US officials said an F-22 Raptor fighter jet shot down the balloon with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile six miles off the coast of South Carolina at 2:38 pm on Saturday.
A US Airforce F-22 fighter jet on Saturday shot down the Chinese spy balloon that floated across American airspace, wight days and 4,000 miles after it first crossed the US border. The balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin confirmed Saturday.
The operation brought an end to a dramatic public drama that caused a diplomatic split between Washington and Beijing, as the American people followed the balloon from Montana all the way to the Carolinas. The balloon’s collapse and descent from the sky could be seen on television, despite the US’s insistence that it was spying and China’s claim that it was for meteorological purposes.
US officials said an F-22 Raptor fighter jet shot down the balloon with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile six miles off the coast of South Carolina at 2:38 pm on Saturday. According to a senior military expert, the debris field was nearly seven miles wide, and the water’s depth was estimated to be 47 feet.
«On Wednesday, when I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down on Wednesday as soon as possible, without doing damage to anyone on the ground,» Joe Biden told reporters.
«I want to compliment our aviators who did it,» President Biden told reporters as he cheered the downing en route to Camp David.
The two aircraft, both of which were based at Langley Air Force Base in Hampton, Virginia, circled the surveillance craft as it approached the South Carolina coast while the Federal Aviation Administration closed three airports in North and South Carolina and the airspace over Charleston, Myrtle Beach, and Wilmington due to «national security initiatives,»
One of the F-22s fired a single AIM-9X missile at the balloon once it had drifted safely into the Atlantic, according to a senior military source.
