The United States and Canada have called off searches for three unidentified objects that were shot down over the weekend as investigators began analyzing the last debris collected from the first Chinese “spy” balloon shot down earlier this month.
Authorities failed to find any wreckage three unidentified objectsthey confirmed.
this us The military said late Friday that they, along with federal agencies and Canadian partners, used a variety of capabilities in the search operation, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scanning.
US President Joe Biden “There is currently no indication that these objects are connected to Chinese spy balloons,” it said this week.
He added that the U.S. intelligence community believes they are likely balloons associated with private companies, recreational or research institutions that study the weather or conduct scientific research.
Thursday: Shooting down ‘non-China related’ flying object
The third object was shot down Canadian The northwestern Yukon is mountainous and sparsely populated.
although Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Last week, the RCMP called the analysis of the object’s fragments “very important,” and on Friday announced their decision to end the search.
“Given the snowfall that has occurred, the likelihood of finding the object has decreased, and the object is currently deemed to be irrelevant to the scene that justified the extraordinary search effort, the RCMP are terminating the search,” it said in a statement.
read more:
Spy Balloons and Flying Objects: A Timeline of Fighter Shootings of Unidentified Planes So Far This Month
recovery work Chinese surveillance balloon The U.S. military’s Northern Command said in a statement that the operation that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina two weeks ago ended on Thursday and “air and maritime security boundaries have been lifted.”
It confirmed that the last pieces of the balloon were on their way to an FBI laboratory in the southeastern United States. Virginia for analysis.
A U.S. Navy sailor searches for wreckage with an underwater vehicle near South Carolina
“It’s a huge amount [of recovered material]including the payload structure and some of the electronics and optics, and all of that now at the FBI lab in Quantico,” said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, who added that the U.S. had learned a lot about the balloon when Watch it while it’s in the air.
“We’re confident that we’ll learn a lot more by taking a deeper look at its internals, understanding how it works and how it functions,” he told a White House news briefing.
Counteroffensive officials will use the Chinese balloon’s prioritized sensors, electronics and other collected elements to determine how Beijing might collect and transmit surveillance information.
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China The balloon, which was the size of a small car and flew over the United States for a week, was used for meteorological and other scientific research and was blown off course, it has been insisting.
China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, said on Saturday that the United States’ handling of the balloon incident was “unimaginable” and “hysterical” – an “absurd” behavior that violated international norms.
“There are so many balloons in the world, is the US going to shoot them all down?” Director Yi
The director of the Office of the Foreign Affairs Commission of the CPC Central Committee said at the Munich Security Conference.
“Make no mistake, if any object poses a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down,” President Biden said in Thursday’s remarks.