US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the balloon shot down by the US over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday was being used by the Chinese government “to monitor strategic locations in the continental United States”, according to CNN. The balloon appears to symbolize a more aggressive — if unclear — espionage tactic compared to satellite spying and the theft of industrial and defense secrets, Reuters quoted security experts as saying.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday authorized the Pentagon to shoot down the surveillance balloon “as soon as the mission can be accomplished without undue risk to American lives,” Austin said after the military shot down the plane on Saturday.

“The Department of Defense developed options to safely descend the balloon over our territorial waters while we closely monitored its route and intelligence gathering,” Austin continued, adding that military leadership was coordinating the mission with the Canadian government.

“Today’s deliberate and lawful actions demonstrate that President Biden and his national security team will always put the safety and security of the American people first by responding effectively to (the People’s Republic of China’s) unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” Austin said.

China’s hot air balloon over the US is seen as a bold but clumsy espionage tactic

Both the United States and China have used surveillance satellites to monitor each other from the air for decades. But the Chinese balloons — a White House official said this week was not the first such episode — have some officials in Washington worried.

“It’s more amateurish in some ways,” said former White House national security adviser John Bolton.

“Their satellites’ cameras aren’t high enough resolution that they have to send up a balloon?”

The story of the hot air balloon comes as China builds up its military capabilities and challenges the American military presence in the Pacific. The United States also believes that Beijing regularly seeks information and knowledge from American companies.

China said the balloon flew into US airspace for civilian meteorological and scientific purposes, accusing US politicians and media on Saturday of using the situation to discredit China. He has previously rejected accusations of espionage and said the United States has a Cold War mentality and exaggerates the “threat of China.”

The balloon discovered this week appeared deliberately provocative, said Ding Cheng, senior adviser for the China program at the US Institute of Peace.

“It’s a way to see how the other side reacts, not in a military sense. But politically, what do you do about it? Keep silent? If in fact there were more of them and this is not the first time, then an interesting question arises. What happened to the previous ones? Did we beat them?” he said.

Mike Rounds, a Republican member of the US Senate Armed Services Committee, told Fox News that it would be good to recover the balloon to see “whether it was intended to actually collect data or to test our response capabilities.”

Andrew Antonio, co-founder of high-altitude balloon startup Urban Sky, said the wind currents that high-altitude balloons depend on for long-distance travel are less favorable in winter, suggesting that China’s intentions may not have been aimed at any specific location in The United States.

“To specifically target a specific military base with this balloon after a launch in China in January or February in the Northern Hemisphere is very difficult, if not impossible,” Antonio said, suggesting that the balloon’s space adventure in American air could be the result of a botched experiment. .

The remains of the reconnaissance balloon shot down by the F-22 will be quickly recovered

The US military said on Saturday it would try to quickly recover key components of a Chinese surveillance balloon after it was shot down by an F-22 fighter jet off the East Coast.

“This recovery is ongoing. How long that will take remains to be determined,” a senior US defense official told reporters, adding that the wreckage was in relatively shallow water.

A senior military official said he expected the recovery would not take weeks or months, but would be swift.