The US Department of Defense released this Wednesday the selfie of a US Air Force pilot, aboard a reconnaissance plane, where we can see the Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States in the beginning FEBRUARY.
An impressive picture. The US Department of Defense on Wednesday released a photo taken from the cockpit of a US Air Force reconnaissance plane as it approached the Chinese spy balloon over the United States. This is a “selfie” taken by one of the pilots on February 4, when the object flew over the American continent.
Spotted on January 28 in the west of the country, the spy balloon has since been shot down on February 4 after flying over the east coast of the United States, in South Carolina.
CNN was the first American media to mention a “selfie” in one of its articles on February 9, without disclosing it. A snapshot of the spy balloon that would have acquired “legendary” status in the corridors of the Pentagon and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad).
Tensions between Beijing and Washington
For its part, Beijing presented this aerostat as a civil infrastructure which had deviated from its trajectory.
US Foreign Minister Antony Blinken told his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi that the incident of the Chinese balloon being shot down by the US military should “never happen again”, during a rare meeting in Munich (Germany) on Last weekend.
The balloon incident forced Antony Blinken to postpone a rare trip to Beijing scheduled for early February in extremis and rekindled tensions between the two major rival powers.
