New Delhi: The US government declared on Thursday that the spy balloon shot down by the US Air Force fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday, was part of a vast fleet that has conducted surveillance on at least five continents over the past several years.
The country is also looking to take action against entities connected to China’s military that supported the flight. Washington is confident that the manufacturer of the Chinese balloon has a “direct relationship” with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), a State Department official said.
White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre stated the same, saying that Washington would look at taking action, but the US government has not specified what measures are under consideration.
The PRC is the only competitor with the intent and means to reshape the international order. The balloon’s violation of US sovereignty and international law was the “latest example of that reality, said Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
In an interview, President Joe Biden, under fire from some lawmakers, said he did not view a Chinese spy balloon that transited the United States before it was shot down in the Atlantic Ocean to have been a major security breach.
Biden, who has attempted to maintain and equation China and not allow tensions with Beijing to get out of control, said in an interview that he did not regret shooting down the balloon sooner.
“It’s not a major breach,” Biden said. “I mean, look, it’s totally … it’s a violation of international law. It’s our airspace. And once it comes into our space, we can do what we want with it.”
He said US military officials were worried that by shooting it down over land, the balloon and its parts could drop into a populated area.
US officials have said that China’s surveillance balloon programme is not limited to the US and has also been used to spy on India, as well as Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines.
Defining it as a “massive effort”, they added that China has essentially taken a very old methodology of information gathering, and embedded modern surveillance and imagery technologies in it, and used it to gather sensitive information about other countries.
Also read: Chinese spy balloon has been used to snoop on India as well, say US officials