A huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon continued sailing across the U.S. on Friday night.
The spectacle drew severe Pentagon accusations of spying, while sending some excited or alarmed Americans outside with binoculars. The U.S. government said the balloon has followed a path over several sensitive sites.
And although the Chinese government says the balloon is a civilian airship used for meteorological research that somehow deviated from its planned course, U.S. officials have learned the balloon has the ability to maneuver and change course.
Republican U.S. State Rep. Aaron Bean represents Florida’s 4th Congressional District. He said he’s shocked by how long the balloon has been allowed to travel through U.S. airspace.
“It’s highly unusual that the public knows about it, and it seems our government hasn’t taken any action at all,” Bean said. “I know all your viewers are wondering like I am: Why haven’t we taken action to bring this thing down?”
Jacksonville attorney Randy Reep is an experienced F-15 fighter jet pilot, who knows a lot about protecting U.S. airspace from foreign adversaries.
“It is not common at all to see a balloon of this size, particularly being used in the context of gathering data. You don’t see this often at all,” Reep said.
Reep says if the roles were reversed and a U.S. balloon floated over Chinese airspace, it would be shot down. He says the U.S. fighter jets could easily do the same thing in this case, but our government must consider a risk assessment that includes:
“Damage to property or, heaven forbid, injury or death to the people on the ground when the debris falls,” he said.
President Joe Biden had been inclined to blow it out of the sky, officials said, but bowed to strong recommendations against that by top military leaders, who feared harm to Americans on the ground.
And there could be a lot of debris considering the balloon is estimated to be the size of three buses. A former U.S. intelligence officer we spoke with, who spoke on a condition of anonymity, says the questions that should be asked: Why is the balloon maneuvering over sensitive sites, and what kind of equipment is on board the balloon?
Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U.S.-China tensions as the administration weighed a broader response to the discovery of the Chinese balloon over sensitive sites in the western United States.