The US president also announced that he will talk to his Chinese counterpart about the downing of the ” spy balloon “, but he will not apologize for it.
The president of the United States , Joe Biden , said Thursday that he will not hesitate to order the shooting down of any aerial object that threatens national security.
“If any object poses a threat to the security of the American people, I will shoot it down,” Biden warned days after ordering the downing of a Chinese balloon and three other unidentified flying objects.
You will talk to your colleague
Biden also indicated that he plans to speak with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, about the “spy” balloon that he ordered to be shot down on February 4, but announced that he will not apologize for shooting it down.
“I hope to speak with President Xi and I want to get to the bottom of this matter. But I am not going to apologize for bringing down that balloon,” the president said in an appearance before the press at the White House.
The Chinese “spy” balloon was located in late January in US airspace and was shot down over Atlantic waters on February 4. It had been flying over several areas of the country for days, such as the state of Montana (northwest), where one of the three existing nuclear missile silo fields in the United States is located .
For its part, the Chinese government has claimed the balloon entered US airspace by mistakenly deviating from its trajectory and claims it was used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
UFOs?
In addition to the “spy” balloon, the United States has shot down three other flying objects in its territory and Canada in the last week , the origin of which is being investigated by US and Canadian authorities.
Biden said those latest flying objects do not appear to have any link to the Chinese “spy” balloon and that, in fact, US intelligence believes they were “probably balloons linked to private companies, recreational institutions” or research that They are dedicated to studying meteorological phenomena or doing other scientific investigations.
The president added that there has not been an increase in flying objects in US airspace and attributed the recent downing of those objects to changes in the frequency of the radars that the Armed Forces made after detecting the “spy” balloon . Chinese.
To address this situation, Biden has said that his National Security Adviser, Jake Sullivan, is developing new rules on flying object detection to incorporate into the national defense strategy.
After years of tensions with the government of Republican Donald Trump (2017-2021), Biden and Xi met for the first time as presidents last year at the G20 in Bali in an attempt to reduce tensions and prevent rivalry between the two powers. lead to open conflict.
However, the discovery of the “spy balloons” has revived tensions and even caused Secretary of State Antony Blinken to suspend a trip to China . EFE