Page 5 - Balloon Flight News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Military doesn't have the capability to make those determinations. we could argue whether the balloon should have been shot down for the pacific or atlanta, and i want to clean that up. our military would never allow weapons platform they had been watching for days to penetrate u.s. air space. to your question, look, the chinese-- this balloon overflight was brazen. now, we don't really know at what levels of the china government this was approved. we don't have that information yet, but the very fact that they put a balloon in a position to go across the continental united states shows real d...

Evidence the u.s. is now sharing with dozens of countries. >> the united states was not the only target of this broader program, which has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents. >> reporter: two u.s. officials tell nbc news the chinese military has been spying on as many as 40 countries. reports say they include japan, taiwan, the philippines and according to nato countries in europe. intelligence analysts don't know whether china's president xi jinping knew his military had launched this balloon flight across the united states. >> it doesn't matter on one level which in...

The military's response. oren lieberman, cnn at the pentagon. >> cnn's ivan watson is standing by in hong kong with the latest from there. china saying u.s. is overreacting, violating international practice. a lot of people saying how so when it was flight over u.s. territory. you imagine china would have brought down a u.s. balloon flight over its territory. >> it's hard to see what kind of a leg the chinese government has to stand on here, michael. friday, the chinese foreign minute city surprise a lot of people when it announced that it regretted the fact that what it described as an air --...

The existence of balloons is not a mystery to people in that field. what we've never seen, what is unprecedented and whoever the source is at the department of defense would have to acknowledge this, what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that entered over idaho, over montana, all these sensitive military installations, air force bases, icbm fields, that's unprecedented. that it flew briefly over the continental u.s., that's one thing. this week, this is unprecedented. we've never seen this. this is no comparison to anything that may have happened up to this point. >> your colleague and fri...

Grant adamson, the father, was pronounced dead at the scene. his wife, two daughters and the pilot survived with life threatening injuries. earlier this year, in egypt, a hot air balloon catching fire, crashing down 1,000 feet to the ground. 19 british tourists on board killed. despite these high-profile crashes, experts say balloon flights are in fact safer than an airplane flight. the investigation is under way into why this balloon flight had such a tragic end. lama hasan, abc new, switzerland. the first criminal charges have been filed in connection with the attack in benghazi. a militia...