A senior U.S. general responsible for bringing down a Chinese spy balloon said on Monday the military had not detected previous spy balloons before the one that appeared on Jan. 28 over the United States and called it an 'awareness gap.'
VanHerck added that U.S. intelligence determined the previous flights after the fact based on "additional means of collection" of intelligence without offering further details on whether that might be cyber espionage, telephone intercepts or human sources.
Republican Representative Michael Waltz, who serves on the House of Representatives intelligence committee, said on Sunday that the Pentagon had told him that several Chinese balloon incidents had happened over the past few years, including over Florida. VanHerck did not rule out that there could have been explosives on the balloon, but said he did not have any evidence of it either. That risk, however, was a factor in his planning to shoot down the balloon over open water.
VanHerck said debris had been collected from an area roughly 1,500 meters by 1,500 meters and a number of military vessels were helping gather it.
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