U.S. shoots down suspected Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolinas
Air Force planes on Saturday shot down the giant Chinese balloon that flew high across the U.S. for days on a suspected spy mission.
F-22 fighter jets sent the balloon plunging to the Atlantic Ocean off the Carolinas in waters 47 feet deep, Defense Department officials told reporters.
President Biden said early Saturday that the government planned to “take care” of the balloon, which politicians, pundits and online critics said should be shot down.
After the balloon met its watery end, Biden said he’d asked the Defense Department on Wednesday to shoot it down as soon as possible. Pentagon officials said it was safest to wait until it had made its way from the heartland to Eastern Seaboard.
“They decided that the best time to do that was when it got over water,” Biden told reporters. “I want to compliment our aviators that did it.”
Reports said an F-22 took out the balloon with one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. The missile was launched at 58,000 feet at the balloon, which was flying at between 60,000 and 65,000 feet.
The balloon, believed to have first entered North American airspace over Alaska, was spotted over Montana earlier in the week, where it forced the shutdown of the airport in Billings.
Montana is home to many U.S. nuclear missiles, but Defense Department officials said they took steps to make sure surveillance equipment on the balloon wouldn’t have picked up any sensitive information.
Before F-22 fighter jets took it out, the FAA cleared the nearby airspace, and closed airports in Myrtle Beach and Charleston, S.C. and Wilmington, N.C.
Some people on the shore reported seeing the balloon fall. Because the balloon landed in shallow water, military officials said, salvage crews expect a relatively easy time recovering whatever is left of it.
America’s move to shoot the object down came after the Pentagon said it had assessed that a second Chinese spy balloon was flying over Latin America.
The spotting of the balloon above the continental U.S. led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a high-profile diplomatic visit to China.
The balloon saga, which dominated headlines in the U.S. over two days, was downplayed by Chinese authorities.
On Friday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement that the object was a civilian balloon used for meteorological research that had flown off course due to westerly winds and its “limited self-steering capability.”
With News Wire Services
