The Biden administration is forming an interagency group with the goal of addressing the recent series of objects flying above North America, the White House announced Monday.
"The president, through his national security adviser, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks," National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at a White House press briefing.
"Every element of the government will redouble their efforts to understand and mitigate these events."
Kirby said the national security team's task is to "dig into this deeper from an interagency effort and to see what if other improvements" need to be made.
Kirby said the Chinese have been operating a balloon program for years, but it previously had gone undetected.
"We were able to determine that China has a high-altitude balloon program for intelligence collection that's connected to the People's Liberation Army. It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it. We detected it," Kirby said. "We tracked it, and we have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can."
Kirby said Chinese balloons have "crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents" and have provided "limited additive capabilities" to China's "other intelligence platforms" used over the U.S.
The U.S. military has shot down four objects over North America this month, beginning Feb. 4 when a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that traveled across the country was downed off the South Carolina coast.
Biden on Sunday authorized the U.S. military to shoot down an unidentified object over Lake Huron. It was an octagon-shaped structure that was flying at 20,000 feet, which posed a possible risk to civilian aircraft, Kirby said.
Kirby said the administration is working to learn more about all of the "objects."
"We have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are," Kirby said.
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