US concludes operation to recover downed Chinese spy balloon
Mike Brest
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The U.S. military ended its recovery efforts on Thursday of the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the country before being shot down earlier this month.
The Alaskan Region of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced on Friday that its recovery efforts concluded the day prior. The “final pieces of debris are being transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation, as has occurred with the previous surface and subsurface debris recovered.”
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U.S. military and intelligence officials began tracking the balloon as it lifted off from Hainan Island, which is near China’s south coast, according to the Washington Post. The expectation was that the balloon would travel over the U.S. territory of Guam but it took an unexpected turn north and eventually entered U.S. airspace over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, traveled into Canadian airspace, then reentered American airspace before traveling across the country.
The balloon gained notoriety when it was seen over Montana before it traveled east over a matter of days. An F-22 shot it down once it reached the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of South Carolina, on Feb. 4 due to concerns that bringing it down over U.S. territory posed a risk to civilians and civilian infrastructure.
“U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels have departed the area,” the statement added. “Air and maritime safety perimeters have been lifted.”
Since then, the U.S. has shot down three additional objects, though officials have said these more recent incidents are of a different nature. In order, the first of this group was shot down off the coast of Alaska near the Arctic Circle last Friday, in the Canadian Rockies in the Yukon region one day later, and over Lake Huron on Sunday.
“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were,” President Joe Biden said on Thursday. “But nothing right now suggests they’re related to China’s spy balloon program, or there were surveillance vehicles from any other country. The intelligence committee’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”
Officials have said the recovery efforts for the three objects will be difficult given the terrain and conditions where they were downed.
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The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade said on Tuesday that one of its balloons is missing and was last spotted at 12:48 a.m. on Saturday along an uninhabited island off the coast of Alaska, which tracks with when the Air Force shot down an object over the Yukon last Saturday.
“For now we are calling Pico Balloon K9YO Missing in Action,” the group wrote in a blog post.