Biden ordered from day one to destroy the aircraft as soon as there were no risks in case it had recorded “sensitive” military data
The Chinese spy balloon ended its flight yesterday. An American fighter shot him down with a missile as he headed off the coast of South Carolina into the Atlantic Ocean. The remains sank into the water without causing damage in their fall, which is why the White House decided not to shoot it down since it entered Canada last Wednesday and was seen over the State of Montana. That same day, President Joe Biden gave the order to destroy it, but when there were no longer any risks to the population.
Two combat planes participated in the operation and it took place around half past two in the afternoon (8:30 p.m. in Spain). A missile hit the aerostat, which exploded in a cloud of smoke visible at a distance. Many witnesses recorded the scene with their mobile phones. It remains to be seen now what China’s response to those images will be. The Department of Defense, which acted in coordination with the Canadian authorities -both share the North American Joint Command-, indicated that it was a “deliberate and legal action” in the face of the “unacceptable violation of our sovereignty” by the People’s Republic.
strategic surveillance
Before the shootdown, the airspace over North Carolina and South Carolina was closed, forcing the airports of Charleston, Wilmington and Myrtle Beach to be inoperative for a few hours. Before appearing in the Atlantic, the airship had already crossed 3,000 kilometers of US territory, including the States of Kentucky and Tennessee, and would have flown over several “sensitive” military installations. His passage through Montana was related to the location of one of the three bases where the US keeps its Minuteman III missiles.
Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin claimed that the aerostat “was being used by the People’s Republic of China in an attempt to monitor strategic sites.” The Pentagon will now try to recover the remains. This fact would allow him to find out what type of devices it incorporated and even what information it stored, provided that the fall has left enough material in an acceptable state. It will also be the opportunity to check if, as Beijing claims, the aircraft is actually a weather probe.
The next consequence will be diplomatic. International. How President Xi Jinping, his cabinet and the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party will fit the destruction of his government property into an apparently military action. In the morning, Biden, visiting Syracuse (New York), was questioned by journalists about the spy balloon flight and replied: “We are going to take care of that.” It is true, the Pentagon had already planned its destruction for at least three days, which feeds the hypothesis that President Xi Jinping was also aware of what was going to happen. Secretary of State Antony Blinken held talks with State Councilor of the People’s Republic Wang Yi on Friday night. Wang reiterated his Executive’s initial argument that the contraption was, in fact, a scientific probe that suffered an “accident due to forceful causes” when it deviated from its original trajectory due to air currents. He also promised to do his best to resolve the incident. The two opted to keep the mutual communication channels “open”.
Another unknown is to what level the destruction of the airship will trigger the tension between Washington and Beijing and for how long. Blinken reproached his interlocutor for the “irresponsible act” of sending a spy balloon to fly over the United States. The Secretary of State would have begun a historic visit to the Asian giant today to meet with President Xi Jinping, but on Friday he pointed out that, given the “clear violation of sovereignty” of the United States and the controversy organized around the aircraft, the context was “harmful” to the agenda and the tone in which the bilateral summit should have taken place.
For its part, Beijing expressed its anger at what it considered an “exaggerated reaction” from Washington and assured that “some politicians and media in the United States use the incident as a pretext to attack and smear China,” according to a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Foreign.
“There doesn’t need to be a new Cold War.” Biden uttered this phrase after his interview with Xi Jinping last November in Bali. The two presidents left satisfied with a meeting that risked a détente in the relations between their governments. Today it is hard to believe that animosity and trust continue at that level. Or if they even continue. If someone had understood it that way, the balloon is no longer a funny anecdote.
. But if one gadget disappears, another remains. The United States Department of Defense detected yesterday the presence of a second Chinese balloon flying over Latin America. Pentagon spokesman General Patrick Ryder. He confirmed this fact to CNN with the following message: “We are seeing reports of a balloon in transit through Latin America. We now assess that it is another Chinese surveillance balloon.” Although he did not want to reveal the location of this aerostat, military sources indicated that it would be over Costa Rica and that hundreds of people would have observed it with the naked eye. Contrary to what happened with the first device, which entered US territory after flying through the skies of Alaska and Canada, Defense reported that this second device was on a trajectory completely away from the US.
According to his version, it would also be a spy balloon like the one the Air Force identified over Montana and immediately linked to a supposed objective of obtaining data from the area where a Minuteman III missile base is located. Beijing, however, insists that the device is a meteorological probe for scientific studies.
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