The US military has completed the task of recovering the wreckage of a Chinese reconnaissance balloon shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on the 4th.
The U.S. Army Northern Command said in a statement on the 17th (local time) that the last remnant of a Chinese reconnaissance balloon shot down on the 4th was heading to an FBI laboratory in Virginia for analysis, according to Reuters and others.
The wreckage recovery work was completed the previous day (16th), and the US Navy and Coast Guard ships that had been recovering from the sea for the past two weeks were also reported to have withdrawn.
Accordingly, the Northern Command announced that safety measures taken at sea and in the air were also lifted while the recovery operation was in progress.
The U.S. military said it believes it has recovered all the sensors and electronics of the Chinese reconnaissance balloon.
Earlier, the U.S. military pursued a Chinese reconnaissance balloon that had invaded the U.S. mainland for a week and shot it down off the coast of South Carolina on the 4th. Since then, the US military has been working on recovering the reconnaissance balloon.
The U.S. military previously collected some of the balloon (cloth) structures, sensors, and electronic devices of Chinese reconnaissance balloons and began analysis.
The analysis is being conducted by engineers and scientists from the Operational Technology Division at the FBI Lab in Quantico, Virginia.
The Joe Biden administration is emphasizing the legitimacy of shooting down the reconnaissance balloon, convinced that the reconnaissance balloon shot down on the 4th is related to the Chinese government.
Vice President Kamala Harris said in an interview with NBC that day, “We needed to shoot it down because we were convinced that China was using it to spy on the United States.”
President Biden also said in a speech the day before that he would not apologize for shooting down the reconnaissance balloon.
(Washington = News 1)
