US intelligence chief says there is no intention to return debris

Kirby said there was no intention to send the pieces back. He said there was no intention or plans to return it.

VanHerck said the balloon debris would be carefully examined.

I don't know where the debris is going to go for a final analysis, but I will tell you that the intel community and the law enforcement community will take a good look at it, he said.

The Biden administration is claiming the incident is a provocative move by China that turned into a personal goal by providing US intelligence services with valuable data.

According to Kirby, measures were taken to ensure the instruments were mitigated in their ability to spy, while increasing and improving our ability to collect intelligence and information from the balloon. We're still analysing the information that we were able to collect before we shot it from the sky, and now we're going to recover it, and I suspect we're going to learn even more. Kirby said that the balloon was not merely drifting, but had propellers and steering to give a measure of control, even as it was swept along in the high-altitude Jet Stream wind.

It is true that this balloon had the ability to speed up, to slow down and to turn. He said that it had propellers, it had a rudder, if you will, to allow it to change direction.

The jet stream itself, the winds at such a high altitude, was the most important navigational vector.