WASHINGTON The US Forces US spotted a new balloon of unknown origin flying over the coast Hawaiialthough as of this Monday the 1st they said there is no indication it is operated or controlled by “foreign actors or rivals”.
A Pentagon spokesman told the EFE news agency that the Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) “detected and observed” an “unmanned” balloon near Hawaii at an altitude of 10,972.8 meters last Friday.
“Although it flew at an altitude used by civil aviation, it posed no threat to aviation in Hawaii,” the source said.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin; The military’s recommendation is to do nothing about the balloon Photo: Michael Reynolds/EFE 27/04/2023
The spokesman said the device did not go “directly” through any “critical” defense infrastructure or “sensitive” government site.
He stressed that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, based on the information gleaned from monitoring the device, accepted the recommendation of the armed forces commanders that “there was no need to take any action against the balloon.”
The plane is now outside of Hawaiian airspace and territorial waters, although it continues to be monitored in cooperation with the FAA.
In late January, a Chinese “spy” balloon hovered over the continental United States until February 4, when it was shot down by the US Air Force over Atlantic waters.
The device flew for days over several areas of the country, such as the state of Montana (northwest), where one of the three nuclear missile silos in the United States is located.
This event heightened tensions between the US and China. Beijing has admitted the balloon is its own but argued in its defense that it was lost and that it was being used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
According to leaked Pentagon documents released by the Washington Post, the US government has uncovered at least three more Chinese “spy” balloons in addition to the one it uncovered in late January. One of them flew over a group of aircraft carriers, the other crashed into the South China Sea./EFE