The US has finished work to recover sunken remnants of the Chinese balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina and the debris reinforces that it was for spying, officials have said. The White House national security spokesman, John Kirby, said the wreckage included “electronics and optics” but declined to say what the US had learned from it so far. “It’s a significant amount [of recovered material], including the payload structure as well as some of the electronics and the optics, and all that’s now at the FBI laboratory…
Tag: US military
Object downed by US missile may have been amateur hobbyists’ $12 balloon
A group of amateur balloon enthusiasts in Illinois might have solved the mystery of one of the unknown flying objects shot down by the US military last week, a saga that had captivated the nation. The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade says one of its hobby craft went “missing in action” over Alaska on 11 February, the same day a US F-22 jet downed an unidentified airborne entity not far away above Canada’s Yukon territory. In a blogpost, the group did not link the two events. But the trajectory of…
Chinese spy balloon may have been blown off intended course – report
The US is reportedly examining the possibility that the Chinese spy balloon was pushed off course by strong winds when it entered US airspace, having tracked it since its launch days earlier. Of the four flying objects shot down by the US in recent weeks, only the first has been attributed to Chinese surveillance efforts. The balloon took off from China’s Hainan island, before travelling on a path which appeared to go over Guam, according to the Washington Post on Tuesday. It then took an “unexpected” turn to the north,…
Three objects shot down by US jets may be ‘benign’ balloons, White House says
Three unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets since Friday may turn out to be balloons connected to “benign” commercial or research efforts, a White House official said on Tuesday. The US has not found any evidence to connect the objects to China’s balloon surveillance program nor to any other country’s spy program, national security council spokesperson, John Kirby, told reporters. “We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China’s] spying program, or…
Wrath and awe: a short history of balloons and their power to fire up mob fury | Jeff Sparrow
On 16 December 1784 – barely a year after the first crewed flight – a British cartoonist published a sketch entitled The Battle of the Balloons, depicting airships belonging to the leading powers of the day firing cannons at each other from among the clouds. In his book Falling Upwards, Richard Holmes adduces the drawing as evidence of the intimate relationship between balloons and military competition, with, for instance, the first French company of aeronauts formed on the remarkably early date of 29 March 1794. Today we might contemplate another…
Tuesday briefing: Why is the US suddenly spying so many UFOs?
Good morning. UFOs are being shot down over North America, and one of them is octagonal. OK, that’s a slightly breathless account of events since a Chinese balloon was sighted over Montana 10 days ago, and aliens probably aren’t involved – but the full story is almost as interesting. After that first balloon was brought down and US secretary of state Anthony Blinken postponed a trip to Beijing in response, three other mysterious objects have been taken out in US and Canadian airspace in the last few days – the…
China has been spying on US and allies via balloon for years, White House says
China has been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years, the White House said on Monday as it answered questions about a series of mysterious objects shot down by the US military over an eight-day period in North American airspace. The surveillance program, according to John Kirby, the US national security council spokesperson, dated back to at least the administration of Donald Trump, which he said was oblivious to it. “It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect…
US shoots down ‘octagonal’ flying object near military sites in Michigan
The US military has shot down a third flying object over North American airspace in three days, as the air force general overseeing the airspace said he would not rule out any explanation for the objects yet. The high-altitude unidentified object, described as an “octagonal structure” with strings attached to it, was shot down over Lake Huron in Michigan on Sunday. It is understood to have been the same item that was picked up by radar over Montana on Saturday. At the point it was struck by an air-to-air missile…
Ongoing detention of accused former US marine an ‘affront to Australia’s rule of law’, wife says
The wife of detained Australian citizen and former US Marines fighter pilot Daniel Duggan has described his ongoing incarceration – now at 115 days – as “inhumane” and an “affront to Australia’s rule of law”. Saffrine Duggan will petition the United Nations human rights committee to intervene in her husband’s detention. He is confined to a 2x4m cell in Sydney’s Silverwater prison and classified as an “extreme high-risk restricted inmate” without justification, she says. The US is seeking Duggan’s extradition on charges of arms trafficking and money laundering more than…
Schumer says Chinese ‘humiliated’ after three flying objects shot down
US and Canadian military are continuing to search by sea and land amid hostile weather conditions in a scramble to recover portions of three flying objects shot down over North American airspace in the past week. The Democratic majority leader of the US Senate, Chuck Schumer, told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that officials were now convinced that all three of the flying objects brought down by air-to-air missiles this week were balloons. He put the finger of blame firmly on China. “The Chinese were humiliated – I think the…