The U.S. State Department says Secretary Antony Blinken has postponed his trip to Beijing amid concerns about a Chinese surveillance balloon over Montana, home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields.
and just before Blinken was set to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing as part of an effort to diffuse those tensions.
The practice became more widespread during World War I and then during the Cold War, when the U.S. launched hundreds of balloons to gather intelligence on China and the Soviet Union,Surveillance balloons have been overshadowed by satellites and unmanned drones in recent decades, though they still offer certain advantages .What is it looking for?
China’s foreign ministry did not mention surveillance in its statement, simply describing the object as “a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes.”A senior defense official told reporters Thursday that the U.S. had prepared fighter jets to shoot down the balloon if ordered, but that the Pentagon recommended against it, in part because of the risk that debris from such a large balloon could pose to people on the ground.
But, he said, the U.S. is using some of those fighter jets to “take a peek” at the balloon in its efforts to keep monitoring it.Canada also says it’s monitoring a high-altitude surveillance balloon, though it’s not clear if it’s the same one. U.S.the balloon they are tracking flew over the Aleutian Islands and through Canada before it was spotted Wednesday over Billings, Montana.
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