The US military has shot down the Chinese spy balloon that flew over North America for a week and moved to recover the debris to glean more information about the surveillance craft.
US defence secretary Lloyd Austin said a fighter jet on Saturday afternoon shot down the surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina in American airspace and over its territorial waters.
Austin said President Joe Biden had on Wednesday authorised that the balloon be shot down “as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives”.
A senior military official said an F-22 fired an air-to-air missile at the balloon at 2.39pm when it was six nautical miles off the eastern coast.
He added that the US military had started the process of trying to recover the debris, which is spread across seven miles of sea.
The Pentagon on Wednesday revealed the presence of the balloon as it was flying over a sensitive military installation in Montana where the US bases some of its nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles.
A senior defence official said the craft entered US airspace on January 28 near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. It flew into Canadian airspace two days later and re-entered US airspace over Idaho on January 31.
Officials said the US would learn more in the coming days about the balloon, but the defence official said the Pentagon had already concluded it had a “broad array of capabilities”.
The debris fell into an area of the sea that is 47 feet deep, which one official said would make it easier to recover the debris than expected.
In a statement, Austin said the “lawful action” had shown that Biden and his national security team would “always put the safety and security of the American people first while responding effectively to the PRC’s unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”.
Speculation had mounted that the US would intercept the balloon when the Federal Aviation Administration ordered the closure of US airspace around Charleston and Myrtle Beach between 12.45pm and 2.45pm.
Biden had come under pressure from Republicans to down the craft, which was estimated to be the size of several buses. The Pentagon presented an option to the president to do so earlier this week when it was over a military base that houses US nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles. But Biden decided against the option because of the risk posed to civilians on the ground.
Some lawmakers questioned why the president had allowed the balloon to continue to fly across the US, giving China more opportunity to surveil American military installations.
“The admin[istration] should have taken care of this before it became a national security threat,” Michael McCaul, the Republican head of the House foreign affairs committee wrote on Twitter. “I hope we will be able to recover the wreckage to help determine what intelligence the Chinese Communist party collected while its spy balloon was over our country for days.”
Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate armed services committee, described the delay in destroying the balloon as “a disastrous projection of weakness by the White House”.
Earlier on Saturday, the Pentagon said a second Chinese spy balloon had been detected over Latin America but did not elaborate.
US secretary of state Antony Blinken on Friday cancelled a visit to China because of the discovery of the balloon. He had been expected to meet President Xi Jinping. He would have been the first Biden administration cabinet secretary to visit China.
Speaking after cancelling his trip on Friday, Blinken said the presence of the balloon was an “irresponsible act” and a “clear violation of US sovereignty” and international law. He added that China taking the action “on the eve of my planned visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have”.
China has expressed regret over the incident but rejected suggestions that the balloon was spying. The Chinese foreign ministry said it was a “civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes” that strayed from its planned course due to winds and “limited self-steering capability”.
Pentagon spokesperson General Patrick Ryder on Friday dismissed the Chinese explanation. “We know that it’s a surveillance balloon.”
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