President Joe Biden delivered a statement yesterday in which he vowed that his administration has been and will continue to defend U.S. airspace, even from barely detectable balloons in the stratosphere. He began by explaining that in the immediate aftermath of the shoot down of the Chinese balloon, NORAD “enhanced” its radar operations to track slow moving objects and that he gave the order to shoot them down based on alleged hazards to commercial aviation “because we could not rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities.”
“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were. But nothing—nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from other—any other country,” Biden said. “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.”
Then, in an apparent riposte to Republicans who say that Biden has left America’s skies open to Chinese incursions, Biden claimed that he has been on top of the problem since day one. “When I came into office, I instructed our intelligence community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects,” he said. “We know that a range of entities, including countries, companies, and research organizations operate objects at altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious, including legitimate scientific research.”
Biden admitted there was no evidence of a sudden increase in objects passing through the sky. Rather, the military is seeing more of them because of the increasing use of radar to look for smaller objects. “That’s why I’ve directed my team to come back to me with sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing—distinguishing between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not,” he said.
“But make no mistake,” he vowed, “if any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down. I’ll be sharing with Congress these classified policy parameters when they’re completed, and they’ll remain classified so we don’t give our roadmap to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”
Biden claimed that the message of the shoot down of the Chinese balloon was clear: “The violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable.” (Of course, it’s OK if it’s the Biden Administration doing the violating of someone else’s sovereignty.) [https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/02/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-united-states-response-to-recent-aerial-objects/]
