Pentagon’s own admission on Feb. 6 of an “awareness gap” regarding previous Chinese balloon incursions in U.S. airspace has put a concerning vulnerability under the spotlight, according to Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.).
“If the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] have been exploiting a radar gap for so many years, Congress deserves answers on this vulnerability to our greatest adversary can be addressed,” said Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.), who sits on the Armed Services and Intelligence committees, in a statement to The Epoch Times on Monday.
“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out,” VanHerck said.
Given the surveillance improvements, Sullivan said that “we were able to go back and look at the historical patterns” and uncover “multiple instances” during the Trump administration in which Chinese surveillance balloons traversed American airspace and territory.
The balloon was up to 200 feet tall and weighed a few thousand pounds, VanHerk said.
“The Office of the Secretary of Defense has informed my office that several Chinese balloon incidents have happened in the past few years—including over Florida,” Waltz wrote. “Why weren’t they shot down?
“And according to several Trump Admin national security officials—they were never informed of these intrusions by the Pentagon,” he added.
‘National Security Threat’
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Biden administration reacted too slowly.“The administration should have taken care of this before it became a national security threat,” McCaul said in a statement to The Epoch Times on Monday. “I hope we will be able to recover the wreckage to help determine what intelligence the CCP collected while its spy balloon was over our country for days.”
“It defies belief to suggest there was nowhere between the Aleutian Islands of Alaska and the coast of Carolina where this balloon could have been shot down right away without endangering Americans or Canadians,” McConnell said in a statement on Sunday.
However, some Democrats have defended Biden from GOP criticism, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).
The Air Force General added that the size of the debris field is estimated to be 1,500 meters (4,920 feet) by 1,500 meters, or about “more than 15 football fields by 15 football fields.”
The USS Carter Hall, an amphibious dock landing ship, was collecting debris “in the vicinity of the splashdown,” VanHerck said. Additionally, the USNS Pathfinder, an oceanographic survey ship, was mapping the ocean floor for debris, he added.