Page 653 - Balloon News Today

>> are your interests piqued when you hear about that, you know, the economic incentive potentially for alaska, or in the last case, involving that balloon, it was montana, and military, sensitive military installations? >> i think cedric makes a great point. there is huge interest in the arctic by virtue of the fact of global warming, and the fact that the arctic can be a transit route as well as probably huge reserves of oil. and the chinese definitely have an interest, an economic interest in...

Zero against the balloons and floating objects by. >> and mystery craft that is for sure. you said he did not focus on it much in his speech. his remarks during the week seemed a little unfocused as well. take a listen to this montage. >> said to a balloon could break american airspace -- mike anyway it is not a major breach. [laughter] >> the idea that shooting down on balloon gathering information over america makes relations worse. >> munson came over into the united states from canada and to...

Christmas is when you go to the norad web site and do the santa tracker, do you guys ever do that? rachel: yes, of course. >> my kids, i loved that. heres where santa is. we need a balloon tracker now, i guess. kirby was so interesting. you guys know d.c., how everybody has their political speak. he looked really, really confused. we dont know if its a chinese balloon, we dont know if its just some kid who was like, hey, im going to fly a balloon which really fundamentally is the issue that im t...

Americans are concerned about the whole balloon incident last week. how safe are our skies and what is getting through? who is getting through? your thoughts? >> and look, we do not know the origin of this is proof do know the balloon is chinese it was an ill-conceived ill-timed incompetent move. china really wanted to have this dialogue with secretary blinken. and so to have this happen right before that dialogue demonstrated some significant i think incompetence and may be a left-hand/right-ha...

Object is. the pentagon is still using the word object. they have said it is different in size and shape than the chinese spy balloon. theyve said its the size of about a small car. but beyond that, theyre not saying do we think this is a drone, some kind of smaller but perhaps similar balloon. we do know from a u.s. official that it is not believed to have surveillance equipment attached to it. so at this point we are really waiting to hear what the military and what the fbi is able to determin...

President biden downplayed that balloons significance in an interview this week saying the flight was, quote, not a major breach. lets bring in retired four-star general jack keane, chairman of the institute for the study of war and a fox news senior strategic analyst. general, good to see you. thanks for coming in. so do you think the administration did the right thing here shooting down this latest object so quickly after it had waited a long time to shoot down the balloon? >> no, yeah, absolu...

Chinese communist party, the ccp. and they have been very odd in their reaction to even the balloon incident. i guess the old line that the best defense is a good offense, saying that we behaved provocatively shooting the thing down. they want it back. theyre hanging up on, you know, american high ranking officials who called to talk to their chinese counterparts, including the defense secretary. what do you think of their behavior and reaction since? >> well, its ridiculous, neil. lets remember...

Clearly was in the range of aviation air space. that is dangerous. commercial aviation air space has protected altitudes. we just simply cant have other stuff in those protected altitudes. and whether the shooting of it down would harm individuals on the ground or property. these are the calculations that went into the biden administrations decision to delay the shootdown until the balloon was past north carolina and why they were able to do it so quickly now. thats the similarity. right now wha...

That part thank you very, very much lucas thomason at the white house were going to center tim kaine sits on the foreign armed services committee, very influential player in all this. senator very good to see you again. >> thanks neil glad to be with you. neil: what do we know that we did not know yesterday? any country of origin no country has come forward to say hey, that is ours. just curious. >> neil i have not been given any more information than you have it. so i am free to speculate i am ...

To pick up on one of juliets points here. the friday shootdown, we dont know what the object was. we know where it was flying. at 40,000 feet. so there was an instant justification to take it down and get it out of the way of the aircraft. thats a big polar route to asia. for this aircraft, they have not said at what height it was moving, but they did say it was a very high altitude. so a big difference about whether it was at 40,000 again or whether it was up at 65,000 where the chinese balloon...