A U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) official said Tuesday there was no evidence that a mysterious balloon detected off the coast of Hawaii on April 28 belongs to China or any other hostile foreign power.
The official reiterated DOD’s judgment that the balloon poses no threat to aviation safety or U.S. national security.
DOD said on Monday the balloon was floating at 36,000 feet when it entered U.S. airspace over Hawaii. The balloon did not transit over any sensitive facilities, unlike the Chinese spy balloon that caused an uproar in February, and since it posed no threat to commercial aviation, the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down.
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“Based on these observations, the Secretary of Defense concurred with the recommendation of his military commanders that no action need be taken against the balloon,” a DOD spokesperson said on Monday, alluding to somewhat more stringent standards for taking action that were imposed after several other objects were shot down over Alaska and Canada in the wake of the Chinese spy balloon debacle.
President Joe Biden said he personally authorized the destruction of three other objects in February “due to hazards to civilian commercial air traffic, and because we could not rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities.”
Critics suspected the Biden administration was reacting to polls that showed a hefty majority of the American people felt the huge Chinese balloon was a blatant challenge to U.S. sovereignty, and Biden waited far too long to destroy it.
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The shootdowns were accomplished with AIM-9x Sidewinder missiles, which cost over $400,000 apiece — and one of them missed, requiring a second launch to destroy the target.
The U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said it launched three F-22 fighters to “assess the situation” near Hawaii and visually identify the balloon before the decision was made to leave it alone.
The DOD official who discussed the incident on Tuesday said the balloon has now passed out of U.S. airspace, but the U.S. military and Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) are still tracking its movements.
“Ownership of the balloon is unknown, but there is no indication that it was maneuvering or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor. The balloon did not transit directly over defense critical infrastructure or other U.S. Government sensitive sites, nor did it pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” the FAA said on Monday.
Ownership of the balloon remains unclear, as it does not appear to have any distinguishing markings. To date, no government or private industry has claimed the object.
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