The Biden administration is releasing details on how exactly the military effort to shoot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina unfolded.
A senior military official said on Saturday that the Chinese spy balloon was shot down at 2:39 p.m. on Saturday by one air-to-air A9X sidewinder missile fired by an F-22 Raptor that took off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.
The aircraft fired the missile at an altitude of 58,000 feet while the balloon was hovering at an altitude of between 60,000 and 65,000 feet.
The balloon was shot down about six nautical miles off the coast off South Carolina and the debris field is said to be roughly seven miles wide.
The depth of the water where the debris from the balloon hit the ocean is approximately 47 feet, officials said.
The timeline on recovering the balloon from the Atlantic Ocean is unknown and a Navy salvage vessel is expected to be on the scene in a couple of days.
The defense official said that the U.S. military was able to gather intelligence information on the balloon as it flew across the country.
“I can’t go into more detail, but we were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment, which has been valuable as Chinese officials have themselves acknowledged,” the defense official said.
The defense official confirmed President Biden’s Saturday comment that the military was given his permission to shoot the balloon down on Wednesday but military officials waited due to safety concerns for people on the ground.
The defense official said that Saturday afternoon “was the first available opportunity to successfully bring down their surveillance balloon in a way that would not pose a threat to the safety of Americans, which are military assets.”
President Biden has received scrutiny from Republicans on Capitol Hill for not shooting down the balloon sooner as it flew over several military facilities that could have potentially provided China with intelligence information.
What the Communist corrupted O.W.O Satan indoctrinated morally & sexually perverted pedophile embracing immoral military leaders in this Antichrist democrat facist military needs to do is too explain to the real American people who belong in this country how it even got this far into our country before they took days to shoot it down , what if these balloons had the newest lab created Biden/ chinese communist collaborated deadly strain of their lab created death covid viruses in them and they released them over the public to destroy our country without a shot being fired, by a bio weapon attack, they tried this at the end of Trump’s presidency to disrupt discredit and destroy this countries last fair election, now a free non corrupted election will never be held in this country again, until we purge, burn, & totally expose this entire corrupted communist Democrat Satan worshiping government to the ground. As we expose their true sick evil satanic agenda of destruction of humanity & our country while destroying people’s human rights, not even mentioning the Force death threats and silencing of the only salvation man has “THE WORD OF GOD” as they Usher in Satan himself to globally run this country to finish off & destroy Humanity & earth ,these are sick demonic rich elitist Antichrist child sacrificing demons who will burn in hell for eternity, but I like to see most of burn in front of us until then.
More lies and they now claim credit for their total incompetence. Like somehow we should believe some heroism was involved. It should have been shot down in the vast empty terrain of Montana. Easy extraction without the Navy getting involved in a difficult and expensive sea extraction. Nincompoops. Their brains are like bb’s in a boxcar.
Woo Hoo! You With All Your Fancy Metals. It was a Civilian Who Spotted it.
“The defense official said that Saturday afternoon “was the first available opportunity to successfully bring down their surveillance balloon in a way that would not pose a threat to the safety of Americans, which are military assets BULLSHIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NORAD was “tracking” the balloon as it crossed the Pacific, and we should have SHOT IT DOWN BEFORE IT REACHED U.S. SOIL.