Pentagon releases photos of downed Chinese balloon
Mike Brest
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The Department of Defense shared photos of the military’s recovery effort for the downed Chinese spy balloon on Tuesday.
“Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach South Carolina, Feb. 5, 2023,” the U.S. Fleet Forces tweeted Tuesday morning, noting that the photos were taken on Sunday.
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The military shot down the Chinese balloon last Saturday once it reached the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas — a week after it first entered U.S. airspace over the Aleutian Islands. Senior military leaders advised President Joe Biden that they should not shoot it down over land due to the concerns for civilians and civilian infrastructure given the balloon’s significant size.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said the assessment was that the actual balloon was “up to 200 feet tall,” while he described the payload “as a jet airliner type of size, maybe a regional jet” and said it probably weighed “in excess of a couple thousand pounds.”
The USS Carter Hall has been focused on “collecting debris and categorizing the debris since arrival,” VanHerck told reporters on Monday, adding that the USS Pathfinder is focused on using unmanned underwater vehicles to “eventually produce us a map” of the suspected debris field.
The debris landed in water that is roughly 50 feet deep, according to Pentagon officials.
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby told reporters on Monday, “They have recovered some remnants off the surface of the sea,” adding that the “weather conditions did not permit much undersea surveillance of the debris field yesterday. They think the debris field is about 15 football fields by 15 football fields square. And so it’s sizable, but they’ve identified that, and they think that in perhaps even today, but certainly in the coming days, they’ll be able to get down there and take a better look at what’s on the bottom of the ocean.”
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Defense officials are hopeful they will be able to gain intelligence of the Chinese surveillance balloon program from the remnants.
“There was a potential opportunity for us to collect intel where we had gaps on prior balloons,” VanHerck explained. “And so I would defer to the intel community, but this gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed. And I think you’ll see in the future that the time frame was well worth its value to collect over.”
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