The Chinese balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina was part of a large surveillance programme that China has been running for "a number of years," the Pentagon has claimed.
Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, said in a news conference Wednesday that similar balloons flew over American soil four times during the Trump and Biden administrations,
The United States did not instantly recognise them as Chinese spy balloons, but was able to identify they were involved in a Chinese surveillance operation and learn "a lot more" through "subsequent intelligence analysis," Ryder said.
