President Joe Biden said on Saturday that he ordered U.S. officials to shoot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon earlier this week and that national security leaders decided the best time for the operation was when the it got over water.
“They successfully took it down and I want to complement our aviators who did it,” Biden said after getting off Air Force One en route to Camp David.
Fighter jets shot down the giant white balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America and became the latest flashpoint in tensions between Washington and Beijing.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that Biden approved the shootdown on Wednesday, saying it should be done “as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path.”
Austin said that due to the size and altitude of the balloon , which was moving at about 60,000 feet in the air, the military had determined that taking it down over land would pose an undue risk to people on the ground.
The balloon was spotted Saturday morning over the Carolinas as it approached the coast. In preparation for the operation, the FAA Administration temporarily closed airspace over the Carolina coastline, including the airports in Charleston and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and Wilmington, North Carolina. The FAA rerouted air traffic from the area and warned of delays as a result of the flight restrictions.
An operation was underway in U.S. territorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean to recover debris from the balloon, which had been flying at about 60,000 feet and was es ..
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