The U.S. shot down a foreign aircraft in its airspace for the first time in 80 years after a Chinese spy balloon satellite spent several days in American airspace, the Western Journal reported. Thanks to President Joe Biden, this marks the first time such an incident has occurred since World War II.
For nearly eight days, this balloon satellite toured the continental United States. While the communist country reportedly claimed it was a civilian airship, government officials admitted it was enemy recognizance aircraft.
"Affected by the westerly wind and with limited self-control ability, the airship seriously deviated from the scheduled route," a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry had claimed prior to the balloon's demise. "China regrets that the airship strayed into the United States due to force majeure," it continued.
"China will continue to maintain communication with the US to properly handle the unexpected situation." Not much was done about the situation until Sunday despite the public outcry, however.
The spycraft was finally shot down off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where it was later retrieved. American airforce jets were deployed to take it down in domestic waters ostensibly to prevent it from injuring anyone on the ground.
Still, Biden did nothing about the craft as it flew over U.S. military installments. An unnamed official at the Pentagon attempted to spin this long period of inaction by declaring, "while we took all necessary steps to protect against the PRC [China] surveillance balloon’s collection of sensitive information, the surveillance balloon’s overflight of U.S. territory was of intelligence value to us," the official said.
"We were able to study and scrutinize the balloon and its equipment, which has been valuable." Valuable perhaps, but the action ruffled feathers in the Chinese Communist Party and embarrassed the U.S.
This incident marked the first time in nearly a century that an adversary had the audacity to pull a stunt like this over the nation. The last time was on June 5, 1942, when a Mitsubishi A6M Zero was taken down near Alaska.
The enemy aircraft was shot down over the Aleutian Islands following its attack on Dutch Harbor, Alaska, on that date. The pilot was killed, and the jet crashed into the ocean.
Because of this recent embarrassment for Biden, the administration attempted to deflect blame. by claiming that former President Donald Trump. Defense officials claimed that similar incidents happened while Trump was in office, The Hill reported.
Trump refuted those claims almost immediately. “Now they are putting out that a Balloon was put up by China during the Trump Administration, in order to take the ‘heat’ off the slow moving Biden fools," Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.
"China had too much respect for ‘TRUMP’ for this to have happened, and it NEVER did. JUST FAKE DISINFORMATION!"
Even Trump's former national security adviser, John Bolton, confirmed that it never happened. "I don’t know of any balloon flights by any power over the United States during my tenure, and I’d never heard of any of that occurring before I joined in 2018. I haven’t heard of anything that occurred after I left either," Bolton said.
This was an embarrassing incident that marks a sad new reality in the U.S. Our enemies used to fear us, but they do as they please under Biden because he'll wait to do anything about it until absolutely forced.
