Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday he would prefer the Biden administration order the military to shoot down objects over North American airspace before they traverse the nation like the Chinese surveillance balloon did more than a week ago.
On Friday, a U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an object roughly the size of a small car over a remote area of Alaska; and on Saturday, a F-22 shot down what was described as a small cylindrical object that crossed into Canadian airspace. It was a F-22 that shot down the Chinese surveillance balloon on Feb. 4, but only after it was allowed to travel across the country.
"I would prefer them to be trigger-happy than to be permissive," Turner told Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Nation." "But we're going to have to see whether or not this is just the administration trying to change headlines. What I think this shows, which is probably more important to our policy discussion here, is that we really have to declare that we're going to defend our airspace."
Turner said it has become clear the U.S. doesn't have adequate radar defense systems and maybe it's time to invest in an integrated missile defense system, such as Israel's Iron Dome.
"We're going to have to begin to look at United States airspace as one that we need to defend and that we need to have appropriate sensors to do so," he said. "This shows some of the problems and gaps that we have, and we need to fill those as soon as possible.
"We certainly now ascertain there is a threat."
Turner said he is frustrated by the lack of communication between the Biden administration and Congress. He said he doesn't know when the administration will brief him on the latest objects that were shot down.
"This is particularly annoying about this administration," he said. "The Biden administration needs to stop briefing Congress through our television sets and actually come and sit down and brief us. What we're seeing here is a number of announcements by the administration, without any real information being given to Congress."
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