have used a surface-to-air missile, perhaps a ship deployed on the surface. based on eyewitness accounts, having seen planes circling it prior and then the video that we re just looking at now, seeing what looks to be a missile trail from the air-to-air, an air-to-air missile, that s the weapons package that the pentagon presented the president with and that the president then chose to do. it s a decision that i know u.s. officials, defense department officials were taking very seriously over the last several days. there were a number of high level discussions. of particular concern in the immediate timeframe was concerns about shooting it down over occupied territory in the u.s. those pieces fall to the ground and that would have posed a danger to people on the ground and that s why they waited until
accuracy, with this balloon 60,000 feet up, the speed in which the jet would be going and then with one strike be able to pierce it, not destroy it, but pierce it enough for it to descend and intelligence gathering, hopefully, will be rich. , you know, what we re seeing here in this video really tells the story, especially combined, with all of those new details from natasha, that this was shot down by an air-to-air missile officially from the pentagon from a jet from langley air force base. this likely put some more predictions that this was going to be a mission by the f-22 raptor. there s a squadron of them based out of fort eustice in virginia. this is a fifth generation fighter. it s a replacement of the f-15 and f-16. you can see in the video the contrail, the hot exhaust meeting with the air, the moist
to have a role on this. if anything comes ashore, this will be a coast guard and state and local mission. this will take a little while. as john was saying i m sorry, as cedric was saying, you w want hopefully they got the balloon. it is going to take a while. this thing is up in the air twice as high as a jetliner, as the debris falls. as it falls, they are pinpointing it and then they have what s essentially the maritime mission now. the maritime mission now is to pick up what they can to determine what do the chinese now, what did they get, and we did this they did this with patience and without putting any civilian americans at risk. it was so i have to say, we were talking patience ends up being a strategy and it was used
which aircraft may have been used here. it seems likely this was the air force f-22 raptor used here. its a new generation of fighters with bases across the country, very likely out of langley air force base. this video to me has some very clear clues in it. what you re seeing in a couple different instances is the contrail of a jet flying by, created by the hot exhaust of the jet engine of the airplane meeting moisture in the air and then causing it to condense. so you can see from left to right there, that looks to me like a contrail of what is likely a fighter jet. and then you see it take a bit of a turn and you can see, also, just what looks to be a bit of exhaust there from the impact, and then likely some parts you can see a glint occasionally there, a little flash of light of what looks to be falling debris. of course the military will be
air up at altitude there. you can see that bend there. that looks to me like it s the jet. the other trail, the thinner one, looks like it s the air-to-air missile going into that balloon. so you can also see in some of this video that we have been getting from sources online what in essence amounts to a waiting game. these fighter pilots were circling this balloon like sharks until they could get away from the populated areas along the coast of north carolina and south carolina. president biden said he ordered the department of defense to shoot it down on wednesday, but the department of defense wanted to wait until much later when there would be no risk to folks on the ground. that looks like the envelope of the balloon, the top of the balloon deflated and falling down there. this was a pretty easy day, likely, for the aviators of this f-22. it is the perfect missile mount