US officials believe that the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down by a US fighter jet last Saturday was part of a global fleet.
The 60m-tall balloon that was spotted in US airspace was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, sparking a diplomatic feud which saw US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, cancel a trip to China. This would have been the first such high-level US-China meeting in years.
US Naval and Coast Guard ships are still working to recover debris from the balloon in the hopes of better understanding what the balloon was capable of. It is believed, however, that the US has been able to glean some information regarding the balloon.
Blinken announced on Wednesday that the ‘United States was not the only target of this broader program’, adding that the US had shared information gathered from the debris with a number of other countries.
At a Wednesday news conference, Defence Department spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder echoed Blinken, confirming that the US believed similar balloons had operated over South America, South East Asia, East Asia, and Europe.
‘We’ve learned a lot about these balloons and how to track them’, said General Ryder, before expressing his confidence that the US had the ability ‘to be on the look-out for these kinds of capabilities’.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that unnamed US officials believe the alleged surveillance balloon project is being operated from the Chinese coastal province of Hainan.
Chinese authorities maintain that the balloon was a weather device blown astray, denying it was being used for spying purposes.
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