US president Joe Biden has said he will act to defend his country’s “sovereignty” after shooting down a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the weekend.
In his State of the Union address to Congress on Tuesday evening, Mr Biden said: “Make no mistake: as we made clear last week, if China’s threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.”
US warplanes shot down the gigantic airship off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday after mounting criticism from Republicans over the federal government’s response.
Mr Biden had refrained from attacking the craft as it slowly drifted across the US during the preceding week, reportedly because he was advised by the Pentagon that the benefits of doing so did not outweigh the risks to civilians underneath its flight path.
Chinese officials claimed the craft was merely a civilian weather balloon that had gone off course by accident. After it was shot down, they criticised the US for overreacting, saying: “The Chinese government will continue to resolutely safeguard its legitimate rights and interests.”
The balloon first entered US airspace over Alaska on Saturday 28 January, before crossing Canada and then drifting into Idaho on Tuesday 31 January.
Over the course of that week, it drifted over Idaho and then Montana, where the US keeps many of its long-range nuclear missiles, before clearing the South Carolina coast and heading out to sea.
Mr Biden’s opponents in the Republican Party made hay with the incident, claiming the balloon’s appearance was part of “a crisis in America” and even suggesting that the craft contained “bioweapons”.
GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene announced she would bring a white balloon to the State of the Union address, joking: “It’s just an innocent balloon.”
However, the Biden administration and senior military officials said that similar surveillance airships had flown across the USA before, including at least three times during Donald Trump’s presidency, without being identified at the time.
