WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Thursday is set to deliver his first comprehensive remarks about the alleged Chinese spy balloon and unidentified objects shot down by the U.S. military in the skies above North America.
At 2 p.m. ET, Biden is expected to explain how he has tasked his administration with setting parameters on how to deal with balloons and other aerial objects spotted in the future.
Members of Congress, including Democrats, called on Biden to address the situation publicly. Lawmakers were briefed by top officials from the Department of Defense and the office of the director of national intelligence.
“The American people need to hear more about the nature of these objects or whatever they were,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., said Thursday.
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said at an event Thursday that, in addition to the alleged Chinese spy balloon, the U.S. still doesn’t know what the additional three objects shot down over North America were. One was shot down Friday over Alaska, another was shot down Saturday over Canada, and a third was shot down Sunday over Lake Huron.
“It could be commercial, it could have been weather balloons,” Kirby said at Georgetown University. “They could be scientific research, we just don’t know.”
The U.S. still hasn’t recovered debris from any of the three objects, Kirby said.
“We haven’t found anything just yet because of where they landed and because of the extreme winter weather in these locations,” he said.
The U.S. has been able to retrieve remnants of the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, more than a week after it first began traversing the country.
NBC News first reported the existence of China’s alleged spy balloon on Feb. 2.
Earlier this week, Biden directed his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, to coordinate an interagency team to address the recent spate of objects in the skies.
The interagency team will lay out parameters by the end of the week, Kirby said Tuesday, for how the U.S. will address such objects in the future.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
