US ends search for downed aerial objects
WASHINGTON, D.C.: The United States military said on Friday it had ended its search for the airborne objects that were shot down near Deadhorse, Alaska and over Lake Huron on February 10 and 12.
The statement released on Friday night came hours after officials said the US had finished efforts to recover the remnants of the large balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4, and analysis of the debris so far reinforces conclusions that it was a Chinese spy balloon.
The US believes that Navy, Coast Guard and Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) personnel collected all of that balloon’s debris off the ocean floor, which included key equipment from the payload that could reveal what information it was able to monitor and collect.
White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said a significant amount of debris was recovered and it included “electronics and optics” from the payload. He declined to say what, if anything, the US has learned from the wreckage so far.
US Northern Command said in a statement that the recovery operations ended on Thursday and the final pieces were on their way to the FBI laboratory in Virginia for analysis. Air and maritime restrictions off South Carolina have been lifted, it added.
Northern Command said later that the decision to end the search for the objects shot down over Alaska and Lake Huron came after the US and Canada “conducted systematic searches of each area using a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans, and did not locate debris.”
Air and maritime safety perimeters are also being lifted at both those sites.
The announcements capped three dramatic weeks that saw US fighter jets shoot down four airborne objects: the large Chinese balloon on February 4 and three much smaller objects about a week later over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron. They are the first known peacetime shootdowns of unauthorized objects in American airspace.
While the military is confident the balloon shot down off South Carolina was a surveillance airship operated by China, President Joe Biden’s administration has admitted that the three smaller objects were likely civilian-owned balloons that were targeted during the heightened response after US homeland defense radars were recalibrated to detect slower moving airborne items.
Much of the Chinese balloon fell into about 50 feet (15 meters) of water, and the Navy was able to collect remnants floating on the surface, and divers and unmanned naval vessels pulled up the rest from the bottom of the ocean. Northern Command said on Friday that all of the Navy and Coast Guard ships had left the area.
On Thursday, Biden directed National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an interagency team to establish “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects.
Key questions about the Chinese balloon remain unanswered, including what, if any, intelligence it was able to collect as it flew over sensitive military sites in the US, and whether it was able to transmit anything back to China.
The US tracked it for several days after it left China, said a US official who spoke to The Associated Press (AP) on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It appears to have been blown off its initial trajectory, which was toward the American territory of Guam, and ultimately flew over the continental US, the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have been previously spotted over Guam, a strategic hub for the US Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It’s unclear how much control China retained over the balloon once it veered from its original trajectory. A second US official said the balloon could have been externally maneuvered or directed to loiter over a specific target, but it’s unclear whether Chinese forces did so.