US Military Tracked Balloon As It Left China, Before It Entered US Mainland

White House Spokesman John Kirby explained that we are seeing more of these objects now because of new adjustments made in the US Military's radar sensitivity. Image | U.S. Navy, enhanced by Donald Standeford.

By Donald Standeford, SJ Founder/Publisher
February 15, 2023 03:10 am UTC
Modified: 2023-02-15 03:10 am

WASHINGTON - The U.S. military had been tracking the first balloon that it shot down for about a week as it left China on a heading toward Guam and Hawaii, before making a sharp turn north towards Alaska.

The U.S. intelligence community also theorizes that the other objects spotted and shot out of the sky were just 'benign' research balloons and not in any way related to the first surveillance balloon that was shot down, but Washington won't know for sure until the debris left from the shoot-down of the objects are recovered.

White House Spokesman John Kirby said on Tuesday that the intelligence community is "considering the leading explanation" that the three objects that were shot down during the weekend "could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose".

He also said that officials are "pretty comfortable" ruling out that the objects were owned by the United States government.

As far as why Washington is calling them "objects", Kirby told George Stephanopoulos from ABC news "We're calling them objects because that's the best description we have right now".

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley said that the debris is currently in "very difficult terrain".

Kirby also said that the objects fell in "pretty remote locations" and said, "it could take us a while to reach the debris, yet alone collect it and analyze it".

• One of the objects was shot down in the Article Circle where the temperature is currently -40 Fahrenheit.
• The second object was shot down in Yukon Territory in the Canadian Rockies.
• The third object that was shot down was submerged in a few hundred feet of water located within Lake Huron.

Milley said, "We'll get 'em eventually but it's going to take some time to recover those," and admitted that the first shot fired over lake Huron missed the target.

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said, "The first shot missed, the second shot hit", and said that the first missile that missed its target "landed harmlessly in the water", and added, "We're very careful to make sure those shots are safe".

"That's the guidance from the president: shoot it down, make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people", he stated.

Kirby said that the objects didn't have maneuvering capabilities and were "much smaller" than the Chinese surveillance balloon that had previously been shot down.

The Pentagon has described the objects they shot down by saying one was shaped like a "metallic drum" while another was "cylindrical" with a tethered payload, and another was octagonal in shape with strings attached to it.

Why Seeing So Many "Objects" In US Airspace Now As Opposed To Before The First Incident?

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla had some questions about the origin of the objects, saying "The most important question we have to answer now is, what are these things? Who sent them here? And what are they doing here? The only way you're gonna get answers to that is not just to retrieve whatever is left of them, but to understand how it compares to the hundreds of other similar cases".

As far as why we're seeing so many "objects" now, Kirby said that this is because of new adjustments made in radar sensitivity.

"They have ramped up their abilities. And then because of this spy balloon, we changed some of the radar parameters, particularly over the northern part of our northern hemisphere, and it is possible that in part because of tweaking the radar sensitivities, we are simply seeing more objects right now".