A Republican congressman from New Jersey called for "decisive consequences" the day before the shooting down of Chinese surveillance balloon this past weekend.
U.S. House Rep. Chris Smith (R-Manchester) issued a statement Friday, Feb. 3, about the much-reported spy balloon that then for days had been flying over the United States, calling the incident "a serious national security incursion that must have decisive consequences."
Smith, who represents New Jersey's 4th Congressional District, serves as a senior House Foreign Affairs Committee member and chairs the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China, also referred to the balloon's arrival as a wake-up call for the United States' relationship with China.
Image of Chinese surveillance balloon by Instagram user Chase Doak before it was shot down
| Instagram / Chase Doak
"It is long past time that we as a nation have a more frank and sober conversation about the challenges and the costs of a strategic competition with China, which is what I have been pushing in the Foreign Affairs Committee and now again as chair of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China," Smith said in the statement. "The Biden Administration must immediately take bold action to counter the great and growing threat posed by [Chinese President] Xi Jinping's Communist regime and safeguard our national security and the livelihoods of the American people."
In terms of Xi's dictatorship, Smith said in the statement that a government "that brutally abuses, tortures and kills its own people cannot be trusted or appeased." Smith also promised in the same release that he would continue "to work tirelessly to protect our great nation from those who seek to harm or destroy it and ensure that the U.S. always stands for freedom, justice and the protection of human rights against the rising tide of authoritarianism."
On Saturday, Feb. 4, the day after Smith released his statement, a U.S. Air Force fighter shot down the "Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon" following its fly-over of the U.S. for days prior, a U.S. Department of Defense news release issued the day of the shooting said. The department has since been collecting remnants of the balloon, despite rough seas, according to a subsequent release.
The balloon was visible for some time before being shot down. The Department of Defense said the evening of Thursday, Feb. 2, that it was tracking the "intelligence-gathering balloon, most likely launched by China."
"The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in an impromptu briefing the same day. "The U.S. government, to include NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense), continues to track and monitor it closely."
The balloon was not the first of its kind spotted over the U.S., according to an "official" quoted in the department's Feb. 2 news release, who also said it appeared to be acting differently than what previously had been observed.
"It's happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this administration," the official said. "It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances. That would be one distinguishing factor."
The dimensions of the balloon weren't specified at the time, but the official did call it "sizable" and said that was a factor in whether to shoot it down.
"We did assess that it was large enough to cause damage from the debris field if we downed it over an area," the official said. "I can't really go into the dimension — but there have been reports of pilots seeing this thing, even though it's pretty high up in the sky."
China weighed in the same day when a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson denied in National Review the balloon was being used for intelligence gathering, saying it was a research balloon blown off course.
"The airship is from China," the spokesperson said in the article. "It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the U.S. side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure."
The following day, the National Review reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken delayed a planned trip to China because of the balloon that had already flown over Alaska and Canada before it arrived over Montana. The National Review also repeated a NBC news story that said a senior defense official reported the balloon seemed to be monitoring Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to the U.S.' intercontinental ballistic missile.
Freshman Montana Republican U.S. House Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, told the National Review that the area of the state over which the balloon then was flying is not densely populated and that the balloon could easily be shot down without civilian casualties. That did not happen.
Smith was not the first high-ranking Republican in Washington to call for action against the Chinese balloon. "China's brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilizing action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent," U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) said in a Twitter post.
The Wall Street Journal later reported that Biden had initially wanted to shoot down the balloon sooner but that Pentagon officials talked him down.
After the balloon was shot down off the South Carolina coast, news outlets worldwide, including NPR (New Jersey Public Radio), reported that defense officials were working with the FBI and counterintelligence agencies to recover debris, including "any material of intelligence value."
"We don't know exactly all the benefits that will derive," a senior defense official said in NPR's news story. "But we have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities. And I suspect if we are successful in recovering aspects of the debris, we will learn even more."
