northwestern canada. it comes a day after us military shot down an object over alaska and a week after the shooting down of a chinese observation balloon. justin trudeau has tweeted saying he ordered the take down of an object that violated canadian airspace. it was shot down by canadian and us aircraft. the us f 22 successfully fired at the object. they haven t said what the object is. a bit like the first news we got in about the shooting down of an object 2a hours ago over alaska. justin trudeau said he spoke to president biden in the afternoon and canadian forces will not recover and analyse the wreckage of the object now recover. more details about that, but in terms of what happened 2a hours before this shooting down, the military said it had no further details about the object shot down by their air force
On February 4th, 2023, the U.S. Air Force had an unusual mission, a task so atypical to modern warfare that it was almost beyond living memory, having last occurred at the tail end of WWII.[1] Now faced with the necessity of downing a balloon, Air Force officials turned to the unit with the most historical experience in this role, the Fightin' Eagles of the 27th Fighter Squadron. So when the F-22 Raptor pilot flying callsign Frank 01 announced, “Splash one,” and his wingman in Frank 02 followed up with, “The balloon is completely destroyed,” upon the 27th Fighter Squadron's successful completion of their mission to destroy a Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast, the moment was far from the first time that pilots from the Fightin’ Eagles had sent a balloon to its doom.[2] While the leadership of Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base knew the history of the squadron they selected for this unique assignment, it is unlikely that they und
The United States has shot down a Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean, CNN reported citing a US official. US President Joe Biden had approved shooting d
military bases. what we learned late today is that the u.s. is now using some of its counter intelligence capabilities to obscure the picture that chinese balloon is able to see on the ground. as it gets potentially closer to that the u.s. doesn t want it to see, they have the capability to keep it from seeing things that might be potentially restricted or may cause some sort of concern to u.s. intelligence. just in terms of the shooting down, cars are lots of people saying it should be shot down, including donald trump, who said a fundraising email out saying shut it down. it s enormous. it s 50,000 feet up and we re seeing. it it s very large. as you should ve down like, that debris is going to fall somewhere, soon. that s exactly what people here, defense officials are saying is the concern about shutting down. as you mention, it s huge. estimates as to maybe three school buses in size. it s around the neighborhood of
this flying at a very, very hay altitude, about 60,000 feet, so higher than commercial aviation, but it s believed to have a helium component to it, and it s enormous. so if we can see it from the ground and it s flying that high, think about how big it actually is in reality. that s one of the concerns here is because it s so large it could create this big debris field if it s blown up, if it comes down. i think that s one of the major reasons according to the defense officials we re speaking to, that s one of the major reasons they re concerned about bringing it down. there s the enormous geopolitical implications of the u.s. shooting down or bringing down a chinese asset no matter where it is. let me ask you about a couple of aspects to this, one obviously the geopolitical implications. look, blinken would have been the highest ranking member of this administration to go to china. i think first secretary of state in, what, five years? to postpone it, what are you hearing, and just