Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee. No incursion should be ignored, and should be dealt with appropriately,' said Mississippi Sen.

'Information strongly suggests the (Defense) Department failed to act with urgency in responding to this airspace incursion by a high-altitude surveillance balloon.

Republicans - always keen to portray President Joe Biden as soft on China, even though he's actually been at least as tough as ex-President Donald Trump - are up in arms over what they are portraying as a violation of US sovereignty. That's what Blinken is traveling to Beijing to address. The politics of the world's most critical geopolitical relationship are so torqued in both countries that any incident can set off a new round of recriminations. But the balloon offers a perfect glimpse into one of the most destructive factors driving the US and China toward confrontation. And officials said it's not the first time the US has tracked one of Beijing's balloons during this and previous administrations. This seems a reasonable position since Chinese surveillance satellites with a far greater capacity for espionage are known to hover in space over the US.

It reasoned that the balloon was wafting well above commercial and military air lanes - and that it was not a huge intelligence threat. The Pentagon says it's been tracking the balloon - the size of three buses, according to a defense official - for several days but made the decision not to shoot it down. It's hard to imagine a worse warm up for US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's critical talks in Beijing, which are expected in the next few days, than news that a suspected Chinese spy balloon is floating merrily across the US. The US government now believes that it has gotten China's attention about the balloon, and that the matter could be resolved soon, the sources said. On Thursday, a senior defense official said, “Instances of this activity have been observed over the past several years, including prior to this administration.” The US official said there were similar incidents with suspected Chinese surveillance balloons over Hawaii and Guam in recent years. It is also not the first time a surveillance balloon has appeared over the United States. In the past, the US has simply allowed balloons like this to waft away, without taking any action or publicizing their presence over the US, the sources said. Pentagon officials said they did not believe the balloon had surveillance or intelligence-gathering capabilities above and beyond Chinese spy satellites in low earth orbit, but unlike satellites that pass rapidly over a location every 90 minutes, a spy balloon can loiter over a spot and gather more of a “pattern of life” of a particular site, the official said. But the solar array does not appear to be connected to any type of motor that would allow China to steer the balloon, the official added. What US officials are saying: The balloon’s surveillance equipment appears to be powered by a solar array, one US official said, which would provide the system with a reliable source of power at high altitude. Sources familiar with the matter tell CNN that it appears that the suspected Chinese spy balloon movements appear to rely primarily on the jet stream, allowing Beijing to predict its likely path.Ĭhina can control the surveillance balloon to an extent, for example by turning on and off the surveillance gear inside of it, the sources said. The fact that China does have some control over the balloon's capabilities is why the US government has raised their concerns with Beijing about it, the sources said.

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