President Joe Biden defended his decision to shoot down a Chinese surveillance balloon but promised on Thursday “sharper rules” for handling unidentified aerial objects.
The military is still working to recover the wreckage from three objects shot down in U.S. and Canadian airspace last weekend. Biden said the intelligence community believes they are likely tied to private companies or scientific research, and are unrelated to the Chinese balloon that crossed the country earlier this month and was downed off the coast of South Carolina, where salvage efforts remain underway.
“We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in number of objects in the sky,” Biden said. “We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because of the steps we’ve taken.”
