President Joe Biden is speaking now from the White House on the United States’ response to the unidentified high-altitude objects over North American airspace in recent weeks, following the US military’s downing of a Chinese spy balloon.
Federal officials have said the initial Chinese surveillance balloon downed off the coast of South Carolina was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations and had a payload around the size of three buses. By comparison, the subsequent objects, which haven’t been attributed to a specific country or entity, are believed to be much smaller.
The US is now also increasingly confident that the three objects that were downed between Friday and Sunday were “benign” balloons.
It’s anticipated that new protocols on how the US will handle similar unidentified objects going forward will be released this week.
