General Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command and US Northern Command, has confirmed that Chinese spy balloons briefly flew over America at least three times under President Donald Trump, and once previously during the Biden administration.
"I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” VanHerck told a news briefing, declining to elaborate on the location of the previous balloons.
He added that US intelligence identified the previous flights after they occurred through what the General described as "additional means of collection". VanHerck offered no further details on whether that might be cyber espionage, telephone intercepts or human sources.
Trump denied that there had been three Chinese spy balloons flying over the US during his administration and instead hit out at the Biden team.
“The Chinese balloon situation is a disgrace, just like the Afghanistan horror show, and everything else surrounding the grossly incompetent Biden administration. They are only good at cheating in elections, and disinformation - and now they are putting out that a balloon was put up by China during the Trump administration, to take the ‘heat’ off the slow-moving Biden fools,” the former POTUS wrote on his Truth Social app.
This comes as the US Coast Guard announced that they had imposed a temporary security zone in the waters off Surfside Beach, South Carolina, where the balloon was shot down and where US Navy divers are trying to recover the debris.
“The debris is in 47 feet (14 meters) of water, primarily. That will make recovery fairly easy, actually. We planned for much deeper water," VanHerck said, adding that wreckage “would have fallen at least in a seven-mile (11km) radius”.
Last week, a Chinese balloon at great altitude, which the US maintained was conducting surveillance, was spotted over the US state of Montana before an F-22 fighter jet shot it down on Saturday.
China claimed that the airship was engaged in scientific research, but the incident nevertheless sparked a diplomatic row, including the postponement of a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, where he was due to sit down with Chinese President Xi Jinping.