A huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon\u00a0sailed across the U.S. on Friday, drawing severe Pentagon accusations of spying on sensitive military sites despite China\u2019s firm denials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U.S.-China tensions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aside from the government response, fuzzy videos dotted social media as people with binoculars and telephoto lenses tried to find the \u201cspy balloon\u201d in the sky as it headed southeastward over Kansas and Missouri at 60,000 feet (18,300 meters).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was spotted earlier over Montana, which is home to one of America\u2019s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, defense officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Later Friday, the Pentagon acknowledged reports of a second balloon flying over Latin America. \u201cWe now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,\u201d Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement, declining to offer further information such as where it was spotted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. actually had been tracking the initial balloon since at least Tuesday, when President Joe Biden was first briefed, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters. According to three U.S. officials, Biden was initially inclined to order the surveillance balloon to be blown out of the sky, and a senior defense official said the U.S. had prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot it down if ordered. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly advised Biden against shooting down the balloon, warning that its size \u2014 as big as three school buses \u2014 and considerable weight could create a debris field large enough to endanger Americans on the ground. The Pentagon also assessed that after unspecified U.S. measures, the possibility of the balloon uncovering important information was not great.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was not the first time Chinese surveillance balloons have been tracked over U.S. territory, including at least once during former President Donald Trump\u2019s administration, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blinken\u2019s trip cancellation came despite China\u2019s claim that the balloon was merely a weather research \u201cairship\u201d that had blown off course. The Pentagon rejected that out of hand \u2014 as well as China\u2019s contention that the balloon was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blinken, who had been due to depart Washington for Beijing late Friday, said he had told senior Chinese diplomat Wang Yi in a phone call that sending the balloon over the U.S. was \u201can irresponsible act and that (China\u2019s) decision to take this action on the eve of my visit is detrimental to the substantive discussions that we were prepared to have.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China\u2019s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement Saturday morning: \u201cIn actuality, the U.S. and China have never announced any visit. The U.S. making any such announcement is their own business, and we respect that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Beijing, Wang said China \u201chas always strictly followed international law, we do not accept any groundless speculation and hype. Faced with unexpected situations, both parties need to keep calm, communicate in a timely manner, avoid misjudgments and manage differences.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After passing the sensitive military sites in Montana, the balloon was moving southeastward over the heartland of the central United States during the day and was expected to remain in U.S. airspace for several days, officials said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The development dealt a new blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations that have been in a downward spiral for years over numerous issues. Still, U.S. officials maintained that diplomatic channels remain open and Blinken said he remained willing to travel to China \u201cwhen conditions allow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe continue to believe that having open lines of communication is important,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Biden declined to comment on the matter when questioned at an economic event. Two likely 2024 reelection challengers, Trump, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, said the U.S. should immediately shoot down the balloon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several Republican congressmen said the same, and a number blasted the administration for \u201callowing\u201d the balloon intrusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe idea that Communist China has a spy balloon headed towards Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri right now \u2014 the home of the Stealth Bomber \u2014 is absolutely unbelievable,\u201d said Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Mo. \u201cNo American should accept this. I don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jean-Pierre did not shed light on why the administration waited until Thursday to make its concerns public.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, refused to say Friday whether there was any new consideration of shooting the balloon down. He said it currently was posing no threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryder said it was maneuverable, not just at the mercy of the wind, and had changed course.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, weather experts said China\u2019s claim that the balloon had gone off course was not unfeasible. China\u2019s account of wind patterns known as the Westerlies carrying a balloon to the western United States was \u201cabsolutely possible \u2014 not possible, likely,\u201d said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for Blinken\u2019s trip, Jean-Pierre said a diplomatic visit to China was not appropriate at such a time. She said that \u201cthe presence of this balloon in our airspace … is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and it is unacceptable this occurred.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A State Department official said Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman had both protested to the top official at the Chinese Embassy on Wednesday, a day before the Pentagon announced the discovery of the balloon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Blinken\u2019s long-anticipated meetings with senior Chinese officials had been seen in both countries as a possible way to find some areas of common ground at a time of major disagreements over Taiwan, human rights, China\u2019s claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine, trade policy and climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although the trip, which was agreed to in November by Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, had not been formally announced, officials in both Beijing and Washington had spoken in recent days about Blinken\u2019s imminent arrival for meetings on Sunday and Monday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China, which angrily denounces surveillance attempts by the U.S. and others over areas it considers to be its territory and once forced down an American spy plane and held its crew captive on Hainan Island, was relatively conciliatory in its response to the U.S. complaints.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a statement that approached an apology, the Chinese foreign ministry said the balloon was a civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research. It said said the airship had limited \u201cself-steering\u201d capabilities and had \u201cdeviated far from its planned course\u201d because of winds. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure,\u201d the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one\u2019s control.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon\u00a0sailed across the U.S. on Friday, drawing severe Pentagon accusations of spying on sensitive military sites despite China\u2019s firm denials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U.S.-China tensions. Aside from the government response, fuzzy videos dotted social media as people with binoculars and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29452,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[461],"tags":[8843,8311,9678,5356,6263,5178,6044,7568,7489,8256,7421,3862,4024,8307,5183,10391,8041,12246,6060,11638,2264,10840,8124,10954,9463,2471,6690,10342,4696,6088,5572,5254,735,12187,10252,7964,5253,6666,11973,6719,96,7039,6830,3805,11243,10313,6944,3457,6736,9761,9271,5349,10838,7422,9483,11279,10841,2711,10329,6584,5180,9262,214,9601,5251,2354,9085,6571,2982,594,7898,8327],"class_list":["post-29468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-breaking-news","tag-air-force","tag-antony-blinken","tag-apology","tag-austin","tag-beijing","tag-biden","tag-blinken","tag-cancellation","tag-chairman","tag-chiefs","tag-chinese","tag-climate-change","tag-common","tag-communist","tag-debris","tag-declined","tag-diplomat","tag-diplomatic","tag-embassy","tag-forced","tag-government","tag-human-rights","tag-indonesia","tag-international","tag-jets","tag-joe-biden","tag-korea","tag-law","tag-lloyd","tag-lloyd-austin","tag-military","tag-missile","tag-missouri","tag-n","tag-nikki-haley","tag-north","tag-north-korea","tag-nuclear","tag-one","tag-pentagon","tag-china","tag-phone","tag-plane","tag-president","tag-president-xi","tag-professor","tag-republican","tag-russia","tag-school","tag-shoot","tag-sky","tag-social-media","tag-south-carolina","tag-spy","tag-spy-ballon","tag-spying","tag-surveillance","tag-taiwan","tag-trade","tag-travel","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-university","tag-wang-yi","tag-war","tag-washington","tag-weather","tag-white","tag-white-house","tag-who","tag-xi","tag-xi-jinping"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}