Chinese Spy Balloon: USA To Not Return Downed Balloon, President Biden Directs Military To Study It

The US Department of Defence has said the Chinese balloon it downed last week will not be returned to the home country. 

American figher planes shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the US territorial waters on Saturday. It entered the United States early last week from Canada and was shot after it exited the continental United States over the water off the coast of South Carolina in US airspace. 

China accepted ownership of the balloon but said it was a civilian weather research aircraft that had gone astray. The Joe Biden administration rejected the Chinese assertion and said it was a spy balloon. 

The Chinese spy balloon was not shot over the continental United States as the Biden administration assessed the debris could pose significant damage to people and property on the ground. The balloon was the size of three buses and carried large espionage-related payload.

US military collecting spy balloon debris

Following the downing of the Chiense spy balloon, the US military has intensified efforts to collect the debris. 

“I know of no such intention or plans to return it," said National Security Council Spokesman John Kirby, adding that the US military have recovered some remnants off the surface of the sea and they are still in the process of collecting them from under waters.

Before it was being shot down by a fighter jet on Saturday, Kirby said they had gathered enough vital information about the balloon.

“We're still analysing the information that we were able to collect off of the balloon before we shot it out of the sky and now we're going to recover it and I suspect we may learn even more," said Kirby.

Kirby said the balloon was not merely drifting but had propellers and steering to give a measure of control, even as it was swept along in high altitude jet stream winds.

He said, "It is true that this balloon had the ability to maneuver itself -- to speed up, to slow down and to turn. So it had propellers, it had a rudder, if you will, to allow it to change direction."

According to General Glen VanHerck, Commander of Northern Command, the balloon was up to 200 feet in height. It carried a payload weighing several thousand pounds, roughly the size of a regional jet aircraft, he said.

“China's, we believe, irresponsible action was visible for the American and the world to see. Not only that at the same time a second PRC surveillance balloon was seen traversing Latin America,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters at her daily news conference.

“It is up to China to show it is serious about its words of being a responsible country that it wants to build on the meeting that the president had with President Xi very recently. So it's up to China to figure out what kind of relationship that they want,” she said.

USA over-reacted instead of calm, professional response: China

In Beijing, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Tuesday reaffirmed that the unmanned airship posed no threat to the US and entered its airspace accidentally.

Mao again criticised the US for "overreacting" rather than adopting a "calm" and "professional" manner, and for using force in bringing the balloon down Saturday in the Atlantic Ocean just off the US coast.

Asked if China wanted the debris back, she reasserted that the balloon "belongs to China."

"The balloon does not belong to the US. The Chinese government will continue to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests," Mao said.

As the Chinese spy balloon floated over the continental America, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his trip to China.

USA to study Chinese spy balloon

According to Jean-Pierre, President Joe Biden directed the military, the intelligence community to collect against the balloon so that they would learn more about China's capabilities and tradecraft.

“At the same time we protected against Chinese intelligence collection because we knew exactly where the balloon was going,” she said.

“The military recommended taking the balloon down over water following the determination by military commanders that there was undue risk of debris causing harm to civilians while the balloon was over land in Alaska, Canada, or the continental United States,” she said.

“On Wednesday, the president directed the military to take it down at the first available opportunity when it could be done with safety, especially as we're thinking about Americans lives and being safe there, while maximising our ability to recover the payload,” she said.

Shooting the balloon down over water wasn't just the safest option, it maximised the chance of recovering the payload, giving the US a better chance to get information from the Chinese surveillance balloon payload.

“But I think the bottom line here and this is something that we want to make very clear, is that look, what China did was unacceptable,” Jean-Pierre said.

“We protected civilians and we gained more intel while protecting our own sensitive information,” she said.

State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told reporters that China knows precisely what it was.

“Ultimately, the course of action was one that was put forward and executed by the Department of Defence. When it comes to what we've heard from the PRC, I'm just not going to give that too much oxygen. Let me see if I can state it as clearly as I can, the PRC knows precisely what this was,” he said.

“The PRC (People’s Republic of China) knows precisely why this was in our airspace. The PRC knows precisely what this was doing over the United States. Ultimately the PRC knows precisely why we did what we did. The secretary made the point on Friday that if the shoe were on the other foot, if something analogous were to have happened within PRC airspace, you can only imagine the response from Beijing,” Price said.

“We learned quite a bit about it in the practice in general, the technology that was on board. There is an active effort underway to recover what is left of this high altitude surveillance balloon on the surface of the ocean. In the coming days, there will be an effort to collect what we can from the bottom of the ocean,” Price said.

(With AP inputs)