The search for the remains of a Chinese balloon shot down off the American Atlantic coast has been successfully concluded, the Pentagon announced on Friday. “The last debris (collected) is transferred to the FBI investigation laboratory in Virginia, in order to be exploited by counterintelligence,” he said.
The US Air Force had shot down on February 4, off the coast of South Carolina, this Chinese balloon considered by the Pentagon as a spy device, intended to collect sensitive information. Beijing maintained for its part that it was a civil aerostat, mainly intended to collect meteorological data, which had involuntarily deviated from its trajectory and had thus found itself flying over American territory.
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Other “unrelated” objects
The balloon affair led US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken to postpone a rare planned visit to China. The Pentagon also announced the end of the search for two other downed aircraft, one off the north coast of Alaska on February 10, the other over Lake Huron on the border with Canada, two days later.
Conducted in cooperation with the Canadian authorities, this research, which mobilized sophisticated technologies, remained unsuccessful, it was specified in a press release. During a press conference on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said that there was nothing to suggest at this stage that these two objects were “linked to the Chinese spy balloon program”.
