U.S. officials believe two airborne objects shot down by U.S. fighter jets today are high-altitude balloons, but “smaller” than the one brought down over the Atlantic last week, according to a top Democrat in Congress.
Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, said he had been briefed by Jake Sullivan, the US national security adviser, on Saturday night after an F-22 shot down an unidentified object at 40,000 feet in Canada’s Yukon Territory. On Friday, the US military shot down a similar object in Alaska.
“He believed that he was [balloons]yes, “said Schumer to ABC, referring to the assessment of US officials. “But it is smaller than the first one.”
US officials described the first balloons as coming from China and being used for surveillance. They have not identified the origin of the two aerial objects that were shot down later.
Asked about the briefing Sullivan gave Schumer and other lawmakers about the two latest incidents, a National Security Council spokesman said: “This object is nothing like, and much smaller than, the PRC. [People’s Republic of China] balloon and we will not define its characteristics until we can recover the debris in progress.
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, said a Canadian team was working to recover the object that was dropped on Saturday, which officials described as a “cylinder”.
“There’s still a lot to know about it. That’s why the analysis of this object will be very important,” said Trudeau.
The Chinese balloon incident has caused a deterioration in US-China relations, which have sunk to the lowest level since the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1979.
Secretary of state Antony Blinken canceled a trip to China at the last minute when he was due to meet President Xi Jinping. China has criticized the US for releasing the balloon, which it says is a civilian vessel carrying out meteorological research.
Schumer called for China to cancel its balloon program.
“I think the Chinese people are humiliated. I think the Chinese have been caught lying. And I think this is a real step backwards for them,” the senator said. “I think they should get rid of it or do something, because it looks so bad. And they don’t just do the United States.
Some Democrats are upset that the Biden administration is not getting information.
“I saw a pattern when I looked at social media this morning. All of a sudden, there’s a lot of speculation about an alien invasion and, you know, additional Chinese actions or Russian actions,” Jim Himes, Democrat of Connecticut, told NBC.
“If there’s no information, people’s anxiety leads to dangerous territory. So I’m hoping that the administration will get more information about what’s going on.
The episode also sparked a debate about whether the US military should invest more in improving its capacity to detect objects.
Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence committee and Ohio Republican, told CNN that the US lacks an “adequate radar system” and an “integrated missile defense” system. “We really need to announce that we are going to defend our airspace and then we need to invest.”
The Biden administration said a Chinese balloon entered US airspace over Alaska on January 28. But officials have not made it clear whether the US detected the object earlier, raising questions about the military’s aerial awareness capabilities.
General Glen VanHerck, the US official who heads the North American Aerospace Defense Command, announced this week that the military did not detect four previous Chinese balloon flights over the US – three during the Trump administration and one during the early Biden administration – in real time.
US intelligence agencies later determined that the balloon had flown over parts of the US without the Pentagon’s knowledge.
“We’re not detecting these threats. And that’s the domain awareness gap we need to address,” VanHerck said.
Speaking before Congress last week, Melissa Dalton, the Pentagon’s top domestic defense official, said the US would use information obtained from monitoring spy balloons in the US as well as from recovered debris to better understand China’s capabilities and pursue “should we move forward”.
Dalton added that the latest defense budget includes money for capabilities that will help the US deal with these problems.