China has responded angrily after a balloon it says was a weather device was shot down by the US military
, which Beijing insisted was a weather device that blew off course.
“This was a PRC surveillance balloon. This surveillance balloon purposely traversed the United States and Canada, and we are confident it was seeking to monitor sensitive military sites,”“Its route over the United States near many potentially sensitive sites contradicts the PRC government explanation that it is a weather balloon.”to the US, Department of Defence officials decided to shoot down it down on Saturday.
“The US used force to attack our civilian unmanned airship, which is an obvious overreaction,” China’s defence ministry spokesperson Tan Kefei said on Sunday.The announcement carried by state-run Xinhua news agency said his departure was not unexpected. In late January, Mr Zhuang was elected the head of the western Gansu province’s people’s political consultative committee, the provincial political advisory body.Spy balloons are not new.
When once they were at the mercy of the elements and could float away in the wind, now more sophisticated technologies allow such devices to use the currents to steer themselves. According to military research documents and studies, the US began using giant trains of balloons and sensors that were strung together and stretched more than 600ft as part of an early effort to detect Soviet missile launches. The top secret operation, dubbed Project Mogul, was carried out between 1947 and 1949.
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