Schumer, told ABC’s “This Week” that he was briefed Saturday night by President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan after the incident that occurred hours earlier in the Yukon. An object the size of a small car was shot down in remote Alaska on Friday, according to the White House.
When asked if those two recent objects were balloons, Schumer said, “They believe they were, yes, but much smaller than the first.”
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The government said the first balloon was roughly the size of three school buses. He was shot down 4 February off the coast of South Carolina after passing through the United States. The Biden administration said it was used for surveillance. China says it has participated in a meteorological research mission.
Schumer said teams are recovering the debris from the objects and will work to determine where it came from. Those shot down on Friday and Saturday were smaller and flew about 40,000 feet lower, within the airspace occupied by commercial flights, compared to about 60,000 feet on the former.
“The bottom line is that we didn’t know about these balloons until a few months ago,” Schumer said. “It’s absurd that we didn’t know. … Now they are learning much more. And the military and intelligence are focused like a laser on first gathering and accumulating information, then coming up with a full analysis.
US warplane shot down ‘unidentified object’ over northern Canada: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
