News Desk
WASHINGTON: The United States Navy has released photos of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down on Saturday.
The US Fleet Forces Command posted several images on its official Facebook page in which members of the Navy’s specialist explosives team could be seen leaning over a rigid-hull inflatable boat and pulling in broad swathes of the balloon’s white outer fabric and shell structure.
The device will now be examined to check if it was indeed spy equipment.
The balloon is approximately 60 metres (200 ft) tall with a payload portion that the head of US Northern Command, General Glen VanHerck, described as about the size of a regional airliner.
The debris was retrieved off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, a day after a US fighter jet downed the balloon.
Balloon’s debris spread over seven miles
The navy said the balloon’s debris was spread over seven miles (11km) of the Atlantic Ocean.
China has repeatedly insisted that the “airship is for civilian use and entered the US due to force majeure – it was completely an accident”.
US officials said on Tuesday that the Pentagon wanted to arrange a phone call between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart after the balloon was shot down, but the request was declined by China.
The discovery of the balloon caused a diplomatic crisis, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately cancelling a weekend trip to China over the “irresponsible act.”
