BREAKING The US has shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off America's east coast. Read more here
: A suspected Chinese spy balloon that has been flying across the US has been shot down off America’s east coast in a mission authorised days ago by President Joe Biden.
“They decided that the best time to do that was when it got over the water,” he said. “They successfully took it down, and I want to compliment our aviators who did it, and we’ll have more to report on this a little later.” The discovery of the first balloon alarmed US officials and prompted widespread calls to immediately take it down, including from former US president Donald Trump, former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and far-right politicians such as Marjorie Taylor Greene.
However, the US has rejected this explanation, noting that the balloon had been floating over sensitive military sites in Montana, a western US state that has about 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos, before moving eastward over central US.Credit:In a statement on Saturday after the balloon was shot down, Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin said it “was being used by the PRC in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States.
“If this were an American asset over Chinese airspace, do you think they’d hesitate for one second to shoot that down?” he said.
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