Page 622 - Capability News Today

So, is that kind of the reasoning that you had mentioned about, if we could take any of the payload from this balloon? >> 100%. i completely agree with that statement. i view this as somewhat of an intelligence when, if you will. for us to be able to hopefully see this intact payload. and i agree with peter, this isnt the first time that something like this has happened and i would assume and hope that the intelligence community and the military was aware of these things happening and didnt know...

Developed by the chinese, a low cost and low-risk as far as the capability is concerned? i think senator tester said something before about the people of montana worried about their privacy. the chinese have capability, the russians have capability, which certainly intrudes upon our privacy. thats gone for all practical purposes in terms of trying to hide things from them. the real question is what capabilities does this particular aircraft have that can loiter and linger for hours or days over ...

Do they want to get caught? >> i think this is not stealth in anyway. this is not meant to evade our ability to detect it, but its an important capability that china has fielded. a balloon allows for persistent surveillance. a satellite has to wrap around the earth on an orbit, it can only pass over an area two, three times a day. a balloon has that proverbial unblinking eye. and it can stare down at targets inside the united states. while balloons are nothing new, in fact, buildings have been u...

Information out of it before we destroy it. we didnt know, for example, could it have contained something within the balloon other than helium that could have posed a threat to us? do we know if it has any kind of biological component to it. you want to ask those questions and just completely correct about this in terms of what the chinese may or may not do in the future, but we need to find out as much information from this particular balloon as we can to make sure we put the chinese on notice ...

Explanation. cnns selina wang is covering this angle for us in beijing. what is the latest from the chinese government? >> reporter: well, look, china is sticking to its claim that this is just a weather balloon thats gone off course. the pentagon does not buy that claim. but what is extraordinary here is that the chinese government expressed regret. this is extremely rare. i dont ever remember a statement from the chinese government like this in my time covering china. and it is a major shift f...

Could it have contained something within the balloon other than helium that could have posed a threat to us. do we know if it has any kind of biological component to it. so you want to ask those questions, and i think they were completely correct about this in terms of what the chinese may or may not do in the future. we need to find out as much information about this balloon we can to make sure we put chinese on notice, come again another time, and we know what to do. right here i think was rea...

Here could be gathered from google maps, what is the motivation from china for allowing this to happen? well, this is muscle flexing on the international stage. we dont know chinas motivation, but this had to come up from very high up and certainly when you look at the sensitive sites, when you look at the state of americas nuclear missile arsenal which of course has slowed down as the russian and the chinese have setup, this is kind of a way for the chinese again to say, we are here, our power ...

Capable surveillance balloon over the continental u.s. including overflying several sensitive installations and now a u.s. president making a decision to fire weapons, fire a missile from an f-22 fighter jet to destroy that surveillance balloon, but also critically take it down in u.s. territorial waters off the coast of south carolina with ships on the surface there, as were told, going to make an attempt, at least, to collect what it can from here that they can further learn exactly what chine...

By the chinese. a great point, the united states was having robust position with a lot of positions of strength. so i think this was a move to say by the chinese to say we actually want to humiliate the united states a little bit and now we have word of a second balloon heading it to south america. i dont think its an accident. we heard from the former chief of staff of the nsc and trump-era we have the capability to bring it down and contain for intelligence purposes. i think thats what we shou...

What do you think? >> well, we certainly could have done that, neil, before it got into our-- you know, over our territory. that thing could have been brought down when it was in the elution area, and as soon as it got over our 12 miles of, you know, space over the ocean we could have brought that thing down and should have done that. president bidens had-- just a run of bad decisions on this one, too, not informing congress, not shooting it down, and just allowing it to go all-- the thing went ...