Joe Biden reveals details about objects military shot down
President Joe Biden on Thursday spoke to the nation about the unidentified flying objects that have been shot down over the past week.
He explained that he immediately gave the order to shoot the objects down out of concern over air traffic and what they might have observed. There was no information indicating that the objects were also from China. Biden said that they are believed to be private companies, recreation or private institutions doing their own research.
He's asking his military team to come up with a group of criteria for ways to detect what the objects are so they're not wasting time shooting down everything.
If any object "poses a threat to America I will shoot it down," Biden said.
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The military reaction came after a spy balloon from China was spotted flying over the United States. The military made a move to restrict any signals from it and observe how it moved before it could be taken down without harming the public below.
The National Security Council released a statement earlier this week explaining that the three objects after the spy balloon were "benign" and related to commercial purposes. In the same briefing, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told the press that the objects were not extraterritorial in nature.
“It can be overwhelming to try to gather, out of all of the radar clutter, the things that are operating at extremely low speed,” NSC spokesperson John Kirby said. “They’re detecting more. Because they’re detecting more, they’re launching more. Because they’re launching more, they’re finding things that don’t make sense more. And then they’re taking action, especially when it poses a threat to civil aviation.”
It comes as Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin explained that the military fine-tuned their observation systems that normally monitor fast-moving objects like planes to look also at slow-moving objects like the spy balloon. It's the reason that there has been such an increase in shooting down objects.
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"One reason the skies are so busy: There’s a relatively low barrier to launch unmanned balloons," an NBC News report explained Thursday.
The report also cited Kenneth Rapuano, former assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and global security at the Pentagon, explaining that the problem shows a real need to modernize NORDA's radar.
"The challenge of filtering nuisance or unwanted targets from radar, particularly as threats present smaller radar signatures," he said. “Hopefully we’re able to match the pace of evolving aerospace threats with continued improvements of our surveillance capabilities. That way we can discriminate amongst this increasing range and number of targets of interest that we’re going to be picking up, and discern feast from fowl and threats from nuisances.”
He also revealed that his Chinese counterpart refused to take his calls before they shot down the balloon. They have recovered sensors from the balloon.
Senators told Raw Story this week that they think there should be some kind of registration system with the FAA for any object sent into the sky. While many academic or scientific weather balloons are sent up, they don't normally remain in the atmosphere for long and they're more likely to be clearly marked. Still, one problem that the F-16 pilot that observed the object over Lake Michigan and Lake Huron noted was that the object was too small for him to make out any details.
Biden agreed with the Senators, saying that his administration would update the rules and regulations for launching objects into the sky.
It's also the first time that Biden spoke out about the balloon from China. He said that he immediately gave the order to shoot it down. It was the military that didn't want to do it right away because it was so huge and it could have hurt people.
"A violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable," said Biden in a message to China.
You can watch the full video here or at the link here.
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