes it as a “small metal balloon with a payload strapped under it.”
Members of the Senate, however, said Democratic Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had “received only preliminary details” about the items destroyed over the weekend and expected more information at a update scheduled for this Tuesday. “I think there needs to be more transparency — and I think it can be done in a way that protects national security, sources and methods,” defended Sen. Ron Wyden, the top Democrat on the Secret Service Committee.
The Chinese government, for its part, says it has detected more than ten US high-altitude balloons flying over its airspace without permission since early 2022. The White House has denied Beijing’s accusations.
The US Armed Forces have admitted that the Pentagon failed to detect three previous Chinese missions during the Trump administration and another at the start of Joe Biden’s term – four cases that were initially recorded as unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
