it was shot down by an f-22 over northern alaska around 1:45 p.m. yesterday. defense officials say the remains have fallen into frozen water which is a good thing for evidence recovery as its origins must still be investigated. we re calling this an object because that s the best description we have right now. . we do not know who owns it, whether it s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned. we just don t know. reporter: all right. president biden used one word to describe the object s takedown when asked by reporters. listen. do you have anything to say about the object shot down over alaska, mr. president? [inaudible] reporter: all right. he says success there. unlike the suspected chinese spy craft, the flying object did the not appear to have any significant payload, and the pentagon does not believe that it was manned. we ll give credit to our pilots that they are very capable in terms of looking at
it s not very easy to track them because they re made out of plastic, vinyl on the top so it doesn t have much of a radar signature, and the payload underneath is generally not that large. the one we shot down over south carolina was a larger one, so they say about the size of three buses. but usually these balloons have a relatively small payload. it s the hard to find on ray car. they move really radar. they move really slowly which makes it something that s less threaten, so people react less quickly. we need another the a better job of coming up with a scheme to monitor for slow moving, smaller objects like this. and clearly, this caused them to go retroactively how they had tracked them in the past. joey: you know, you outlined the difference in cost it aches to scramble an f-22 and then i believe it s a side winder that we used to shoot it down. we re talking hundreds of thousands into the millions if we do this over and over again
the generosity of californians helping out people miles away. for the second time in less than a week, u.s. fighter jets have shot down an object inside u.s. territory. the latest is what military officials call a high altitude object that was spotted crossing into frozen territorial waters off alaska, an f-22 shooting it down on friday. unlike the chinese spy balloon shot down near south carolina, officials do not believe this new object was carrying surveillance equipment. katie bow is joining us now. what do we know about this latest intrusion? reporter: still a lot more questions than answers at this point. the u.s. military on thursday observed this unknown object entering into american air space off the coast of alaska, sent up
1:45 eastern time with the f-22. it does tell me perhaps the administration is still trying to gather the facts, they re trying to understand, now, what are the nature of this object. they may not have all the facts. you know, from a policy maker standpoint, especially on the heels of that chinese spy balloon that was shot down last weekend, you would have thought that we would have been really on top of this and maybe alerted the american people, but we ll i think the greater point here is not the operational tactical aspect of the chinese balloon much less this object, but it s really what does it tell us about china? china is now really trying to make its way on the world stage. modernizing their nuclear capabilities, land base, air base, sub launch capabilities. it s breathtaking. they ve got more nuclear missile launchers than the united states right now, we have greater capability, but
whereas one of their balloons is less than a million dollars. in other words, we re going to be the on the paying side of this, so they can just keep sending balloons regardless of capability and cost us a lot of money. if we look at this map, we have f-22s, i believe this is the flight path. they come up, they scramble, they wait on the mission, they go out. this is burning fossil fuels, it s costing a lot of time and resources. is there a chance that s part of the mission here? that s part of it, certainly. china, what they re trying to do is sort of test the ability of the united states to track these balloons and other drones and see how we respond and just sort of impose costs. they ve been doing this to japan with aircraft for about a decade now. so they force us to respond, spending $80,000 an hour with an f-22, spending $300,000 for a sidewinder missile, so that s part of the game here, test our resolve, evaluate our sensing capabilities ask just impose costs. joey: yeah. par