The Pentagon is now monitoring a Chinese reconnaissance balloon flying high over US territory. This was reported by a high-ranking official of the US Ministry of Defense on Thursday. The balloon will not be shot down yet due to the possible risk of falling debris.
US authorities have been tracking the balloon since it entered US airspace via Canada several days ago, including monitoring it with manned military aircraft. The balloon would be in the stratosphere. “It is obviously a surveillance balloon and its trajectory is currently over sensitive sites,” particularly nuclear bunkers, the anonymous official said.
The balloon is now reported to be over Montana, in the western United States. He had been flying in US airspace for several days, the source said, but had been under surveillance for some time.
The Pentagon, at the request of President Joe Biden, investigated the possibility of shooting down the balloon, but decided against it because of the possible risk of falling debris, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We determined that it was so large that the debris could have caused damage if it had hit a residential area,” it reads. However, due to its high altitude, the balloon poses no threat to aircraft. to the Pentagon.
Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said only that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) was monitoring the balloon’s movements. According to the spokesman, the device poses “no military or physical danger to people on the ground”.
This is not the first time that the airspace has been violated in this way. This time the balloon will stay over the US longer than usual. Washington is in contact with Beijing over the incident, which shows how far the two superpowers will go to spy on each other amid rising tensions.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken plans to visit China in a few days. It is not yet known if any changes will be made to those travel plans as a result of the observation balloon detection.
Source : HLN
