General: US Failed to Detect Past Chinese Spy Balloons

A senior U.S. general responsible for bringing down a Chinese spy balloon said on Monday the military had not detected previous spy balloons before the one that appeared on Jan. 28 over the United States and called it an "awareness gap."

The Pentagon said over the weekend that Chinese spy balloons had briefly flown over the United States at least three times during President Donald Trump's administration and one previously under President Joe Biden.

Air Force General Glen VanHerck, head of U.S. North American Aerospace Defense Command and Northern Command, said the balloon was 200 feet tall and the payload under it weighed a couple thousand pounds.

"I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that's a domain awareness gap," VanHerck said.

He added that U.S. intelligence determined the previous flights after the fact based on "additional means of collection" of intelligence without offering further details on whether that might be cyberespionage, telephone intercepts or human sources.

A U.S. Air Force fighter jet shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on Saturday, a week after it first entered U.S. airspace and triggered a dramatic — and public — spying saga that worsened Sino-U.S. relations.

VanHerck did not rule out that there could have been explosives on the balloon.

Multiple fighter and refueling aircraft were involved in the mission, but only one — an F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia — took the shot at 2:39 p.m. (1939 GMT), using a single AIM-9X supersonic, heat-seeking, air-to-air missile.

Meanwhile White House national security spokesperson John Kirby on Monday dismissed China's contention that the balloon was for meteorological purposes, saying "it strains credulity ...  that this was some kind of weather balloon that was floating on the winds."

He said the United States had the opportunity to study the balloon while it was aloft and that officials hope to glean intelligence on its operations by retrieving as many components as possible in the Atlantic Ocean. Such information is likely to be valuable, he said.

The U.S. Coast Guard said Monday it is imposing a temporary security zone in the waters off Surfside Beach, South Carolina, in the area where the balloon came down.

Senior U.S. officials have offered to brief individuals from the previous administration of Donald Trump on the details of what the White House says was three China balloons overflights when Trump was president. U.S. officials say the overflights came to light after Trump left office in January 2021 and was succeeded by President Joe Biden.

The White House, meanwhile, said Monday that the balloon's flight over the United States has done nothing to improve already tense relations with Beijing and that Secretary of State Antony Blinken will seek to reschedule a postponed trip when the time is right.

"Nobody wants to see conflict here," Kirby said.

Blinken postponed a planned Feb. 5-6 visit to China because of the balloon's flight into U.S. airspace last week. It was shot down by a U.S. fighter jet off the Atlantic Coast on Saturday.

U.S. officials will decide when Blinken should seek to reschedule the trip, Kirby said.