US President Joe Biden said Thursday he is developing “tougher rules” for tracking, monitoring and potentially shooting down unknown aerial objects, following three weeks of high-stakes drama sparked by the discovery of a suspected balloon. Chinese spy transiting through much of the country. .
The president has ordered national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an “interagency team” to review US procedures after the US shot down the Chinese balloon, as well as three other objects Biden said the US had. The US now believes they are likely to be “benign” released objects. by private companies or research institutions.
While he did not regret taking down the three as-yet-unidentified objects, Biden said he hoped the new rules would help “distinguish between those likely to pose security risks that require action and those who don’t.”
“Make no mistake, if any object poses a threat to the safety of the American people, I will shoot it down,” he added, repeating the cited legal justification for the shootdowns: that the objects, flying between 20,000 and 40,000 feet, posed a remote risk to civil aircraft.
The downing of the Chinese surveillance craft was the first known peacetime downing of an unauthorized object in US airspace, a feat that was repeated three times a week later.
Biden harshly criticized China’s surveillance program, saying the shootdown sent a “clear message, the violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable,” but said he seeks to keep open lines of communication with Beijing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed the first planned trip to China as the balloon was flying over the US and a new meeting with his Chinese counterpart is yet to be scheduled.
“I look forward to speaking with President Xi and hopefully we can get to the bottom of this,” Biden said, adding: “But I don’t apologize for bringing down that balloon.”
Biden said the rules would remain classified so as not to “give a road map to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he hoped the US would keep its radar systems set to detect slow-moving balloons as well as planes that move quickly and other potential intruders. But he said he had convinced White House officials Tuesday night that law enforcement would have to fine-tune their response when they detect balloons of unknown provenance.
“The White House fighter jets and tankers” and special forces, he said, “are not going to be a scalable solution for every piece of junk in the air.”
The Chinese balloon has increased tensions between the United States and China. Blinken is traveling to the Munich Security Conference on Thursday and there is speculation that he may use the opportunity to meet China’s top foreign policy official, Wang Yi, who is also attending the conference.
Biden had remained largely silent about the objects shot down on Friday off the Alaskan coast, on Saturday over Canada and on Sunday over Lake Huron. On Monday, the White House earnestly announced that there was no indication of “extraterrestrial or extraterrestrial activity.” As of Wednesday, US officials said they were still working to locate the remains of the objects, but hoped the three were not related to surveillance efforts.
“The intelligence community is considering as the main explanation that these could just be balloons attached to some commercial or benign purpose,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby. No country or private company has come forward to claim any of the objects, Kirby said. They do not appear to have been operated by the United States government.
Unresolved questions remain about the original balloon, including what spy capabilities it had and whether it was transmitting signals while flying over sensitive US military sites. US intelligence believed he was initially headed towards the US territory of Guam, according to a US official.
The United States tracked it for several days after it left China, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence. He appears to have veered off his initial trajectory and eventually flew over the continental US, the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have previously been seen over Guam, a strategic hub for the US Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It’s unclear how much control China retained over the globe once it deviated from its original trajectory. A second US official said the balloon could have been externally maneuvered or directed to loiter over a specific target, but it is unclear whether Chinese forces did so.
After the balloon was shot down, the White House revealed that those balloons had flown across US soil at least three times during President Donald Trump’s administration without Trump or his aides knowing, and that others had flown over dozens of nations in the five continents. Kirby stressed Monday that they were only detected by the Biden administration.
