The mission of the Chinese balloon shot down by the US Air Force would not really be meteorological. According to three senior US officials, two of whom are still in office, it would be a spy balloon that even managed to collect information on several sensitive US military sites.
These senior officials claim that Beijing could control the aircraft to make multiple passes over certain sites. It would have even managed to transmit the collected information in real time. US officials say the electronic signals were picked up by weapons systems, radars that typically detect flybys by missiles or aircraft of a foreign power.
China has always denied
nbc news it requested confirmation of these statements from the Security Council, which referred the journalists to the Ministry of Defense for comment. The Pentagon sent them statements from February already saying the balloon had “limited additive value” for Chinese government intelligence gathering “beyond what [Pékin] it’s likely to collect thanks to satellites in low orbit.”
China has always denied a spying mission and a deliberate overflight of sensitive sites. Beijing claims that the unmanned civil aircraft accidentally veered off course and that the United States overreacted by shooting it down.
Source: BFM TV
