The United States shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, injecting new tension into relations with Beijing and Washington.
U.S. defense officials said multiple fighter and refueling aircraft were involved in Saturday’s mission, but just one – F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia – took the shot at 2:39 pm (19:39 GMT) using a single AIM-9X supersonic, heat-seeking, air-to-air missile.
What China said: The military attack drew an immediate rebuke from China, which warned of “necessary” responses and insisted the “unmanned civilian airship” was a weather research balloon that had strayed into US airspace “completely accidentally”.
The balloon, which had been flying at about 18,300 metres (60,000 ft), was shot down about six nautical miles off the coast of South Carolina.
Biden ordered shooting down balloon: U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that he had issued an order to take down the balloon. “We successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it,” Biden said in Maryland.
Fuzzy videos dotted social media as people with binoculars and telephoto lenses tried to find the “spy balloon” in the sky.
A White House official said Saturday that President Joe Biden and his military advisers took “responsible action” by waiting to shoot down the Chinese balloon until it was over water, minimizing the risk it could have posed to people on the ground.
U.S. military leaders said they were confident the aircraft was used for espionage. Senior U.S. administration officials called it a Chinese “surveillance balloon” which purposely traversed the United States and Canada “to monitor sensitive military sites.”
Officials said this was not the first time Chinese surveillance balloons have been tracked over U.S. territory, including at least once during former President Donald Trump’s administration.
