WASHINGTON — The U.S. government has assessed that three unidentified objects downed since last Friday were likely for commercial use and not foreign intelligence-gathering.
“Given what we’ve been able to ascertain thus far, the intelligence community’s considering, again, as a leading explanation, that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday.
Early indications have shown nothing that points to a Chinese government surveillance program, Kirby said. Authorities also feel comfortable ruling out that the objects belonged to the U.S. government, he said.
The U.S. has not been able to collect debris from the objects, and thus has not made a final determination about what they were or their origin. But analyses by intelligence agencies and the Federal Aviation Administration as well as visual accounts from military pilots have given the Biden administration some preliminary clues.
“Our initial assessments here based on talking to civil authorities in the intelligence community is that we don’t see anything that points right now to these being part of the PRC spy balloon program or in fact, intelligence collection against the United States of any kind,” Kirby said, using the abbreviation of China’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China. “That’s the indications now. It will certainly help us hone in on that, if and when we can get the debris.”
Kirby and U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley confirmed that a U.S. military jet ordered to shoot down an object over Lake Huron missed its first shot. Milley said the first missile landed “harmlessly” in the lake.
An interagency group President Joe Biden established to study the objects will likely have a set of criteria by week’s end on how to respond to the objects going forward, Kirby said.
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(With assistance from Josh Wingrove.)
