A US fighter jet shot down an unidentified object drifting high over Alaska yesterday, the White House said, just six days after the downing of an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon sparked a fresh diplomatic rift with Beijing.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said it is unclear what the purpose or origin of the new object was, but said that it was taken down because, floating at 40,000’, it was a threat to civil aviation.
“The president ordered the military to down the object,” Kirby said.
The object was much smaller than a huge Chinese balloon that crossed the United States last week and was shot down by a US fighter jet off the Atlantic coast on Saturday, Kirby said.
It was “roughly the size of a small car”, he said.
“We do not know who owns it, whether state owned or corporate owned,” he said. “We don’t understand the full purpose.”
The incident took place amid a new alarm over what US officials say is an ongoing programme by China to fly surveillance balloons to collect intelligence around the world.
US officials said such balloons have flown over 40 countries, including at least four times previously over United States territory.
The Chinese balloon last week sparked particular concern as it overflew areas where the United States keeps nuclear missiles in underground silos and bases strategic bombers.
The incident led US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel an imminent trip to Beijing that had been long in planning and aimed at improving communications between the two rival superpowers.
Kirby said that the new object was detected late on Thursday, and shot down yesterday afternoon Washington-time.
It went down in northern Alaska near the Canadian border and fell over a frozen body of water, making recovery feasible, Kirby said.
Biden ordered the shoot-down because, at the altitude it was flying, the object posed “a reasonable threat” to civil aviation.
He said that the US military sent a plane to observe the object before it was taken down and “the pilot’s assessment was that this was not manned”.
The Chinese surveillance balloon had clear abilities to propel and manoeuvre itself, he noted.
It “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard weather balloons”, a senior State Department official said on Thursday, adding: “It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications”.
The official also tied the balloon to China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), without saying directly that it had been deployed by the PLA.
Beijing rejected US allegations that it sent the balloon to spy on the United States, and said it had simply drifted by accident into US airspace.
However, since Saturday China has rejected and overture by US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin to speak by phone about the issue.
“The US insisted on using force to attack the airship, which seriously violated international practice and sets a bad precedent,” the Chinese defence ministry said in a statement.
Earlier, Biden said that he did not view a Chinese balloon that transited the United States before it was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean to have been a major security breach.
He said in a Noticias Telemundo interview that he did not regret shooting down the balloon sooner.
“It’s not a major breach,” Biden said. “I mean, look, it’s totally ... it’s a violation of international law. It’s our airspace. And once it comes into our space, we can do what we want with it.”
He said US military officials were worried that by shooting it down over land, the balloon and its parts could drop into a populated area.
“This thing was gigantic. What happened if it came down and hit a school in a rural area? What happened if it came down? So I told them as soon as they could shoot it down, shoot it down. They made a wise decision. They shot it down over water, they’re recovering most of the parts, and they’re good,” he said.
Some Republicans and Democrats have complained that Biden should have had the balloon downed sooner.
Meanwhile, US lawmakers have unanimously denounced China’s use of the balloon that flew over North America last week and had been shot down.
The vote allowed lawmakers to agree on a bipartisan stance on Beijing, after several balloon-related political skirmishes.
The House of Representatives passed a resolution “condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty”.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing was “strongly dissatisfied” with the US resolution, calling it “pure political manipulation and hype”.
China has insisted the balloon was a “civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological purposes”.
A Pentagon official told a separate Senate hearing on Thursday that the United States is still trying to figure out what exactly the balloon, which it has said was deployed for espionage purposes, was looking for.
“We have some very good guesses about that,” assistant defence secretary Jedidiah Royal said.
“We are learning more as we exploit the contents” of the balloon, he added.