February 14, 2023
By Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali
The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina, U.S. February 4, 2023. REUTERS/Randall Hill
WASHINGTON, Feb 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Monday
it had recovered critical electronics from the suspected Chinese spy balloon
downed by a U.S. fighter jet off South Carolina's coast on Feb. 4, including
key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering.
"Crews have been able to
recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor
and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the
structure," the U.S. military's Northern Command said in a statement.
The Chinese balloon, which
Beijing denies was a government spy vessel, spent a week flying over the United
States and Canada before President Joe Biden ordered it shot down. The episode
strained ties between Washington and Beijing, leading America's top diplomat to
postpone a trip to China.
It also led to the U.S. military scouring the skies for other objects that were not being captured by radar, leading to an unprecedented three shootdowns in the three days between Friday and Sunday.
The U.S. military and the Biden administration have acknowledged
that much about the most recent, unmanned objects remains unknown, including
how they stay aloft, who built them and whether they may have been collecting
intelligence.
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin sought to calm Americans on Monday about the risks posed by the
unidentified objects.
"I want to reassure
Americans that these objects do not present a military threat to anyone on the
ground," Austin said, speaking to reporters as he landed in Brussels for a
NATO gathering.
"They do, however, present a risk to civil aviation and
potentially an intelligence collection threat."
The U.S. military has said that
targeting the latest objects has been more difficult than shooting down the
Chinese spy balloon, given the smaller size and the objects' lack of a
traditional radar signature.
In an example of the difficulty,
the latest shootdown of an unidentified object on Sunday by an F-16 fighter jet
took two sidewinder missiles - after one of them failed to down the target, a
U.S. official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Austin said the U.S. military has
not yet recovered any debris from the three most recent objects shot down,
one of which fell off the coast of Alaska in ice and snow. Another shootdown
occurred over the Yukon territory in Canada.
U.S. officials have declined to
connect the incidents.
But Canadian Prime Minister
Justin Trudeau said on Monday that the four aerial objects shot down in recent
days were somehow connected, without elaborating.
"Obviously there is some
sort of pattern in there, the fact we are seeing this in a significant degree
over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention," Trudeau
told reporters in a news conference in Whitehorse, Yukon's capital.
Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali in Washington Editing
by Matthew Lewis
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-military-says-it-recovers-key-sensors-downed-chinese-spy-balloon-2023-02-14/
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