New Chinese balloon flies over Latin American countries 0:43
(CNN) --
The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden ordered the military to shoot down what he described as a "high-altitude object" that was flying over Alaska earlier that day.
"The Department of Defense has been tracking a high-altitude object over Alaskan airspace in the last 24 hours," National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby told reporters when asked about the rumors. of another alleged Chinese spy balloon.
The high-altitude object, Kirby said, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet (12 kilometers) and "posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight."
He continued: “Out of an abundance of caution and on the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to shoot down the object, which they did.
And it came within our territorial waters, and those waters right now are frozen, but within territorial airspace and over territorial waters.
Fighter jets assigned to US Northern Command shot down the object in the last hour."
The object, Kirby added, was shot down with US Northern Command fighter jets.
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ANALYSIS |
The United States says that Xi Jinping did not know about the balloon.
That raises even more questions.
Kirby also offered some naming guidance on the object, which the US does not refer to as a balloon and has yet to attribute to China or any other entity.
“We call this an object because that's the best description we have at the moment.
We don't know who owns it, whether it's state owned, corporate or private, we just don't know,” Kirby said.
It added: “We do not have any information confirming a stated purpose for this object.
We hope to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we believe to be frozen water.
So there will be a recovery effort and hopefully it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it."
The object was "much, much smaller" than China's suspected spy balloon, Kirby said, comparing it to "about the size of a small car."
The balloon shot down last Saturday was described by US officials as being about the size of three buses.
Biden "was absolutely involved in this decision" and ordered it on the recommendation of Pentagon leadership, Kirby said.
Joe Biden
