China seethes as US shoots down spy balloon

The Biden administration lauded the Pentagon for shooting down an alleged Chinese spy balloon off the US Atlantic coast on Saturday, but China angrily voiced its “strong dissatisfaction” at the move and said it may make “necessary responses”.

The craft spent several days flying over North America before it was targeted off the coast of the south-eastern state of South Carolina with a missile fired from an F-22 plane, Pentagon officials said, falling into relatively shallow water just 47 feet deep.

US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin called the operation a “lawful action” in response to China’s “unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”. But China’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday blasted the downing of the “civilian” aircraft as “clearly overreacting and seriously violating international practice”.

Saturday afternoon was the military’s first chance to take down the balloon “in a way that would not pose a threat to the safety of Americans,” a senior defence official told reporters, while still allowing authorities to collect the fallen debris from US territorial waters.

In eyewitness video posted to social media, the balloon appeared to disintegrate in a white puff before its remnants dropped vertically into the Atlantic Ocean below. Twitter user Haley Walsh posted that she “heard and felt the explosion” in Myrtle Beach, a popular resort town in South Carolina.

President Joe Biden, who earlier Saturday had promised “to take care” of the balloon, congratulated the fighter pilots involved. “They successfully took it down. And I want to compliment our aviators who did it,” Biden told reporters in Maryland.

However, the Republicans lashed into Biden over his handling of the Chinese balloon, which had been shot down after floating across the country for days. Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Senate intelligence committee, criticised the US president for waiting so long to alert the public,

He described the overflight as a brazen effort by Beijing timed to embarrass Biden just before his State of the Union message on Tuesday (tomorrow), and to disrupt a since-cancelled China visit by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The controversy erupted on Thursday, when American officials said they were tracking a large Chinese “surveillance balloon” in the US skies. After initial hesitation, Beijing admitted ownership of the “airship,” but said it was a civilian weather balloon that had been blown off course.

It was not the first time in recent history such an aircraft had flown over US territory. The balloon first entered US airspace over Alaska on January 28, Pentagon officials told reporters Saturday, before drifting over Canada and then back into the United States days later.

It was not the first time in recent history such an aircraft had flown over US territory, the senior defense official said, though this was the longest time one had spent in the country. Three balloons were spotted during Donald Trump’s presidency and another one earlier in the Biden administration.

According to the senior defence official, the military determined the airship was not a major threat to the United States during its flight, and “the surveillance balloon’s overflight of US territory was of intelligence value to us,” he added, without providing details.

Teams were already working on recovering the balloon’s remains, a senior military official said Saturday. The balloon had flown over parts of the north-western United States—including the state of Montana—that are home to sensitive airbases and strategic nuclear missiles in underground silos.