“We have no doubt that the ball is from China.” For more than two days, the United States has been tracking the movements of a spy balloon flying at high altitude over American territory and sensitive military sites, said Thursday, February 2, a senior American official of the Defense, on condition of anonymity.
At the request of President Joe Biden, the Pentagon considered shooting down the balloon, but the decision was made not to because of the risk posed by the debris to those on the ground, the official said. “We take steps to protect ourselves against the collection of sensitive information”, he said again. He insisted on “the limited added value in terms of information gathering” of the machine “surveillance”described as a balloon with fairly large dimensions.
“Clearly, this balloon is intended for surveillance”, assured this source, evoking a trajectory bringing it over air bases and silos of strategic missiles, in particular in the State of Montana, in the north-west of the United States, where fighter planes are approached the machine. This is not the first time that the US military has seen such an intrusion, but never for so long, according to this official.
“No military threat on the ground”
Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder confirmed that the United States and Canadian Aerospace Defense Command was monitoring the path of the balloon. “The balloon is currently flying at an altitude well above commercial air traffic. It poses no military or physical threat to people on the ground.”did he declare.
Washington has raised the matter with Chinese authorities, according to the Pentagon official who spoke anonymously. “We communicated to them the seriousness of the incident. We made it clear to them that we will do whatever is necessary to protect our people in our territory.”
Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy on Thursday evening denounced a “destabilizing action” of a China that “blatant disregard for the sovereignty of the United States”. He called Joe Biden to “not to be silent” and asked that members of Congress be briefed.
This incident comes before a trip by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to China, scheduled for Sunday and Monday. This is the first visit to the country by a US foreign minister since October 2018, amid tensions between the two countries.