President Biden said that the Chinese surveillance balloon was “not a huge breach” of U.S. national security and supported his administration’s choice to postpone shooting it down for many days, Fox News informed.
Biden stated that he wanted it to be shot down as quickly as possible in an interview for Noticias Telemundo, but that they were concerned about the harm that could be done even in a large state like Montana.
He made note of how enormous the balloon was and speculated as to what would have happened if it had crashed into a remote school.
Biden claimed that he gave the order to shoot it down as soon as it was safe to do so and that it was a prudent choice to do so over water.
On Saturday afternoon off the coast of South Carolina, a fighter jet shot the balloon down. On January 28, the 200-foot-tall balloon made its maiden trip above Alaska’s Aleutian Islands before traveling across the entire country. It was about 2,000 pounds in weight and carried a payload about the size of a jet airplane.
According to Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, Chinese surveillance balloons have entered the country at least four times before.
Biden downplayed the importance of the most recent balloon by putting it in the context of the vast global monitoring programs.
According to Biden, every nation in the world is engaged in an enormous quantity of intelligence collecting.
U.S. Navy and Coast Guard troops are gathering and classifying a sizable debris field in shallow waters that was left by the disintegrated balloon.
The debris at Quantico, Virginia, is already being examined by FBI experts, who are particularly interested in any found devices.
Biden has come under heavy fire from Republicans for delaying taking steps to pop the balloon. Democratic party members have also questioned the delay in taking it down.
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