The US Navy released photos Tuesday of its recovery effort of a suspected Chinese spy balloon, which US fighter jets shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.
The photos from Sunday show sailors from a Navy explosive disposal team pulling debris from the deflated balloon onto a boat. The debris recovered is being taken to an FBI laboratory in Quantico, Virginia, for analysis as the US looks to understand the capabilities of the balloon.
On Monday, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters that the balloon was roughly 200 feet tall and carried a payload weighing more than a couple of thousand pounds.
US officials had been tracking the balloon for several days by the time it appeared in the skies over Montana. President Joe Biden said over the weekend that he’d directed the US military to shoot down the balloon as soon as it was safe to do so, but officials said it posed a risk to civilians and property on the ground.
“[F]rom a safety standpoint, picture yourself with large debris weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds falling out of the sky. That’s really what we’re kind of talking about,” VanHerck said on Monday. “So glass off of solar panels, potentially hazardous material, such as material that is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment as this and even the potential for explosives to detonate and destroy the balloon that could have been present.”
US officials also determined that the balloon did not pose a significant risk in its ability to gather intelligence.
A senior defense official said last week that the balloon had “limited additive value” from an intelligence collection perspective. Nevertheless, VanHerck said Monday that he and the commander of US Strategic…
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