The Biden administration praised the Pentagon for shooting down an alleged Chinese spy balloon off the US Atlantic coast on Saturday, but China angrily expressed “strong dissatisfaction” at the move and said it could make the “necessary response.”
The ship spent several days flying over North America before being targeted off the southeastern coast of the state of South Carolina by a missile fired from an F-22 jet, Pentagon officials said, falling in shallow water just 47 feet (14 meters) deep. deep.
US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called the operation a “deliberate and lawful action” in response to “an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty.”
But China’s Foreign Ministry blasted the US actions in a statement Sunday morning, saying the downing of the “civilian” plane was “clearly overreacting and a serious violation of international practice.”
Saturday evening was the military’s first chance to retrieve the balloon “in a way that would not pose a threat to American security,” a senior defense official told reporters, while still allowing authorities to collect debris that fell from US territorial waters.
In an eyewitness video posted to social media, the balloon was seen collapsing in a white puff before its remains plummeted vertically into the Atlantic Ocean below.
Twitter user Haley Walsh posted that she “heard and felt an explosion” in Myrtle Beach, a popular resort town in South Carolina.
President Joe Biden, who earlier on Saturday had promised to “protect” the balloon, congratulated the fighter pilots who took part.
“They successfully removed it. And I want to commend the aviator who did it,” Biden told reporters in Maryland.
‘Clearly overreacting’
The controversy erupted Thursday, when American officials said they had tracked a large Chinese “surveillance balloon” in the US sky.
That led Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday to cancel a rare trip to Beijing designed to contain US-China tensions.
After initial hesitation, Beijing acknowledged ownership of the “aircraft,” but said it was a civilian weather balloon that blew up and “regretted” the episode.
Also read: Alleged Chinese spy balloon in US – What we know
But after Saturday’s operation, the Foreign Ministry expressed China’s “strong dissatisfaction and protest against the use of force by the United States to attack a civilian unmanned aerial vehicle.”
Instead of responding in a “restrained manner,” the ministry said in a statement, “the United States forced the use of force, clearly overreacting.”
“China will safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the relevant companies and reserves the right to provide more important responses,” the statement said.
The balloon first entered US airspace over Alaska on January 28, Pentagon officials told reporters Saturday, before flying over Canada and returning to the United States a few days later.
It was not the first time in recent history that the plane had flown over US territory, a senior defense official said, although it was the country’s longest such time. Three balloons were found during Donald Trump’s presidency and another one earlier in the Biden administration.
Biden told reporters that on Wednesday he ordered the ship to be shot down “as soon as possible.”
“They decided — without hurting anyone on the ground … that the best time to do it was when it was flooded,” Biden said.
According to a senior defense official, the military determined the airship was not a major threat to the United States during the flight, and “surveillance balloons overflying US territory are of intelligence value to us,” he said, without elaborating.
Balloons over five continents
Teams have been working to recover the remains of the balloon, a senior military official said on Saturday.
The balloons have flown over the northwestern United States – including the state of Montana – which is home to sensitive air bases and strategic nuclear missiles in underground silos.
“We are confident that we are going to monitor sensitive military sites,” a senior defense official said.
Republican lawmakers were quick to attack the ballooning incident, casting Biden — who has largely maintained, and sometimes expanded, Trump’s hawkish policy on China — as weak.
By late Saturday afternoon, the Federal Aviation Administration had reopened airspace in the coastal Carolinas, after three southeastern airports were temporarily closed due to a “national security” effort.
Another suspected Chinese spy balloon was spotted over Latin America, the Pentagon said on Friday, without providing details.
“Over the past few years, Chinese balloons have previously been seen in countries on five continents, including East Asia, South Asia and Europe,” a senior defense official said on Saturday.
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