“Uncovering the U.S. Military’s ‘Awareness Lapse’: Investigating Chinese Spy Balloons in American Airspace”

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A senior US general responsible for the downing of a Chinese spy balloon said on Monday the military had not detected any previous spy balloons prior to the spy balloon that appeared over the United States on January 28, describing it as an “awareness lapse”. designated.

The Pentagon said over the weekend that Chinese spy balloons had flown briefly over the United States at least three times during the administration of President Donald Trump and once previously under President Joe Biden.

Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, chief of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command, said the balloon was 60 meters high and the payload underneath weighed a few thousand pounds.

“I will tell you that we have not detected these threats and that is a knowledge gap in the domain,” said VanHerck.

He added that US intelligence had subsequently identified the previous flights based on “additional means of gathering” information, without giving further details on whether they could be cyberespionage, wiretapped phone calls or human sources.

A US Air Force fighter jet shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, a week after it first entered US airspace, sparking a dramatic – and public – spy saga that has left the Chinese -American relations deteriorated.

VanHerck did not rule out that explosives could have been on the balloon.

Several combat and refueling aircraft were involved in the mission, but only one — an F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base, Virginia — captured the image at 14:39 (1939 GMT) with a single AIM-9X on heat-seeking supersonic -Air-to-Air Missile.

(Reporting by Phil Stewart and Idrees Ali; Editing by Chris Reese and Jonathan Oatis)

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