The Senate on Thursday held its first hearing on the Chinese spy balloon that floated over the US last week before it was shot down over the weekend.
The Senate Appropriations Committee took testimony from top Pentagon officials, including Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Vice Admiral Sara Joyner, director of force structure, resources and assessments for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The hearing comes because the U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard complete a recovery operation of the downed spy balloon roughly six miles off the coast of South Carolina. On Saturday, Biden gave the order to take the 200-foot-tall spy balloon out of the sky. The operation resulted in an F-22 fighter jet shearing a hole in the underside of the balloon with a sidewinder missile.
Pentagon spokesman U.S. Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Wednesday that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called his Chinese counterpart on Saturday following the military mission. Chinese officials didn’t accept the decision.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that the U.S. intelligence community was studying the balloon and that the U.S. would proceed to update allies in addition to countries all over the world which may be victims of Chinese espionage.
“The US was not the one goal of this broader program, which has violated the sovereignty of nations across five continents,” Blinken said on the State Department.
“In our engagements, we’re again hearing from our partners that the world expects China and the US to administer our relationship responsibly. That is precisely what we got down to do. We proceed to induce China to do the identical,” he added.
