U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, has some questions about the China spy balloon, which was shot down by a U.S. fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, after entering U.S. airspace in Alaska a week earlier.
From Jan. 28 to Feb. 4, the a large, white high-altitude balloon, visible from the ground, crossed through North American airspace, entering in Alaska, traversing Canada, and crossing the continental United States.
“I want to commend the skilled airmen who safely executed the mission to finally take down the Chinese spy balloon,” Sullivan said in a statement. But with Alaska’s advanced missile detection systems, there are too many unanswered questions. Sullivan asked questions that plenty of Alaskans have already asked, as many wonder why the federal government didn’t alert the state to the danger, and why the object was not shot down over the vast empty spaces of Alaska.
“I have already begun pressing our senior military leaders and Biden administration officials on why this surveillance balloon was allowed to operate for so long over our country, and what consequences the Chinese Communist Party will face for this brazen violation of American sovereignty.
“The 11th Air Force in Alaska does an exceptional job of detecting, intercepting and keeping adversarial aircraft, like Russian bear bombers, out of Alaska air space on a regular basis. We need to know why a Chinese spy asset was allowed to breach sovereign American airspace. This cannot become a precedent for further Chinese Communist Party aggression,” Sullivan said.
