(AmericanProsperity.com) – United States intelligence officials claim that the Chinese spy balloon that hovered over the country for several days was seen taking off from China, according to The Daily Wire. The aircraft, which generated a lot of controversy over the hesitated response to shooting it down, reportedly departed from Hainan Island in late January before heading to the U.S.
U.S. officials were tracking the balloon’s movement as it moved toward Guam before heading toward Alaskan airspace over the Aleutian Islands, according to The Washington Post. At that point, officials had already reportedly known about it for a week.
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The event came just as Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to visit China. But the visit was postponed in protest as the spycraft was detected over Billings, Montana. Days after veering into U.S. airspace from Canada, the U.S. military was authorized to shoot the object down as it safely went over the Atlantic Ocean.
China reportedly denies that the object was being used for surveillance, instead maintaining that it was a civilian aircraft that flew off course. A senior State Department official said that the Chinese craft sported “multiple antennas” capable of collecting intelligence from signals.
The spy balloon was only one of three other objects found over that weekend which resulted in U.S. jets shooting them down with the cooperation of Canada.
The Biden administration is saying that the objects are being spotted as a result of “heightened surveillance Rep. Dan Crenshaw is also reiterating these comments. Another U.S. official reportedly corroborated this by saying that the radars have been recalibrated to detect smaller things.
The three downed objects have now been part of a salvage mission to determine what they were. National security spokesman John Kirby suggested that the three unidentified flying objects were part of research entities, not espionage.
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