Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, on Thursday, Feb. 9, 2023.
Anna Rose Layden | Bloomberg | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate held its first public hearing on the Chinese spy balloon Thursday, at which visibly offended lawmakers grilled 4 Defense Department officials about when the military learned of the balloon and why they waited per week to shoot it down.
“I don’t need a rattling ballon going over america after we could’ve taken it down over the Aleutian Islands,” said Sen. Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who chairs the Appropriations Subcommittee that conducted the hearing.
Officials said the balloon first entered U.S. airspace off Alaska on Jan. 28, where it was immediately detected by NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canadian air defense system.
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) questions witnesses during a Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill in regards to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in Washington, U.S., February 9, 2023.Â
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
“As an Alaskan, I’m so offended,” said Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. “Alaska is the primary line of defense for America… It’s like this administration doesn’t think that Alaska is any a part of the remainder of the country!” she shouted.
The witnesses defended the Pentagon’s decision to let the high-altitude balloon float across america, arguing that the balloon’s primary value to the U.S. military lay in what might be learned from its flight course and its debris.
“A key a part of the calculus for this operation was the flexibility to salvage, understand and exploit the capabilities of the high altitude balloon,” said Assistant Secretary of Defense Melissa Dalton.
“If we had taken it down over the state of Alaska … it might have been a really different recovery operation,” she said, noting that the deep, freezing water of the Bering Sea “would make recovery and salvage operations very dangerous.”
The hearing was a part of a series of events Thursday morning in Congress, all related to the spy balloon.
Within the House, a resolution condemning “the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon” passed unanimously, 419-0.
That vote took place shortly after House members received a classified briefing in regards to the balloon and the recovery efforts from defense and intelligence officials. Shortly before midday, the complete Senate was given its own classified briefing on the balloon.
Individually within the Senate, the Foreign Relations Committee heard testimony from deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman, who said the spy balloon “placed on full display what we have long recognized: that the PRC (People’s Republic of China) has turn out to be more repressive at home and more aggressive abroad.”
At times, Sherman’s characterization of the balloon as a part of a broader campaign of aggression appeared at odds with the Pentagon’s insistence that the balloon didn’t pose a sufficient threat to justify shooting it down earlier.
“There was no hostile act or hostile intent” behind the balloon, Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, the director of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators on the Appropriations Committee.
Like her fellow senators, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine didn’t accept this reasoning.
“Why would not a foreign military surveillance aircraft violating us airspace inherently be considered to have a hostile intent?” she asked.
