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.
Ryder didn't reveal more information on the earlier balloons, except that they passed over "spots that might be of interest to the Chinese".
The balloon was shot down by a U.S. military fighter jet on Saturday. The Navy and Coast Guard are still working to recover pieces of the downed balloon so they can be analyzed.
China claims it was a civilian balloon used for meteorological research and sharply criticized the US for shooting it down.
In response to questions about China's explanation, Ryder said Wednesday: “I can assure you this was not for civilian purposes...we are 100% clear about that.”
Major General Kenneth Hara, the adjutant general in Hawaii, tweeted about a balloon over Kauai a year ago.
He said US Indo-Pacific Command “detected a high-altitude object floating in the air in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands” and sent up aircraft to intercept it.
He said they visually confirmed it was an unmanned balloon with no identification markings.
Ryder declined to confirm whether this was one of the four previous incidents that the US had discussed. Pacific Air Forces, the Air Force command in the Indo-Pacific, said that the balloon was not shot down.
Ryder said North American Aerospace Defense Command began tracking the balloon as it approached US airspace.
It passed north of the Aleutian Islands on January 28 and moved largely over land across Alaska and then into Canadian airspace before crossing back into the US over northern Idaho on January 31, US officials have said.
Top administration officials were briefing members of Congress on the Chinese balloon surveillance program in classified sessions on Wednesday and Thursday.
Avril Haines, director of national intelligence; Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman; General Glen VanHerck, head of U.S. Northern Command; and Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defence for policy, were among those expected to brief lawmakers.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the US has briefed dozens of countries on the program, which officials said has been active over five continents.
“The United States was not the only target,” he said at a news conference with visiting NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg.
Blinken said he and Stoltenberg had spoken about the “systemic and tactical challenges” that China poses to the alliance and the importance of combatting them.
The foreign countries would include nations the US believes have been surveilled in the past and NATO allies.
Stoltenberg agreed on the nature of the Chinese threat, saying the balloon incident “confirms a pattern of Chinese behaviour" and noting that Beijing had “invested heavily in new military capabilities, including different types of surveillance and intelligence platforms.”
“We have also seen increased Chinese intelligence activities in Europe,” he said. “We just have to be vigilant. We need to be aware of the constant risk of Chinese intelligence and step up what we do to protect ourselves.”
Those briefings continued Wednesday, and the State Department sent a cable to all US embassies and consulates outlining the administration’s case against China and instructing American diplomats to discuss these points with their host governments.
owever, the cable is less specific than what has been briefed to allies and partners.
Off the South Carolina coast, meanwhile, Navy divers began pulling pieces of the downed Chinese spy balloon from the depths of the ocean floor on Tuesday, using sophisticated reconnaissance drones dubbed the Kingfish and the Swordfish to locate the debris.
Ryder said agents from the FBI and the Naval Criminal Investigative Service are cataloguing the debris and transporting it for further processing.
