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Chinese Balloon Over the U.S. Updates What to Know Fragile U.S.-China Relations Balloon Surveillance History Video

Live Updated 1 minute ago

U.S. Shoots Down Chinese Spy

Balloon Off the Coast of the
Carolinas
The airborne surveillance device was first spotted earlier this week
over the Western United States, setting off a diplomatic crisis.

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0:19

00:00 U.S. Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon 0:19

American officials said that the surveillance device was shot down off the coast of the Carolinas after it
spent the last week traversing the country. Chinese officials maintained that it was a weather balloon that
had entered U.S. airspace by accident. Randall Hill/Reuters

Pinned

Updated 1 minute ago

Helene Cooper and Edward Wong

Shooting down the balloon ended a dramatic chapter

in a diplomatic crisis.
WASHINGTON — The United States shot down a Chinese spy
balloon on Saturday that had spent the last week traversing the
country, American officials said, an explosive end to a drama that
put a diplomatic crisis between the world’s two great powers onto
television screens in real time.

The balloon, which spent five days traveling in a diagonal

southeast route from Idaho to the Carolinas, had moved off the
coast by midday Saturday and was over the Atlantic Ocean. The
Federal Aviation Administration had paused departures and
arrivals at airports in Wilmington, N.C., and in Myrtle Beach and
Charleston in South Carolina, which the agency said was meant to
“support the Department of Defense in a national security effort.”

Show more

3 minutes ago
Anushka Patil

The Chinese government has claimed that the balloon was a

weather device that entered U.S. airspace by accident, but the U.S.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III was unequivocal on
Saturday about its true purpose in Washington's eyes. He said in a
statement that the balloon was being used by China “in an attempt
to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States.”

20 minutes ago
Helene Cooper

U.S. officials are watching closely for China’s reaction to the

downing of the balloon — and whether the Chinese military will
retaliate against an American target.

26 minutes ago
Charlie Savage

Representative Don Beyer, Democrat of Virginia, mocked

Republicans on social media. Retweeting a CNN clip of Mr. Biden
saying he had ordered the Pentagon to shoot down the balloon
once it could be done safely, Mr. Beyer wrote : “Great news for my
Republican colleagues, they can stop panicking about a balloon
now.”

27 minutes ago
Edward Wong

The presence of the balloon floating over the United States in

recent days prompted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to
cancel a planned visit to China. That trip would have been the first
by a Biden Cabinet secretary to China and was planned as
relations between the two powers were becoming tense over a
number of issues.

39 minutes ago
Katie Rogers

Jill Biden, the first lady, praised the military for what she said was
a “thoughtful” approach to taking down the balloon. Just before
giving a speech in San Diego, Ms. Biden said she was proud of how
the military carried out the mission -- “how coordinated it was, how
thoughtful it was, that it was decided to wait until it was over water
so that civilians weren’t affected.”

43 minutes ago
Katie Rogers
If the military recovers the downed Chinese spy balloon, there
could be a lot of material and machinery for U.S. officials to pore
over. Art Thompson, an aerospace engineer who helped develop
the B-2 stealth bomber, said the balloon appeared to be outfitted
with solar panels, a control panel and a parachute system. “You
could collect a lot of information from a balloon, and it has a very
long reach,” Mr. Thompson said. He added the Chinese "could be
collecting a lot of data to analyze for future applications."

48 minutes ago
Helene Cooper

A senior Defense Department official said that the delay in

shooting down the balloon had allowed Pentagon personnel to
track it for about a week and to glean more insight into China’s
intelligence gathering capability. President Biden has been fending
off criticism from Republicans who say that he should have ordered
the balloon shot down as soon as it appeared over American
airspace.

53 minutes ago
Helene Cooper

U.S. Navy and Coast Guard personnel will conduct a recovery

effort to retrieve the debris of the Chinese spy balloon, which
landed in 47 feet of water off the South Carolina coast, a senior
Defense Department official said. He characterised the spot the
balloon sank into the sea as “relatively shallow water,” which, he
said, would make its recovery easier.

55 minutes ago
Charlie Savage

Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, the ranking Republican on

the Senate Armed Services Committee, also blasted Mr. Biden in a
statement. “Allowing a spy balloon from the Communist Party of
China to travel across the entire continental United States before
contesting its presence is a disastrous projection of weakness by
the White House,” he said, adding:“It is clear that standard
protocol for defense of U.S. airspace was ignored.”

56 minutes ago
Helene Cooper

A senior military official told reporters at the Pentagon that one of

two F-22 fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base downed the
balloon with a single missile at 2:39 p.m. about six miles off the
South Carolina coast. The balloon was flying at an altitude of
between 60,000 and 65,000 feet at the time, and the fighters were at
58,000 feet. The pilots safely returned to Langley at 3 p.m. Other
warplanes also went up to support the fighters, the official said.

Randall Hill/Reuters
 59 minutes ago
Anushka Patil

Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign

Affairs committee, added to the Republican chorus of criticism of
President Biden for his handling of the balloon crisis. Mr. McCaul
called it “an embarrassing display of weakness.” He said he hoped
the United States could recover the balloon's wreckage and
determine what intelligence China had gathered while it was over
the United States.

1 hour ago
Charlie Savage

Republicans praised the military for shooting down the Chinese

balloon while still criticizing President Biden for waiting so long to
do it. The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee,
Representative Mark E. Green of Tennessee, said he was pleased
what he called an "espionage tool" would not be returning to China,
but he added, "it is indefensible that this threat was eliminated
only after great public outcry and the damage to U.S. national
security and American sovereignty was already done.” He said Mr.
Biden had demonstrated “weakness on the global stage.”

1 hour ago
Zolan Kanno-Youngs

Asked by reporters on Saturday what message the downing of the

balloon sends to China, President Biden ignored the question and
walked to his waiting car.

1 hour ago
Zolan Kanno-Youngs

President Biden told reporters on Saturday that the Pentagon did

not want to injure anyone on the ground when shooting down the
balloon. “They decided that the best time to do that was when it got
over water within our 12-mile limit," the president said. "They
successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators
that did it.”

0:00 0:24

Associated Press

2 hours ago
Helene Cooper

The American defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, said that U.S.
fighter jets from Northern Command “successfully brought down
the high altitude surveillance balloon launched by and belonging to
the People’s Republic of China.” The balloon was brought down just
off the coast of South Carolina, Mr. Austin said in a statement,
while it was still in American airspace.

2 hours ago
Helene Cooper
 Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said that President Biden
had told the Pentagon on Wednesday that the balloon could be
brought down as soon as “the mission could be accomplished
without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path.”

2 hours ago
Katie Rogers

Jeffrey Billie, a retired defense contractor who lives in Pawleys

Island, S.C., saw the balloon being shot down. “It was two fighter
jets dancing with this thing going around and around it,” Mr. Billie
said. Mr. Billie said a third jet flew near the balloon and fired a
missile just as the craft crossed the coastline. “Then, of course, the
round big white ball that we saw -- all of the sudden it looked like a
shriveled Kleenex.”

2 hours ago
Helene Cooper

“I told them to shoot it down,” President Biden told reporters on

Saturday, speaking about the Chinese spy balloon the United States
downed. “They said to me let’s wait for the safest place to do it.”

Al Drago for The New York Times

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