The US Navy wrapped up its search for debris from the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina, bringing a quiet conclusion to an episode that provoked a political uproar in the US and led to a spike in tensions with China.
(Bloomberg) — The US Navy wrapped up its search for debris from the Chinese balloon shot down off South Carolina, bringing a quiet conclusion to an episode that provoked a political uproar in the US and led to a spike in tensions with China.
Recovery work ended Thursday and remaining pieces of the balloon’s payload are being transfered to the Federal Bureau of Investigation “for counterintelligence exploitation,” the Pentagon said in an brief statement that offered no detail about the nature or condition of the debris. It said ships and planes were no longer restricted from the search area.
The statement marked an anticlimactic end to a drama that gripped the US after residents of Montana reported seeing a strange object in the sky on Feb. 1. The US later revealed it had been tracking for days — but elected not to shoot down — a high-altitude Chinese balloon after it entered US airspace over Alaska.
US officials haven’t said publicly if the debris backs the Biden administration’s argument that China used the balloon to spy on the US.
Citing officials it didn’t identify, the Associated Press reported Friday that analysis of the balloon’s remnants reinforced the claim that it was used for spying.
The US has said the balloon was part of a global surveillance program that affected more than 40 countries. China has argued that it was a weather balloon that drifted off-course, and accused the US of hyping the incident.
The balloon’s payload had western-made components, people familiar with the matter said last week, suggesting that it was put together with foreign parts. That may prompt US lawmakers and the administration to seek new export controls on China in a bid to limit its technological gains.
The decision to delay shooting down the balloon became a political liability as Republicans hammered President Joe Biden for allowing the balloon to drift over sensitive military sites in Montana and Idaho before moving across the US and then being destroyed with a single missile fired from an F-22 fighter jet off Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. One US general warned of a “domain awareness gap” and the Pentagon, on hair-trigger alert for more spy balloons, shot down three other objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan that officials later said had nothing to do with China.
Chinese Balloon Had Parts With English Writing, Lawmakers Told
“The balloon, the gulf between the US and China and the extremely hawkish sentiment toward China in the new Congress, plus Biden’s already tough policies, means that it will be very, very tough to get back to the possibility for rapprochement that seemed in the air,” said Joshua Kurlantzick, a senior fellow for Southeast Asia at the Council on Foreign Relations who wrote the book Beijing’s Global Media Offensive: China’s Uneven Campaign To Influence Asia and the World.
Search crews had recovered the balloon several days ago and quickly located the craft’s payload, which officials said was about the size of three school buses. It took several days more to bring up the gear, which was scattered along the ocean floor under about 50 feet of water.
While the search is over, key questions remain. The US is expected to announce new guidelines in the coming days to help the Pentagon decide what to do about unidentified objects in US airspace. And Biden said Thursday he’ll speak at some point with President Xi Jinping.
“We’re also continuing to engage with China as we have throughout the past two weeks,” Biden said in a briefing. “As I’ve said since the beginning of my administration, we seek competition, not conflict, with China. We’re not looking for a new Cold War, but I make no apologies, and we will compete.”
–With assistance from Iain Marlow.
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