US Military Searches Territorial Waters To Recover Remnants Of Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon

In a spectacular spy tale that has further strained US-Chinese ties, the U.S. military announced on Sunday that it is looking for remnants of the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon that it shot down the previous day off the coast of South Carolina.

The Coast Guard is securing the operation as the U.S. Navy works to recover the balloon and its payload, said General Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command.

A week after it originally entered American airspace near Alaska, a fighter aircraft from the U.S. Air Force shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday. According to VanHerck, the incident happened above U.S. territorial waters. Despite U.S. authorities downplaying the balloon's effect on national security, a successful recovery might provide the U.S. insight into China's spying capabilities. China has expressed its "strong dissatisfaction and protest" against the decision, accusing the US of "overreacting" and "seriously violating international practice."

The operation, according to President Joe Biden, was successful. When he was informed on Wednesday, he claimed to have given the go-ahead to shoot it down "as soon as possible." China maintains that the balloon was a civilian research vessel while U.S. authorities claim it was being used for spying.

According to a transcript provided by the US Department of Defense, a senior defense official told reporters that while the debris' nature was still being evaluated, recovery options, including naval divers on the site, would "seek to recover all debris and any material of intelligence value," reports the Guardian.

"The debris is in 47 feet of water, primarily. The recovery that will make it fairly easy, actually. We planned for much deeper water," the official said adding that the wreckage "would have fallen at least in a seven-mile radius."

US Navy troops were unloading supplies off boats and loading them onto trucks at the Johnny Causey Boat Landing in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina., according to a CNN team at the scene. One of the boats had a mound of white material on its deck, and many persons wearing camouflage could be seen nearby in cell phone footage taken earlier in the day and acquired by CNN. There was another boat at a neighboring dock that looked to have the same substance. The people could also be seen unloading several boxes off one of the boats. However, it's not yet determined if the wreckage is from the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon.

Republican senators slammed President Joe Biden on Sunday for delaying days before shooting down the balloon as it passed over the country, accusing him of being weak in the face of China and first attempting to conceal the breach of American airspace.

Republican Tom Cotton, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee said, "I think part of it is the president's reluctance to take any action that would be viewed as provocative or confrontational towards the Chinese communists."

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that identical balloons had passed over the United States while former President Donald Trump was in office, but both Trump and his national intelligence director at the time, John Ratcliffe, denied this.

Democrats claimed that Biden's choice to wait until the balloon had flown over the United States before shooting it down protected civilians from falling debris.