US officials have determined that the unmanned balloon seen off the coast of Hawaii over the weekend did not pose a military or physical threat, and decided that it won’t be necessary to shoot it down, like the balloons earlier this year.
The balloon was first spotted by the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) on April 28. It was unclear what the object was, or to whom it belonged, but a DoD spokesperson said there was “no indication that it was maneuvering or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor. The balloon did not transit directly over defense critical infrastructure or other U.S. Government sensitive sites, nor did it pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”
“Based on these observations, the Secretary of Defense concurred with the recommendation of his military commanders that no action need be taken against the balloon,” the spokesperson said.
According to a spokesman for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command as reported by NBC, it “responded to an unidentified radar signature Friday in the vicinity of the island of Hawaii. Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object. We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat.”
The object, which was flying at an altitude of 36,000 feet, was not found to have floated over any sensitive government sites, and as of Monday evening, it was said to be outside of Hawaii’s airspace and the US territorial waters.
In February, a Chinese spy balloon was tracked flying across the US before it was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It was reportedly able to gather intelligence from a number of American military sites, which China has firmly denied.
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