Debate over balloon, China’s intent
WASHINGTON — Republican lawmakers on Sunday accused China of deliberately surveilling sensitive U.S. military sites with a suspected spy balloon and said the Biden administration had given Beijing an intelligence opening by not downing the balloon during its high-altitude drift through American airspace.
The balloon’s presence in the sky above the United States before a military jet shot it down over the Atlantic Ocean with a missile Saturday further strained U.S.-China ties. America’s top diplomat abruptly scrapped a trip to Beijing, and China’s defense ministry said in a statement after the balloon fell into the waters off the Carolina coast that it “reserves the right to take necessary measures to deal with similar situations.”
“Clearly this was an attempt by China to gather information, to defeat our command and control of our sensitive missile defense and nuclear weapon sites,” said the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, who was among the members of Congress on Sunday news shows. “And that certainly is an urgency that this administration does not recognize.”
U.S. defense and military officials said the balloon entered the American air defense zone north of the Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28 and moved largely over land across Alaska and then into Canadian airspace in the Northwest Territories on Monday. It crossed back into U.S. territory over northern Idaho on Tuesday, the day the White House said President Joe Biden was first briefed on it.
“It defies belief to suggest there was nowhere” between Alaska and the
“The message they (the Chinese) were trying to send is … that the United States is a once-great superpower that’s hollowed out, that’s in decline.”
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla.
Carolinas where the U.S. could have safely shot down the balloon, said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said the full Senate soon will get a briefing on the balloon, including details about its surveillance capabilities, and that the administration is considering measures against China for “their brazen activities.” He said the GOP criticism was political and premature and that the U.S. had “sent a clear message to China that this is not acceptable.”
Biden issued the order to shoot down the balloon but had wanted it to happen Wednesday. He was advised that the best time for the operation would be when the balloon was over water, U.S. officials said. Military officials determined that bringing down the balloon over land from an altitude of 60,000 feet would pose an undue risk to people on the ground.
“The message they (the Chinese) were trying to send is what they believe internally, and that is that the United States is a once-great superpower that’s hollowed out, that’s in decline,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee. “And the message they’re trying to send the world is, ‘Look, these guys can’t even do anything about a balloon flying over U.S. airspace. How can you possibly count on them if something were to happen in the Indo-Pacific region?’”
By Wednesday, the balloon was over Montana, home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, which has fields of nuclear missile silos.
The Chinese “didn’t go and look at the Grand Canyon,” Turner said. “They went and looked at our nuclear weapon sites and the missile defense sites throughout the country.”
Meanwhile, the Defense Department notified Congress of several previous incursions of U.S. airspace by Chinese surveillance balloons, with earlier sightings near Texas, Florida, Hawaii and Guam, U.S. officials said Sunday.
Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, said in an interview that defense officials identified the locations in a discussion with lawmakers and staff on Saturday, disclosing for the first time that similar surveillance balloons had been spotted in U.S. airspace near the continental United States before. The existence of such balloons near Hawaii and Guam has been reported previously.
Two such incidents were reported near Florida, while there was at least one each in the other three locations, Waltz said.
The defense officials said that several of those events occurred during the Trump administration, Waltz said. Officials had also said that during a news briefing with reporters on Saturday.
The Defense Department was not specific about where in each state the previous incursions occurred, or whether they made it into U.S. airspace, which extends 12 nautical miles from the shore, or over U.S. territory, too, Waltz said. Fox News first reported the additional locations.
The account, verified by two U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, adds to an issue that has become vexing for the U.S. government.
One of the other officials, a congressional aide, said that the disclosure came during a phone briefing with congressional leaders and national security committees. The administration official briefing them said the other incidents had mostly been along or off the coast of the United States.
Several former Trump administration officials, including former defense secretary Mark Esper, said they do not recall reports of such balloons reaching their level, raising questions about how they were handled at the time.
Pentagon officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment. They have previously declined to specify where the previous incursions occurred.