US Fighter Jet Shoots Down Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon
United States fighter jets on Saturday shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of the US state of South Carolina, a week after it entered US airspace.
The United States suspected the balloon has been spying on key military sites across the country but China insisted the “unmanned civilian airship” was a weather research balloon that had strayed into US airspace “completely accidentally”.
Al Jazeera reported that US defence officials said multiple fighter and refuelling aircraft were involved in Saturday’s mission to destroy the Chinese balloon.
But just one fighter aircraft – an 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.
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.
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US President Joe Biden issued an order on Wednesday to take down the balloon but defence officials had recommended waiting until it could be done over open water to avoid injuring civilians from debris crashing to Earth. Said Biden in Maryland:
We successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.
Media reports indicated that the Chinese balloon was the size of three buses.
The Associated Press news agency said an operation was underway to recover debris from the balloon in the Atlantic Ocean.
Reuters quoted a US military official as saying that the debris field was spread out over 11km (seven miles) of the ocean.
US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said that the operation was a “deliberate and lawful action” that came in response to China’s “unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”.
He said the balloon was being used by China “in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States”.
Meanwhile, China’s foreign ministry condemned the destruction of the balloon by the United States.
The ministry expressed Beijing’s “strong dissatisfaction and protests against the use of force by the United States to attack the unmanned civilian airship” saying the Americans had overreacted.
