US downs Chinese balloon, prompting protests from Beijing

The US shot down an alleged Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday (Feb 4), injecting new tension into relations with Beijing which called the move an overreaction. 

President Joe Biden said he ordered the Pentagon on Wednesday to down the balloon as soon as possible “without doing damage to anyone on the ground”. The military decided the best window was on Saturday while it was over the Atlantic within US territorial waters, capping days of waiting as it traversed the country. 

China protested the downing and said it reserves the right for any necessary reaction, according to a foreign ministry statement on Sunday. It said the US violated international practices after an accidental incursion of the balloon that was for civilian use.

China didn’t get advance notice of the plan to shoot down the balloon. US officials communicated to Beijing that they’d reserve the right to take such action, but didn’t follow up with more details about the plan once it was decided.

“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,” Biden told reporters. 

The balloon, along with another observed transiting Central and South America, had surveillance equipment not usually associated with standard meteorological activities or civilian research as claimed by China, a senior US administration official said on Saturday. Its route over the US near many potentially sensitive sites also contradicted the Chinese government’s explanation that it was a weather balloon, the official said. 

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News of the balloon entering US airspace led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a visit to China to meet President Xi Jinping and prompted growing calls from Republicans, including former president Donald Trump, to shoot it down. On its way, the balloon passed over Montana, home to intercontinental ballistic missile silos. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said China was using the balloon “in an attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States” and the US plan to take it down involved “closely monitoring its path and intelligence collection activities”.

Officials expect US-China relations to be difficult moving forward, but said that both countries have reasons to put the incident behind them. The second Chinese balloon spotted in Latin America that defence officials said was also conducting espionage activities is not a concern to the US, a person familiar with the matter said.

US officials expect to learn more about the balloon’s capabilities from a recovery operation under way off the coast, where US vessels are on site. 

A single missile from an F-22 fighter jet brought down the balloon at 2.39 pm Eastern time, using the first available opportunity to bring it down without harming Americans, according to two senior officials who briefed reporters. The F-22 was flying at about 58,000 feet when it fired an Aim-9X Sidewinder missile at the balloon at between 60,000 and 65,000 feet, the officials said.

That followed an odyssey that took it into Alaskan airspace on Jan 28, into a swing over Canada two days later and back over the US on Jan 31. The overflight had intelligence value to the US by allowing officials to study and scrutinise the balloon and its equipment along the way, a defence official said. The US also took steps to mitigate the balloon’s intelligence gathering, the official said.

The military action shows that the administration is “responding effectively to the PRC’s unacceptable violation of our sovereignty”, Austin said in a statement, referring to the People’s Republic of China.

Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said the joint North American Aerospace Defense Command, known as Norad, was “tracking and analysing the trajectory and actions of the high-altitude surveillance balloon”.

Canada “unequivocally supports the actions taken”, she said in a statement.

The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily closed a section of US airspace along the Carolina coast and ordered a halt to arrivals and departures at four airports on Saturday to allow for the military to conduct its operation.

On Friday, the Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed that the high-altitude balloon belonged to China, but said that it was a civilian airship conducting climate research and accidentally blew off course. The Pentagon rejected that explanation, saying the balloon carried surveillance equipment and was manoeuvrable.

Blinken’s trip to China starting from Sunday had been meant to build on diplomacy between Biden and Xi at last year’s Group of 20 summit. Blinken said he will visit Beijing when conditions are appropriate, without elaborating what that would entail. BLOOMBERG