the senate will get its own briefing later this morning. bill: the u.s. revealing the spy flight was part of a larger espionage program going on for years. china maintains it with as a weather balloon that drifted off course and traveled over sensitive military sites in the u.s. the pentagon says no chance. i can assure you this was not for civilian purposes. we re 100% clear about that. we are very confident we ll be able to detect these kinds of capabilities as evidenced by the continuing body of knowledge that we ve been able to build up on this. obviously that s something our intelligence community will continue to work closely on for this and any other potential threats. dana: bryan llenas is in myrtle beach, south carolina where crews are still searching for debris. we begin the aishah hosni on capitol hill and more on today s briefings as we get thursday going. hi, aishah. this all-house briefing got underway an hour ago and already seen some of these members e
dana: why did the administration let it spend days floating over sensitive military sites? among those pressing the pentagon for answers is montana senator john tester. say yes or no. did we know what they were trying to collect, yes or no? yes. we think we know what they were going to collect, we don t know. that scares the hell out of me. we are building our understanding of what capabilities they have. i have a problem with the chinese balloon flying over my state, much less the rest of the country. mike: president biden down playing the incident. president biden: it is not a look, it is totally violation of national law, our airspace. once they come in our space we can do what we want with it. mike: we begin with bryan llenas off the coast of south carolina where the salvage operation is moving forward. good morning, bryan. good morning. the f.b.i. says a majority of the chinese spy balloon remains underwater spread out in two separate sections in
it will be hard once they go down. dana, as you see the tools they need here in the sky to see these groups. we know there is only about four left in this area in rgb giving the border agents the tools they need. dana: taking tools away now doesn t seem to make sense. thanks for the report. mike: here to talk about is the chris from the national border patrol council. the price tag for these border blimps is not a whole lot of money, $52 million for fiscal year 2022. when the federal government is throwing around trillions of dollars, that sounds like loose change in the couch. you know, these aero stats are imperative for us in the field. losing them is going to be have a tremendous negative effect in the rio grande valley and across the border. del rio is the busiest border
handle it rather than did you do it, it seems kind of strange and see if he does anymore interviews. bill: tracking illegal migrants at the border is about to get more difficult. the biden administration is ending the use of one of its most critical and important border patrol surveillance, blimps at the border with mexico. bill melugin is on that story in mission, texas. what s up with this? good morning. these surveillance blimps are known at aero stats. there were 12 deployed along the southern border, now only four left due to a lack of funding. look at this video we shot of these stats considered a massive asset for border patrol. an eye in the sky. highly sophisticated cameras and technology. night vision, see for miles in all directions. they re highly effective at tracking evaders, smugglers and relaying realtime information to
seriously, it costs too much. people totally unwilling to assess this. what is it really about the wall that makes democrats mad enoughv i can t speak for everybody but i ll say what affects me for somebody that lives on the border all my life. first of all, we believe in homeland security. we want to see homeland security. but we want to have a homeland security that really works. a wall or a fence can t provide from tactical assistance. no f s no butts. especially in areas like arizona where you can step from one way to the other. we have a river, the thing is, we can secure the border by having technology, aero stats, 24-hour night and a camera, sensors, cameras, more personnel. i want to see more border patrols. we have too know how to secure the border because after all, we spent about $18 billion a year