The US military have announced they’ve recovered critical electronics from the Chinese spy balloon downed by a US fighter jet off South Carolina’s coast on February 4. Recovered fragments from the aircraft include key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering, the US military’s Northern Command said Monday.
The revelation comes less than a week after Navy seamen were pictured pulling portions of Chinese spy balloon from the chilly waters of the Atlantic – with the Pentagon releasing sensational photographs of the retrieval operation.
The Chinese balloon, which Beijing denies was a spy vessel, spent a week flying over the United States and Canada before it was shot down on the orders of US President Biden – a decision officials reportedly agonized for days amid fears of harming the already tenuous relationship between the two countries.
The spy balloon was the first of four airborne objects gunned out of the sky by the US in eight days.
Recovered fragments from the aircraft shot down on February 4 include key sensors presumably used for intelligence gathering, the US military’s Northern Command said
The Pentagon has released photos showing the Navy’s retrieval of a suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean
In the end, the episode inevitably strained ties between Washington and Beijing, and spurred a sprawling U.S. military scouring effort across US skies for other objects of interests – leading to an unprecedented shooting down of three suspected spy crafts between Friday and Sunday.
On Monday, US military’s Northern Command, the agency tasked with defending the American homeland, revealed in a statement that debris from the first craft included sensors likely used for the gathering of intel.
‘Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure,’ the statement said.
While much about the more recent, unmanned aircraft remains unknown, officials this week said they are continuing to look for debris.
