let s go the white house on the breaking news. lucas tomlinson, i understand you have new reporting the share. lucas: that s right, senior official confirms that the u.s. government is weighing options on how to shoot down this chinese spy balloon when it crosses the atlantic, safely off the coast of the united states. now earlier in syracuse president biden was asked to do on the balloon and he said all options are on the table and this is what he said exactly. the chinese balloon we will take care of it. lucas: this morning former defense secretary chuck served under barack obama said this balloon should be brought down gently to exploit it. we don t know what the pentagon is going to do and what the president will ultimately decide and once it gets out over open waters i d be surprised if we would allow this balloon just to float back to china. lucas: both countries spawn each other, of course, just over a month ago the pentagon says fighter jet came to american sp
the u.s. military would love to recover the spy satellite, spy balloon and be able to recover and exploit the material. any information that it transmitted from the spy balloon that s already been transmitted in realtime certainly floating over key u.s. military bases including silos in montana and other states as well. i heard kellogg b2 in missouri. certainly you would not want to destroy the whole thing a mid air. you don t want to cause a giant debris field but certainly brought down gently by poking holes in it with 20-millimeter cannon you would have the thing land in the ocean and exploit it. griff: lucas, as we are continuing to look live at that balloon wondering what its fate will be, you mentioned general kellogg, he s with us in studio and i m going open this conversation to all four of us as we watch this moment and general, you heard lucas talk about the options, no shortage of fire power but you were speaking a little bit earlier about the need to recover the
surging floodwaters that have swamped cities farther north. they are uncovering significant damage and debris below. dan simon is there. brianna, this is what you call a giant debris field. you can see the magnitude of destruction. all these household items that people have collected and brought over to this community center. ultimately this will be taken to a landfill. in the meantime, you need a place to put all of this stuff. i can tell you governor jay nixon has asked the obama white house for an emergency declaration. you have to have all the debris removed and try to get cleanup accelerated they are hoping the president will honor that request. we will walk around a little bit. you can see all the stuff people have dropped off.
welcome back to cnn newsroom. i m george howell. prime minister david cameron is promising to work to bolster flood defenses. communities across the united kingdom are struggling to recover from unprecedented flooding. both scotland and wales saw their wettest december on record. the rainfall will continue through the weekend. but by monday, that country will finally see some relief. there is very little rain in sight for the midwest but the flooding is far from over. that s because swollen waterways that pour into the mississippi river could mean more floods for at least six states. the cleanup has begun for some families returning to their homes, but for many, there s nothing left. cnn s dan simon has this report. reporter: this is what you call a giant debris field. you can see the magnitude of destruction in this community. all these household items that people have collected and brought over to this community
cnn s tom foreman is working that part of the story for us. tom, what can you tell us? hi breanna. think about this. this plane was at 32,000 feet when it was last seen on radar in the one-hour flight before it disappeared and so far, in this red zone over here is where they found some of the debris but not a whole lot. now that could mean any number of things. it could mean the bad weather and conditions have made it hard to find more but clearly some aviation analysts are beginning to hope that maybe what it means is that most of the plane was intact when it hit the water. it created a giant debris field. why would that matter? that would matter because if it s all intact then you basically have a sort of a holy grail to look for out there. one area where you might be able to find all of the critical components, parts of the wings and parts of the tail and part of the electrical system and all of the computers onboard and of course the flight data recorder and the voice recorder th