President Joe Biden’s administration has downplayed the seriousness of the Chinese spy balloon entering United States airspace and seems unconcerned with the fact that a salvage vessel may take several days to reach the wreckage before the Chinese attempt to recover it.
The spy balloon seems to have taken a long journey over the Pacific Ocean, Alaska, Canada and the continental United States which undoubtedly was carrying Chinese surveillance equipment and it wasn’t until it reached the coast of South Carolina when it was shot down.
According to the Pentagon, “The balloon, which was being used by the People’s Republic of China in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States, was brought down above US territorial waters.”
The United State Navy has deployed warships to create a perimeter around the wreckage but the planning may have taken too long. According to the U.S. Naval Institute (USNI) News, a Navy official confirmed that three warships were deployed after the balloon was shot down by a F-22 Raptor. The balloon has an approximate size of three school buses and the wreckage has a debris field of seven miles. With numerous navy vessels and U.S. Coast Guard ships on site, the wreckage is being guarded until a Navy salvage ship can arrive in approximately two days.
According to a senior military official, “We have…capable Navy divers to go down if needed. We’ll also have unmanned vessels that can go down to get the structure and lift it back up on the recovery ship. We’ll have the FBI on board as well, under the counterintelligence authorities for categorizing and assessing the platform itself.”
The reasoning to delay the shooting down of the balloon has been attributed to intelligence gathering on the balloon and the equipment onboard. “I would also note that while we took all necessary steps to protect agains the PRC surveillance balloon’s collection of sensitive information, the surveillance balloon’s overflight of U.S. territory was of intelligence value to us,” according to the senior official. “I can’t go into more detail, but we were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment, which has been valuable.”
The Defense Department claims “The balloon did not pose a military or physical threat. Still its intrusion into American airspace over several days was an unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty.”