Washington (EFE).- The US Armed Forces announced this Friday that the work to recover the remains of the Chinese spy balloon, which was shot down on February 4 over the waters of the Atlantic, was completed the day before.
The US Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) reported in a statement that these tasks culminated off the coast of South Carolina, after the “successful” location and removal of the remains of the balloon.
Those recovered pieces have been moved to an FBI lab in Virginia for “counterintelligence exploitation.”
US Navy and Coast Guard vessels have already left the area and the security perimeters that had been set up at the search site have been lifted.
On Thursday, US President Joe Biden said in a speech that he plans to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, about the “spy” balloon, but said he would not apologize for shooting it down.
Biden also warned that he will not hesitate to shoot down any flying object that poses a threat to the American people.
A plot that stretches around the globe
The Chinese “spy” balloon was located in late January in US airspace and was shot down over Atlantic waters on February 4. It had been flying over several areas of the country for days, such as the state of Montana (northwest), where one of the three existing nuclear missile silo fields in the United States is located.
For its part, the Chinese government has claimed that the balloon entered US airspace by mistakenly deviating from its trajectory and claims that it was used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
In addition to the “spy” balloon, the United States has shot down three other flying objects in its territory and Canada in the last week, the origin of which is being investigated by US and Canadian authorities.
Biden indicated that these latest flying objects do not appear to have any link to the Chinese “spy” balloon and that, in fact, US intelligence believes they were “probably balloons linked to private companies, recreational institutions” or research that They are dedicated to studying meteorological phenomena or doing other scientific investigations.