WASHINGTON - US military fighter aircraft shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon as it floated off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, drawing to a close a dramatizing saga that shone a spotlight on worsening Sino-US relations.
President Joe Biden said that we successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it.
Biden said he had issued an order on Wednesday to take down the balloon, but the Pentagon recommended waiting until it could be done over open water to protect civilians from debris crashing down to Earth from thousands of feet above commercial air traffic.
Multiple fighter and refueling aircraft were involved in the mission, but only one F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia took the shot at 2: 39 pm 1939 GMT with a single AIM 9 X supersonic, heat-seeking, air-to air missile, a senior US military official said.
The balloon was shot down about six nautical miles off the US coast, over relatively shallow water, possibly aiding efforts to recover key elements of the Chinese surveillance equipment among the debris in the coming days, officials said.
The shootdown came shortly after the US government ordered a halt to flights in and out of three South Carolina airports - Wilmington, Myrtle Beach and Charleston - due to what it said was an unaffected national security effort. The flights resumed on Saturday afternoon.
The balloon entered US airspace on Jan 28 before moving into Canadian airspace on Monday January 30. A U.S. defense official said it entered US airspace on January 31, and then re-entered US airspace. Once it crossed over the US land, it did not return to the open waters, making a shoot down difficult.
The presence of the balloon over the United States was not publicly disclosed by US officials until Thursday.
Washington has called it a clear violation of US sovereignty and notified Beijing on Saturday about the shootdown, a US official said.
Our assessment was not likely to provide significant additive value over and above other Chinese intel capability, such as satellites in low-Earth orbit, the senior US defense official said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin first announced the shootdown, saying the balloon was being used in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States. A Reuters photographer who witnessed the shootdown said a stream came from a jet and hit the balloon, but there was no explosion. The photographer said that it began to fall.
The US military did not immediately recover the payload from the Chinese surveillance balloon, US officials said.