A suspected Chinese spy balloon in the sky over Billings, Montana, on February 1
(Picture: CHASE DOAK/AFP via Getty Images)The three still-unidentified aerial objects shot down over the US in the past week were likely “benign”, the White House has said.
The US on Tuesday drew a distinction between them and the massive Chinese balloon that was shot down a week ago, after it traversed America with a suspected goal of surveillance.
The nation has been racing to identify the three mystery flying objects it downed shortly after taking down the initial ‘spy balloon’.
But on Tuesday, White House national security spokesman John Kirby said: “The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose.”
The White House said the objects differed in size and manoeuverability from the Chinese surveillance balloon that US fighter jets shot down earlier this month, but that their altitude was low enough to pose a risk to civilian air traffic.
Questions remain about what the objects were, who sent them and how the US might respond to unidentified airborne objects in the future.
Questions about the original balloon - including what spying capabilities it had and whether it was transmitting signals as it flew over sensitive military sites in the US - also remain unanswered.
The original balloon was believed by American intelligence to have initially been on a track toward the US territory of Guam, according to a US official.
The US tracked it for several days after it left China, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It appears to have been blown off its initial trajectory and ultimately flew over the continental US, the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have been previously spotted over Guam, a strategic hub for the US Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It is unclear how much control China retained over the balloon once it veered from its original trajectory.
Even less is known about the three objects shot down over three successive days, from Friday to Sunday, in part because it has been challenging to recover debris from remote locations in the Canadian Yukon, off northern Alaska and near the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on Lake Huron.
So far, officials have no indication they were part of a bigger surveillance operation along with the balloon that that was shot down off the South Carolina coast on February 4.
“We don’t see anything that points right now to being part of the PRC spy balloon program,” Mr Kirby told reporters, referring to the People’s Republic of China. He added it is also not likely the objects were “intelligence collection against the United States of any kind”.
No country or private company has come forward to claim any of the objects, Mr Kirby said. They do not appear to have been operated by the US government.
His comments on Tuesday marked a clear effort by the White House to draw a line between the balloon, which officials believe was part of a Chinese military programme that has operated over five continents, and objects that the administration thinks could simply be part of some research or commercial effort.
In Washington, Pentagon officials met with senators for a classified briefing on the shootdowns. Lawmakers conveyed concerns from their constituents about a need to keep them informed and came away assured the objects were not extraterrestrial in nature but wanting many more details.
Mr Biden has ordered National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to form an interagency team to study the detection, analysis and “disposition of unidentified aerial objects” that could pose either safety or security risks.
The recent objects have also drawn the attention of world leaders including in Canada, where one was shot down on Saturday.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Monday said fighter jets are on standby to be launched within minutes to shoot down Chinese spy balloons if they are flown over Britain.
