- Navy’s elite explosives squad recovered the debris on Sunday.
- The navy said the debris was dispersed across seven miles.
- The item will now be analyzed to see whether or not it was surveillance equipment.
The US Navy released images of a possible Chinese spy balloon blown out of the sky on Saturday.
The US Fleet Forces Command shared many photographs on Facebook of the balloon’s debris being loaded into a boat.
According to the article, the sailors who recovered the debris on Sunday were members of the Navy’s elite explosives squad.
The item will now be analyzed to see whether or not it was surveillance equipment.
According to US officials, the balloon is around 200 feet (60 meters) tall, with the payload part equal in size to regional airliners and carrying hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds.
China has constantly stated that the “airship is for civilian use and entered the US due to force majeure – it was completely an accident”.
According to US authorities, the Pentagon attempted to organize a phone contact between Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart after the balloon was shot down, but China refused.
“Lines between our militaries are particularly important in moments like this,” defense press secretary Brigadier General Patrick Ryder said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the PRC has declined our request.”
The discovery of the balloon set off a diplomatic crisis, with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken immediately calling off a weekend trip to China – the first such high-level US-China meeting there in years – over the “irresponsible act”.
A day after being shot down by a fighter jet, the balloon was recovered off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
The navy said the debris was dispersed across seven miles (11 kilometers) of the Atlantic Ocean, and two naval ships, including one equipped with a big crane for retrieval, were dispatched to the region. However, the photographs show that the mounds of balloon material may be dragged aboard by hand.
As part of the hunt, the US Navy has also deployed unmanned underwater vehicles.
According to experts, the balloon’s wreckage might give the US with important insight into Chinese aerial surveillance equipment and procedures, allowing them to better understand what the balloon was capable of and how it relayed data.
Efforts to recover the balloon’s equipment, on the other hand, have been hindered by the necessity to protect US troops from potentially hazardous objects such as explosives or battery components.
On Thursday, US defense officials declared that they were tracking the unusual object and would shoot it down once it was safely over the sea.
Footage shown on US television networks showed the balloon crashing into the sea after a tiny explosion.
The Pentagon announced on Friday that a second Chinese surveillance balloon had been sighted over Latin America, with reports of sightings across Costa Rica and Venezuela.
Colombia’s Air Force reports that an identifiable object, thought to be a balloon, was discovered above 55,000 feet in the country’s airspace on 3 February.
It claims it followed the object until it departed the airspace and that it posed no threat to national security.
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