The US shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of Carolina on Saturday and will try to recover the debris, according to a US official.
The move came hours after President Joe Biden responded to a reporter asking if the US would shoot down the balloon. “We’re going to make it happen,” Biden said in his first public remarks about the balloon.
In remarks to reporters after the balloon was shot down, Biden said he gave the order to the Pentagon after being briefed on Wednesday.
“They decided — without harming anyone on the ground — that the best time to do that was when it surfaced,” he said. “They successfully brought it down and I want to congratulate our pilots who did it. And we will have more to report on this later.”
The balloon was shot down at 2:39 p.m. by an F-22 raptor with a single missile, a senior defense official said. The balloon was between 60,000 and 65,000 feet in the air when it was brought down.
The balloon’s debris field stretches for about 7 nautical miles, and ships and Navy divers are expected to help recover the pieces, a senior U.S. military official told NBC News.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the balloon was shot down “above U.S. territorial waters” off the coast of South Carolina.
“This afternoon, U.S. fighter jets assigned to U.S. Northern Command, under the direction of President Biden, successfully downed the high-altitude surveillance balloon launched by and belonging to the People’s Republic of China (PRC),” Austin said in the statement.
“The balloon, used by the People’s Republic of China in an attempt to monitor strategic locations in the mainland United States, was brought down over US territorial waters,” he said.
Biden on Wednesday” gave his permission to bring down the balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives below the balloon’s path,” he added. posed an unnecessary risk to people in a wide area due to the size and height of the balloon and the guard payload.”
The balloon entered US airspace north of the Aleutian Islands in Alaska on Jan. 28 before entering Canadian airspace on Monday, the senior defense official said. It re-entered US airspace in northern Idaho on Tuesday.
Hours before it was shot down, residents of North Carolina and South Carolina reported seeing the spy balloon, and the Federal Aviation Administration said its departures and arrivals at three local airports were paused to support the Department of Defense in “a national security effort “.
Flights to and from the three airports — Wilmington International Airport and Myrtle Beach International Airport in North Carolina, and Charleston International Airport in South Carolina — have resumed, the FAA said in an update Saturday afternoon.
Videos of fighter jets attacking and bringing down the spy balloon are circulating on social media. The jets are seen approaching the balloon before it begins to fall from the sky.
Some lawmakers applauded Biden’s decision to bring down the spy balloon on social media, while others criticized his administration’s handling of the situation.
“I strongly condemn President Xi’s brutal incursion into US airspace, and I commend President Biden’s leadership in bringing down China’s balloon to the surface to ensure the safety of all Americans,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer tweeted, following the news.
“Now we can collect the equipment and analyze the technology used by the CCP,” the New York Democrat added.
Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee tweeted: “Administrator should have taken care of this before it became a threat to national security. I hope we will be able to recover the wreckage to help determine what intelligence the CCP gathered while its spy balloon hovered over our country for days. I will demand answers and hold the administrator accountable for this embarrassing display of weakness.”
Now that the balloon has been shot down, the Biden administration should make clear to China the seriousness of its violation of US airspace, a former Obama administration official said.
Brett Bruen, who was Director of Global Engagement in Barack Obama’s White House, said in an interview Saturday that Chinese President Xi Jinping is “examining and testing how far he can push the West and Biden in particular, and we need to respond in a strong and sustainable way.”
Bruen suggested that the US consider recalling its ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, to protest China’s actions.
Julie Tsirkin, Molly Roecker And Peter Nicholas contributed.