The airship, which Pentagon officials characterized as an attempt by Beijing to collect intelligence on the U.S. military, was shot down off the South Carolina coast.
By Ellen Nakashima, Alex Horton, Dan Lamothe and
A U.S. fighter jet, acting on an order from President Biden, downed a Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, the Pentagon said, ending what senior administration officials contend was an audacious attempt by Beijing to collect intelligence on sensitive American military sites.
Biden had authorized the takedown on Wednesday, instructing the Pentagon to act “as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path,” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement confirming the operation. The president, in brief remarks to reporters, said: “They successfully took it down. And I want to compliment our aviators who did it.”
With a single missile fired from an F-22 Raptor, the craft was taken down at 2:39 p.m., shortly after the Federal Aviation Administration ordered ground stops for all flights in and out of Wilmington, N.C., Myrtle Beach, S.C., and Charleston, S.C. The agency lifted the order less than an hour later.
Videos taken by onlookers showed shredded remnants of the balloon falling, leaving a white plume in its wake. One witness described hearing a “boom.”
The days-long ordeal has caused a political furor in Washington and placed new strains on what was already a fraught relationship between the two world powers, leading the Biden administration to announce on Friday it was postponing a trip to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. With efforts to recover and examine the downed craft now underway, friction between the two governments is expected to continue as the administration presses for answers and China insists the incursion was innocuous and unintended.
A U.S. military aircraft on Feb. 4 downed the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that had been floating over the United States for several days. (Video: Brett Adair)
“This is 100 percent their fault, their problem, and they’ve got to answer for it,” said one U.S. official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity citing the matter’s sensitivity.
U.S. officials spoke with their Chinese counterparts after the balloon was shot down.
The Chinese government, which has claimed the balloon was merely collecting weather data before being blown off course, called the vessel’s downing “a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice” and said it “reserves the right to make further responses if necessary.”
The discovery of this military spy balloon and others — the presence of a second craft loitering over Latin America was disclosed on Friday, and officials say there is likely a third operating elsewhere — is highly embarrassing to the Chinese.
A second official said that Beijing was “freaked” by the incident. “They’re in a very tough place,” this person said. “And they have very few cards to play right now.”
The balloon was struck by an air-to-air Sidewinder missile at an altitude of 60,000 to 65,000 feet by a jet that had flown from Joint Base Langley-Eustis in southeastern Virginia, top Defense Department officials told reporters in a conference call.
The Raptor pilot’s call sign, Frank 01, was a nod to World War I ace Frank Luke Jr., known as “the Arizona Balloon Buster” for destroying German observation balloons and enemy planes. The historical connection was reported by the War Zone. The plane was joined in the operation by other aircraft, including F-15s from Barnes Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts and tanker planes from several states.
Soon after, an array of Coast Guard and Navy vessels descended on the debris field to recover as much as possible from the balloon, they said.
The balloon went down off the coast of South Carolina in relatively shallow waters, about 47 feet deep, which should make recovery easier, a senior military official said. A Navy salvage vessel will arrive within a couple of days, with FBI counterintelligence officials aboard, the official said, adding that it will probably include divers and unmanned underwater vessels.
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Yasmeen Abutaleb and Josh Dawsey in Washington and Christian Shepherd in Taipei contributed to this report.
The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the South Carolina coast on Saturday. (Randall Hill/Reuters)
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