US shoots down Chinese balloon over Atlantic

ThePentagon had previously estimated that the balloon, which was flying at about 60,000 feet in the air, was the size of three school buses and that any debris field would be considerable.

WASHINGTON— The United States shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday after it passed through sensitive US military installations and became the latest flashpoint between Washington and Beijing.

“This afternoon, under the direction of President Biden, US warplanes assigned to the country’s Northern Command successfully shot down the highaltitude surveillance balloon belonging to and launched by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over the waters off the coast of South Carolina,” US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin confirmed in a written communication. After the shootdown, an operation was underway in United States territorial waters in the Atlantic Ocean to recover debris from the balloon, which was flying at an altitude of about 18,300 meters (60,000 feet) and was estimated to be the size of three busses. schoolchildren. Austin confirmed that President Biden gave the authorization to shoot down the balloon last Wednesday, “as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to the lives of Americans in the path of the balloon.”

The Federal Aviation Administration and the

Coast Guard coordinated to clear the airspace of the area and the waters below.

Television images showed a small explosion, followed by the balloon’s descent into the water. The Secretary of Defense pointed out that the action was taken in coordination with the Canadian government, which provided monitoring and analysis of the balloon through the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD, for its acronym in English). Officials were aiming to time the operation so they could recover as much debris as possible before it sinks into the ocean. The Pentagon had previously estimated that the balloon, which was flying at about 60,000 feet in the air, was the size of three school buses and that any debris field would be considerable.

Biden would have been inclined not to shoot it down on the advice of defense experts concerned about the injuries its remains could cause to people on the ground. Meanwhile, China downplayed the cancellation of a trip by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken after the balloon sighting soured diplomatic relations. According to Beijing, neither side had formally announced a plan for the visit.

“Actually, the US and China had never announced any visits. The US making such an announcement is its business, and we respect it,” the Chinese Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

Blinken was scheduled to visit Beijing on Sunday for talks aimed at easing tensions between the two nations. It would be the first high-profile meeting since the presidents’ meeting in Indonesia in November. But Washington abruptly canceled the plans after discovering the balloon, despite China’s claim that it was a weather research “blimp” that veered off course. The Pentagon rejected that claim, as well as the claim that it was not used for surveillance duties and had limited navigation capabilities. The uncensored reactions online reflected the official government position that Washington was exaggerating the situation. Many users made jokes about the balloon. Some said that since the United States restricted the technology that Beijing can acquire in order to weaken the domestic technology industry, they now could not control the globe. Others took the opportunity to mock the US defenses as not being able to even deal with a balloon, and nationalist influencers were quick to use the news to mock the rival country. One of them wryly wrote that “the United States delayed Blinken’s visit to China because of the balloon incident.”

The device was sighted over Montana, home to one of the country’s three nuclear missile silos, at Malmstrom Air Force Base, according to defense officials.

Note publishied on : The Guardian

¡SABIAS QUE...!

Shakespeare inventó más de 1.700 palabras. Shakespeare escribió algunas de las piezas literarias más queridas y veneradas que el mundo haya conocido, pero para crear sus obras y poemas, a veces recurría a inventar sus propias palabras. De hecho, se dice que The Bard inventó más de 1700 palabras, entre las que se incluyen rayo de luna, risible, globo ocular, golpe, vómito, campeón, dormitorio, emoción y locura.

Did You Know...!

Shakespeare invented more than 1,700 words.

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