Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) claimed Sunday that the Chinese spy-balloon scandal, in which Beijing gained access to U.S. airspace for a week—including over an intercontinental-ballistic-missile site—was ultimately a net loss and embarrassment for Beijing.
After apprehending the surveillance balloon over Montana, the U.S. government tracked it for five days, allowing it to drift over U.S. and Canadian airspace for a total of eight days before finally shooting it down over the Carolina coast last Saturday.
“I think the Chinese were humiliated,” Schumer said on ABC’s This Week. “I think the Chinese were caught lying. I think it’s a real step back for them.”
Two other objects were removed from the sky by the U.S. since the China incident. A U.S. F-22 fighter jet shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over the Yukon Territory in Canada on Saturday, in the third such occurrence this month.
The Federal Aviation Administration then shut down a part of the airspace over Havre, Montana by the U.S. border with Canada due to a “radar anomaly.” It was later reopened to air traffic. A fighter jet was deployed to investigate the radar situation, the U.S. military said.
North American air defense (NORAD) “detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits,” the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command said in a statement.
On Friday, another “high-altitude airborne object” was shot down off the northern coast of Alaska, U.S. Northern Command said in a statement. Multiple agencies such as Alaska’s command, the Alaska National Guard, and the FBI have been conducting search and recovery activities on sea ice. Those operations have had to be adjusted, however, due to “arctic weather conditions, including wind chill, snow, and limited daylight.”
On Sunday, Schumer noted recent comments from President Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, that other airborne objects that the U.S. apprehended and shot down were also probably balloons. The government has not said whether it suspects China is also behind them.
China should feel compelled to discontinue its balloon dispatches after last week’s drama, Schumer said.
“I think they are probably gonna have to get rid of it or do something,” the senator said. “Because they look really bad.”