it goes back to the question you asked, and i think everybody is asking, why not shoot down the chinese spy balloon before it had the ability to traverse the united states for a week. sandra: if these were just weather balloons, wouldn t somebody have claimed them? i would think someone is missing a balloon somewhere, maybe they are embarrassed, maybe the administration knows, but somebody is missing three balloons, so i suspect we ll find out in due course. john: so just, if we are going to go after every weather balloon that happens to pass by or end up on this newly tuned radar, what s the cost associated to the u.s. taxpayer of doing that? you have to send up f-22 or f-16, firing off missiles at $400,000 apiece, the one over lake huron missed, pretty much a million dollars inside winder missiles there. how much is this going to cost the u.s. taxpayer in the
0 out because it was jammed. are we to believe that this didn t get any communications out back to beijing because it was effectively jammed all the way through by either the intelligence agencies or the military? yeah, well, dealing with the first thing, it s obvious, i think, given the action we took against these three unidentified objects, we did not act accordingly when air space was about to be violated by the spy balloon in alaska, did not shoot it down, that reacted in i think what may be an overreaction to the others. he has to be absolutely clear what we are going to do about it. i don t think he s going to fess up to the fact that they may have made a mistake in permitting it to go across the united states. i believe he did, he s going to get questions around that. in terms of what did we learn and did we shut them down, i m not a technology expert but my gut tells me we would never know for sure about that until we get ahold of the devices which we have in our hands now a
violent sphere destroying the object and popping the balloon, like we saw over the coast of south carolina. ashley: that is good to know for people wondering like me. todd: great work. richard newton has this warning about china s spy campaign. listen to this. this is a significant threat and it is a wake-up call forern ms. the fact the chinese are operating a spy vein through balloons, the first balloon shoot down by f-22 was at 65,000 feet, near space regime that i believe the chinese are trying to exploit. we don t operate up there very much. we have unmanned vehicle, but it is a region the chinese will try to exploit and they re doing it
the fact that whether or not we are able to, you know, we had one shot with an f-16 that was unable on the first shot with a side winder these are very complex, you know, very complex mission, again, we are not trained or are they designed f-16 or f-22 to go after a slow mover 5 or 10 knott balloon. can i tell you at the weapon school or certainly at top gun we don t train, this isn t in our playbook. jesse: you don t train on popping balloons. no we don t. jesse: i would agree. this is a significant threat. and it s a wake-up call for americans. the fact that the chinese are operating this global spy campaign through balloons. they are in a region, at least that first balloon shot down on the 4th of february by an f-22 that was operating up around 65,000 feet. that s in a near space regime that i believe the chinese are trying to exploit. we don t operate up there very much. we have got some reconnaissance aircraft u2 and hawk unmanned
the u.s. and canada haven t yet recovered any debris. the senior biden administration says it is possible they may never be able to. very difficult terrain. second one off the coast of alaska, that is up in some really, really difficult terrain with very low temperatures in minus 40s. meanwhile new audio the moment of an f-22 shot down the chinese spy balloon. the balloon is completely destroyed. reporter: the u.s. military has recovered a significant portion of that balloon. divers were able to get into the water and able to recover a significant amount of debris including some of the structure, some of the electronics. all r reporter: as for the ongoing recovery efforts off the coast of south carolina, a defense official says a significant portion of that balloon has been