A balloon the size of three buses and many questions. The Pentagon said on Thursday it was tracking the movements of a Chinese spy balloon flying high over US soil and sensitive military sites, saying it posed no direct threat.
• Seen for “several days”, no immediate danger
“The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” the Department of Defense (DOD) said in a statement.
The US-Canadian Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) continues to carefully monitor the object’s trajectory. On Twitter, Dan Satterfield, a meteorologist, estimated the trajectory of the object, which would have passed through Alaska and Canada.
The balloon, “the size of three buses”, according to CNN, entered US airspace “several days ago” but was already being monitored by US intelligence before its discovery was announced Thursday. This is not the first time the US military has seen such an intrusion into airspace. But this time the ball stayed much longer.
• “Without a doubt” about the origin of the ball
Therefore, the US authorities take the situation very seriously. “We have no doubt that the ball came from China,” said a senior US defense official.
“We are taking measures to protect against the collection of sensitive information,” he said, while stressing the “limited added value in terms of information collection” of the device compared to what China already has such as satellites or media.
But the balloon is currently flying over Montana, the state where one of the sites that allow the United States to launch nuclear missiles is located, stresses the wall street newspaper. “Clearly, this balloon is intended for surveillance and its current trajectory takes it over sensitive sites,” including airbases and strategic missile silos.
• The US military is not shooting down the object (yet).
For now, Washington has decided not to shoot down the object. “We considered that it was large enough for the debris to cause damage” if it were to fall again in an inhabited area, we explained from the Pentagon side.
“We had examined whether there was an option yesterday (Wednesday) in certain sparsely populated areas of Montana, but we were unable to sufficiently reduce the risk” of damage, Pentagon press attaché officer Patrick Ryder also told the media.
A decision that has angered some Republicans, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who believes that “Biden should immediately tear down” the object. The far-right deputy assures that Trump “would never have tolerated that.”
For his part, the head of the Republicans in the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy, denounced on Thursday night a “destabilizing action” by a China that “blatantly disregards the sovereignty of the United States.” He called on Joe Biden “not to be silent” and asked that members of Congress be informed.
Joe Biden, for the moment, has not reacted publicly. “President Biden has been briefed and has asked his team to provide him with various military options,” Patrick Ryder said. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin held talks with Pentagon chiefs of staff.
Military fighter jets, and F-22s in particular, are ready to step in at any moment to shoot down the balloon if the White House so decides.
• Just before a trip by Antony Blinken
Diplomatically, the Joe Biden administration is mobilizing. The State Department summoned Xu Xueyuan, China’s top government official in Washington, “to deliver a very clear and very strong message,” a US official told Reuters. Wall Street Journal under condition of anonymity.
The next 72 hours will be crucial: this incident comes just before Antony Blinken’s trip to China, scheduled for Sunday and Monday. It will be the first visit to the country by a US Secretary of State since October 2018.
And in part it intends to calm the tensions between the two great powers, which have sometimes been on the verge of opening a conflict in recent months. In particular, when former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, which China claims as an integral part of her territory.
Source: BFM TV
