President Joe Biden speaks at the White House on January 12, 2023.
AP Photo/Andrew Harnik
Three mysterious objects were shot down by the US military in North American airspace last weekend.
President Biden said nothing suggests these objects were related to any surveillance programs.
The three unidentified objects are “most likely” just civilian objects, he said on Thursday.
President Joe Biden on Thursday said no evidence suggests that the three unidentified objects shot down by US fighter jets in recent days are related to any country’s surveillance program and were ‘most likely’ civilian objects.
“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were,” Biden said in long-awaited remarks. “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”
Biden also addressed the Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace late last month, noting that his administration put restrictions on six firms that directly support the People’s Liberation Army aerospace program. Biden, who has drawn criticism for not acting as it traversed the country for a week, said he gave the order to shoot it down over the Atlantic Ocean “as soon as it would be safe to do so.”
“The military advised against shooting it down over land because of the sheer size of it,” he said. “It was the size of multiple school buses and it posed a risk to people on the ground if it was shot down where people lived.”
Biden said he’s directed his team to create “sharper rules” for dealing with unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those that pose a security risk and those that don’t. If any object poses a risk to Americans, he said, “I will take it down.”
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan will lead a government-wide effort to ensure the US is positioned to deal with objects in US airspace, establishing a better inventory of unmanned airborn objects, improving detection, and updating rules and regulations.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken will also help establish “common global norms in this largely unregulated space,” Biden said.