OUR American the army extracted from the sea “important” components from Chinese balloon that was shot down a few days ago, the Pentagon said. According to the US Department of Defense, the US military found electronic components off the coast of South Carolina, including sensors that may have been used to collect information.

The Chinese balloon, which the US says was a spy balloon, and Beijing denies the allegations, flew over the United States and Canada for a week before US President Joe Biden ordered it shot down. The episode escalated tensions between Washington and Beijing, prompting State Department Secretary Anthony Blinken to postpone his trip to China. This was followed by the downing of three other “flying objects” between Friday and Sunday over North America.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tried to reassure Americans on Monday about the danger of unidentified objects. “I want to assure Americans that these facilities do not pose a military threat to anyone on earth,” he told reporters as he landed in Brussels for a NATO summit. “However, they pose a danger to civil aviation and could potentially become a threat to intelligence gathering,” he added.

Shooting down the other three objects was more difficult than shooting down a Chinese balloon, according to the US military, given their smaller size and the inability to determine their location using radar.

According to the US Secretary of Defense, no debris was recovered from the last three downed objects. One of the objects fell into ice and snow off the coast of Alaska, while another crashed in the Yukon Territory in Canada.

US officials have not established any connection between the incidents. But Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Monday that the four flying objects shot down in recent days are connected in some way, without going into details. “Obviously there is a pattern, the fact that we are seeing it to a large extent is of interest and special attention,” Trudeau said.

^{According to REUTERS}