Washington (EFE) .
Kirby explained that, in the last 24 hours, the Pentagon detected a “high-altitude object” over the state of Alaska and in the last hour Biden gave the order for a combat plane associated with the US Northern Command. shoot and shoot him down.
The “object” appears, in principle, to be different from the Chinese “spy balloon” that the United States shot down last Saturday after it flew over various areas of the country, the spokesman said.
Specifically, Kirby explained that the downed “object” was much smaller: it was the size of a “small vehicle”, while the proportions of the “spy balloon” were “two or three buses”.
order to shoot down
In addition, the Chinese “spy balloon” had the ability to maneuver, but the “object” that was shot down today did not have that ability and was downwind, the spokesman explained.
When giving the order to shoot down the “object”, one of the factors that worried Biden was the altitude at which he was flying, about 12 kilometers, and what placed him at a height where he could interfere with the trajectory of civilian aircraft, Kirby said.
Unlike the downed “object”, the Chinese “spy balloon” was flying at an altitude of about 20 kilometers.
The “object” was shot down over frozen waters in the state of Alaska and now the fragments of the downed entity are being collected to determine exactly what it was, Kirby said.
The US-China diplomatic crisis
The United States accuses the Chinese government of having developed, with the involvement of the Armed Forces, a balloon “program” for espionage work and that they have already flown over more than 40 countries on 5 continents.
China defends that the balloon that the US shot down on Saturday was a meteorological device that “deviated from its original course” due to “force majeure.”
The discovery of these “spy balloons” has triggered a new diplomatic crisis between the United States and China and led to the suspension of a trip that the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, had planned to make to the Asian country.
