Sen. Schumer Wants Answers About Flying Objects

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) in Washington on Dec. 22, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Frustration grows in Congress concerning a lack of information from the White House regarding the three objects that the U.S. military shot down over the past weekend.

Pursuing answers, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) announced in the Senate chamber on Feb. 13 that he convened a meeting of senators for an intelligence briefing on the matter that will be held at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.

The U.S. military used missiles to destroy three small objects; one over Alaska on Feb. 10, another over the Yukon in Canada on Feb. 11, and one over Lake Huron on Feb. 12.

On Feb. 4, the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina but not before it crossed most of the continental United States. Washington and the U.S. military have been on high alert since the incident.

Sen. Schumer Chases Answers

“I have scheduled for senators to receive a briefing tomorrow on what we know and do not know about where these objects come from and what threats if any, they pose to the United States,” Schumer said to those assembled in the Senate shortly after the day’s session started.

Map shows path of suspected spy balloon. AP Photo

Before the U.S. downed the object over Lake Huron, Schumer said he thought the objects destroyed over Alaska and Canada that officials said were “unidentified” were balloons.

Further, Schumer suggested they could also be Chinese spy balloons and part of a surveillance effort that has been going on for years.

“The bottom line is, until a few months ago, we didn’t know of these balloons—our intelligence and our military didn’t know,” he said.

Schumer also posed the possibility that China’s ruling communist party are “not just doing the United States, this is a crew of balloons.” And “they’ve probably been all over the world.”

China did not respond to Schumer’s accusation of a global spy effort but did say that the balloon shot down on Feb. 4 was a weather balloon that had traveled off course and that the U.S.’s military response was unnecessary and an overreaction.

The regime also claimed that the United States had flown surveillance balloons over mainland China multiple times last year—claims that the White House has contested are “false.”

An official publication of the CCP’s military wing published in 2020 suggested that the regime could use high-altitude balloons like the one shot down this month to spread terror and confusion in America.

“In the future, balloon platforms may become like submarines in the deep sea, a silent killer that brings terror,” the CCP publication said.

In one incident covered by Chinese state-owned media in 2018 and subsequently deleted, the Chinese military used a high-altitude balloon to lift and drop hypersonic missiles for testing purposes.

Andrew Thornebrooke and The Associated Press contributed to this article.