but there it is. and so the fact that the foreign ministry apologized for it yesterday and called it a weather balloon, that s sort of typical of miscommunication given by governments when something is done as a secret project and the foreign ministry is not engaged in it. so we ve seen this happen before. we have to believe that this is an intentional provocation and a warning. and so we want to take it down. while this is declared national defense airspace now, do you see that it will be f-22s involved? what kind of military aircraft do you see will potentially be involved and what are the risks involved? not just for people on the ground, along the coastline, but risks involved involving the military or any kind of vessels anywhere in the water? because we don t know what the debris feel, if there s going to be a debris field, how big it might be. right, i think you ll see a couple pair of aircraft up
0 effort to take this balloon down, that would pose a risk to these airplanes down below. so we re seeing this sort of take place to make it so that the area below is clear and safe for this to possibly happen. we will see exactly when that takes place. we know from the ground stop that was published by the faa, that is in place until 2:45 eastern standard time, so another 45 minutes. and this is also impacting, you know, flights that are going into other places. so this might mean that commercial flights on the ground are being told to stay on the ground so the trickle effect, the trickle-down effect goes beyond this area. it s a huge area, but it goes well beyond that and it s including places that have commercial planes flying into the three airports impacted. let s zero in on that. a huge area, 20,000 square miles, and that includes the coastline, and of course, what, generally about 14 miles of waterways along the coastline, which is, you know, u.s. territory before hitting inte
the most sensitive and nuclear sites in the country. and china said it is a civilian craft to study among other thing, meteorological condition, and it has limited control over the path. because it is carried by the winds. u.s. officials tell us that this thing has no motor and so it is floating over the continental united states, and a lot of people are questioning this decision so far by the pentagon not to shoot it down. it was an option we are told on wednesday when it was over a sparsely populated montana, and a air space was created for the f-22s to be mobilized. and we are hearing the calls that it should be shot down including by marco rubio who is the top official on the foreign
time, so in the middle of the night, he brought together the chairman of the joint chiefs, the head of north common norad, he called them all together and said let s figure out what this thing is doing and where it could be heading and whether action needs to be taken. when they discussed the possible courses of action to take, one of those included taking it out. and it got to the point where on wednesday norad actually brought in aircraft, including an awacs to try to surveil this craft, this balloon, and also f-22s, which have very advanced surveillance capabilities but also have the ability to take this out if that was decided. ultimately the military leaders decided that if they were to bring this thing down, in a kinetic way, it could potentially leave a large debris field on the ground, putting civilians and infrastructure in danger. that he decided that was not going to be their recommendation. they took that recommendation to president biden on wednesday, he concurred. so at t
they sent aircraft near the balloon when it was over montana on wednesday, including civilian they have the ability to collect information and f-22s, a fighter jet. they are sophisticated and advanced surveillance aircraft. the f-22 had a dual purpose in this case. it was able to gather information and look at the balloon. but it theoretically has the ability to take action, to take out the balloon if that was decided. we don t know for sure that that s the way they would have brought down this balloon. it would have that capability. one thing that the general said that i think is critical, one of the questions we have been asking since we learned about this, and that is that its track. it s moving east across the continental u.s. that opens up more questions. what is it going over? is it going over strategic locations? when it was in billings, the last known location that we know of and that the defense department is acknowledging, it was a couple hundred miles from