The US military has concluded its recovery operations of the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of Alaska and over Lake Huron after days of ultimately fruitless searches. The effort came to an end as the U.S Navy assets assigned to “U.S Northern Command successfully located and retrieved debris” from the balloon, a statement from U.S Northern Command said on Friday.
The final pieces of the Debris are taken into the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation, as has occurred with the previous surface and sub-surface debris recovered. U.S Navy and U.S Coast Guard vessels have left the area. Air and Maritime safety perimeters have been lifted.
Biden says objects shot down over North America last week appear to not be part of China’s spy balloon operation. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the command’s recommendation to call off the search. The Biden administration had repeatedly pointed to the need to locate and recover the downed objects to be able to identify what they were and who launched them, but US officials had grown less optimistic about recovering debris from them.
The failed search efforts make it increasingly unlikely the public will receive a thorough explanation of what the objects were the US fighters had shot down over three consecutive days. National Security coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby suggested as much at a White House press briefing on Friday, telling reporters, “We would like nothing better, but I can’t sit here and promise you that we’ll get to that level of fidelity of detail. He noted the “extremely bad winter weather” up in the North of Alaska and “arctic conditions” were making recovery efforts extremely difficult.
After the Chinese balloon was shot down, the US military had downed the three subsequent objects that were much smaller and are now believed to have not been tied to any country’s surveillance program, President Joe Biden said Thursday. Instead, they were likely used for weather or research purposes by private entities.
US officials have said that the Chinese Balloon, in contrast, had a payload or the equipment it was carrying, the size of roughly three buses and was capable of collecting signals intelligence and taking photos. The balloon traveled over sensitive sites in Montana, officials have said, but the administration has said, it tracked the balloon’s path and worked to minimize its intelligence collection capabilities.