Air Force Gen. Glen D. VanHerck of the U.S. Northern Command provided worrisome information on a Chinese spy balloon found in American airspace on Monday, underscoring the growing danger of foreign espionage and cyberattacks to our country.
He revealed in a recent insightful news conference that the inflatable device had been purposefully fitted with explosives to guarantee its demise. Approximately two hundred feet tall and several thousand pounds in weight – an impressive sight that destroyed itself at the end of mission – along with cargo roughly equivalent to what you would find onboard a jetliner!
TRENDING: NEW Trump Diamond Bills Will Drive Liberals Crazy!
“Because the president decided they wouldn’t shoot it down until he could do so safely, and that meant over water, that afforded us a terrific opportunity to gain a better understanding, to study the capabilities of this balloon,” he told reporters on a call.
“His description followed a briefing by National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who defended President Joe Biden’s decision to wait and shoot down the Chinese craft until it was over South Carolina’s coastline on Saturday,” the Daily Mail reported. “Biden ordered the balloon shot down Wednesday, but the U.S. military held off until Saturday, with the Air Force sending an F-22 fighter jet armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile to do the job.”
Last week, a Chinese surveillance balloon made an uninvited entry into US airspace, and Joe Biden’s handling of the situation drew criticism. The President’s reaction to this national security lapse was criticized by a former senior U.S. Army general, who deemed it unsuitable given the circumstances.
After meandering across much of the US before being shot down over South Carolina on Saturday, Gen. Keane blasted the Biden administration for failing to intercept a wayward military balloon sooner.
Following the splashing of a large helium balloon in the Atlantic, Keane wryly made his comments in an interview with Fox News.
“Remember, this was approaching the United States over water,” he said. “It was approaching the Aleutian Islands over water. And we had plenty of opportunity to take it down then. And that’s when it should have happened. We had to be tracking it from mainland China across the Pacific Ocean, and we had plenty of warning to put together an operation that we are conducting now on the east coast that should have been done there.”
WATCH:
Here is a portion of the text:
ARTHEL NEVILLE, FOX NEWS HOST: Yeah, I heard your last point there. And I want to say, as we’re watching this exclusive coverage of this Chinese spy balloon going down there over Surfside Beach, South Carolina, if you could talk to us about what happened in terms of coordinating this to get to this point now, General Keane.
GENERAL JACK KEANE: Well, we’ve had all of our sensors watching this, you know, for some time. And certainly our military capability that was going to be involved got alerted. People have been planning it likely for a couple of days. I’m assuming the president, you know, made a decision within the last 24 hours to take this out. They probably presented him with a number of options of where the best place to do it, certainly heading to the East Coast, which is considerably more populated than Montana was. It was probably ruled out that they would do anything over land. If they weren’t willing to do it over Montana, they’re certainly not going to do it on the East coast of the United States or in transit to the East Coast. And they’re taking advantage of obviously doing this safely in terms of civilians.
Despite the complexity of reining in a balloon moving at high speed, the U.S military was able to give it their best shot – and succeed! However, retrieving its cargo may be challenging due to size and weight considerations; but ultimately we managed what needed doing from jump street with this uninvited guest travelling over water towards our territory near Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
Although there were early warning indications, the operation that is now being carried out on the east coast of America was not started until it had crossed the Pacific Ocean. With greater planning and prompt action, we may have avoided missing a critical chance to take preventative actions before this disaster developed.
According to The New York Post, China expressed shocking threats of additional action via diplomatic channels after a hot-air balloon went down in its airspace.
Why bother to take it down, after traveling across our country, they got all the information they wanted. It was a waste of ammunition.