Officials in the Biden administration had planned to keep a Chinese spy balloon that hovered over the US secret from the public, it has been claimed, with a top Air Force commander admitting the balloon exposed gaps in their intelligence gathering.
The balloon entered US airspace on 28 January and was shot down on 4 February after passing over multiple nuclear missile sites.
In a new report from NBC, the outlet has cited a former senior official briefed in the incident who claims that the administration had planned to keep it under wraps.
The source said: ‘Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it.’
Biden’s administration has been adamant that the balloon, which Beijing previously denied was a government vessel, did not collect and transmit data.
The spy balloon is seen drifting above the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, on Saturday – with a fighter jet and its contrail seen below it
NORAD Chief Gen. Glen VanHerck has said the presence of the balloon exposed holes in the intelligence agencies
A senior Biden administration official denied that there was an attempt to keep the balloon secret to the outlet.
They said: ‘To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking. There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.’
NBC also revealed that during a phone call on January 27, General Mark Milley and NORAD Chief Gen. Glen VanHerck said the Pentagon planned to send up 5-22 jets to gauge its characteristics.
Soon after that call, jets used targeting pods to determine that the object was indeed a balloon that was roughly the size of three school buses and equipped with a surveillance payload.
President Biden was not briefed on the balloon until February 1, with the public later hearing about it after NBC broke the story.
VanHerck has since said that the balloon exposed gaps in the intelligence agencies and warned the Chinese balloon program remains ongoing.
He said: ‘It exposed significant gaps, long range gaps, for us to be able to see potential threats to the homeland. I think that opened the eyes of a lot of people.
‘Time is the opportunity to create deterrence options or, if required, defeat options’, adding that the U.S. is still ‘not where we need to be’.
The F-22 Raptor is seen taking off from Joint Base Langley-Eustis to take down the balloon
A U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot looks down at the Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovers over central America
Another administration official also told the outlet that the balloon ’caused so many problems’.
The balloon had drifted east and entered US airspace over Alaska on 28 January and was tracked as it flew over Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana, where nuclear assets are stored.
On 4 February, the Air Force sent an F-22 fighter jet armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile to take the balloon down over water.
The balloon was found to have a self-destruct mechanism that could have been activated remotely from China.
NBC also reported that at some points it had been remotely steered from inside of China, while also using the wind and jet stream to push it over America.
After being taken down, the balloon fell into waters off the coast of South Carolina with divers and underwater robots being deployed to recover the remains.
Throughout the whole episode, Beijing insisted that the craft was deployed for ‘meteorological purposes’, and spoke out vehemently against its destruction.
President Biden would go on to suggest that Chinese leaders may have been unaware of the spy balloon.
He told reporters: ‘China has some legitimate difficulties unrelated to the United States.
The Chinese spy balloon after it was shot down by an F-22 on Saturday over South Carolina’s coastline
President Joe Biden downplayed the recent Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the US, saying he thinks Chinese leaders may have been unaware of it
‘And I think one of the things that that balloon caused was not so much that it got shot down.
‘I don’t think the leadership knew where it was and knew what was in it and knew what was going on. I think it was more embarrassing than it was intentional.’
It comes after a report earlier this week that said a Chinese spaceplane that was launched into orbit last week is sending strong signals over the U.S.
The craft – dubbed Shenlong after a spirit dragon from Chinese mythology – has released six mysterious objects after reaching the Earth’s orbit for the third time in three years.
The objects are being tracked by the US Space Force but no details have been released publicly as to what they are or what purpose they serve.
Amateur astronomer Scott Tilley has been tracking the plane and examining the signals they have been emitting.
He told DailyMail.com they appear to be sending the strongest signals while passing over North America.
An announcement in the Chinese press described the purpose of the space plane as providing ‘technical support for the peaceful use of space’ – but the nation has kept details under wraps.