A U.S. Navy sailor loads debris from the Chinese surveillance balloon onto a ship on Feb. 10 in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
U.S. forces have completely recovered the Chinese surveillance balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4, though officials warn they may never recover the other three unidentified objects downed by fighter jet missiles the following week.
U.S. Northern Command in a Feb. 17 statement said recovery operations concluded the day before, with the final pieces of debris transferred to an FBI laboratory in Virginia. U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels have left the area near Myrtle Beach with all air and maritime safety perimeters lifted.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby during a Feb. 17 briefing said crews retrieved all that was recoverable, including the payload structure, electronics and optics.
“They’re analyzing it, they’re looking at it, and we need to let them do their work in a thoughtful, deliberate way,” Kirby says. “I want to caveat all this by saying there may be some things we will not be able to disclose.”
During the briefing, Kirby was asked about Aviation Week reporting that the object downed Feb. 11 in the Yukon Territory of Canada could have been a hobbyist pico balloon launched by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB) that went missing off the west coast of Alaska the day before. Kirby says the White House cannot confirm the report or what the remains of that balloon, or the other two objects downed over Alaska and Lake Huron, will end up being.
“We haven’t recovered it. It’s very difficult until you can get your hands on something to be able to tell,” Kirby says. “We all have to accept the possibility that we may not be able to recover it.”
The object in Yukon is in rough, remote territory in cold weather. The object downed Feb. 10 over Alaska is on a shelf of sea ice. The one shot down in Lake Huron on Feb. 12 is in a deep water, and Canadian officials announced Feb. 16 that they were ending the search on their side of the border.
Even with the possibility that the objects shot down by F-22s and F-16s were small, cheap hobbyist balloons, Kirby defended the decision to take them down based on the circumstances at the time.
“Given the situation we were in, the information available, the recommendation of our military commands, it was exactly the right thing to do at exactly the right time,” he says.
The possibility that the objects end up being $12 balloons launched by hobbyists would be a good thing, he argues.
“Frankly, given the circumstances, in light of what happened with this spy balloon, wouldn’t that be a better outcome?” he says. “If it turns out that they were, in fact, civilian or recreational use or weather balloons and therefore benign, which is what the intelligence community thinks. Isn’t that a better outcome than to have to think about the possibility of greater threats to our national security?”
If the downed object in Yukon does belong to the NIBBB, Kirby says he is not aware of any plan to reimburse it for the cost of the balloon.
President Joe Biden on Feb. 16 outlined his plan to better detect, track and regulate uncrewed flying objects, and to overhaul procedures for the military to respond. This includes a new inventory of uncrewed airborne objects, improved ability to detect objects in airspace and revised regulations for the launch and operations of the objects.
The military parameters will likely be classified. They will be sent to Congress within days and go into effect quickly, Kirby says.
The saga of the Chinese balloon and subsequent unidentified objects comes as the Pentagon is finalizing its upcoming budget requests, and there could be funding shifted to address the issue.
“If there needs to be more resources, to have more resources applied to this particular challenge, then that’s certainly a conversation worth having,” Kirby says.
