in north america. i m michael holmes. you re watching cnn newsroom. the u.s. military right now working to salvage that suspected chinese spy balloon after it was shot down over the atlantic. president biden giving the go ahead to shoot it down several days ago, and the pentagon waiting until it was out over water to execute that order. on saturday, a single u.s. missile hit the balloon at an altitude of some 12 miles or 20 kilometers. the debris is now said to be on the ocean floor but in relatively shallow water. china s foreign ministry protesting the shoot-down of what it said was a research balloon that had gone off course. but the pentagon says it is confident the balloon was conducting surveillance as it slowly floated over the u.s. mainland and some sensitive military sites. president biden said he approved the plan to shoot down the chinese balloon earlier in the week. he says the pentagon wanted to wait until it was over water to avoid damage to anyone on the ground. cnn s
last week. here it is. it happened saturday off the coast of south carolina near myrtle beach. the balloon was so high up at nearly 12 miles or 20 kilometers that it took a few seconds for the shock wave to reach the ground. china issued a stern protest afterward accusing the u.s. of overreacting. beijing insists it was a civilian research balloon that blew off course, but pentagon officials say they re confident it was conducting surveillance. at last report we re told salvage efforts are under way to retrieve the wreckage from the ocean bottom. the water in that area is only about 50 feet deep or 15 meters. well, cnn s oren leiberman explains what the u.s. plans to do with the balloon s remnants.
i mean, look, the chinese had to say something to try to save face here. they got caught spying on the united states, and it still took some time to come up with a story but they ve come up with a story and decided to go on the offensive here. but make no mistake and this is a situation in which even as diplomatic relations with china were getting to a point where conversations were happening again, china made a terrible miscalculation here. and this will have a significant impact on diplomatic relations going forward. no one buys the story, and i think the chinese know that. but they re doing what nation states do when they get caught spying, going on the offensive. but this certainly is not going to sit well in our diplomatic channels, and i think this is going to change the nature of those discussions that the united states is planning to have with china in the future. because china as you know is still standing very firmly with its claim this was just a research balloon studying
the dramatic moment a u.s. missile took out the suspected chinese spy balloon that caused such havoc in the u.s. last week. have a look. it happened saturday off the coast of south carolina near myrtle beach. the balloon was so high up that it took a few seconds of the sound of the blast to reach the ground. china issued a stern protest afterward accusing the u.s. of overreacting to a civilian research balloon that was blown off course, and the defense ministry has warned it now reserves the right to do something similar, but the pentagon officials say they re confident the balloon was conducting surveillance. salvage efforts are now underway to retrieve the debris from a relatively shallow area of the atlantic. anything recovered will be sent to fbi for analysis. tom foreman is in washington with a look at the recovery
so why are these two so notable, in your opinion? i think because usually when you have a balloon flying over somebody s airpsace, you notify them. all these balloons are flying, but everyone is talking to each other. they gave no notice of the balloon until it was spotted out of place. now, you are an expert on balloons. we don t know very much about the second balloon sighting, but what can you tell us about the first? one of the things we can tell is the type of balloon it is. this kind of balloon, a latex balloon, is kind of a standard weather balloon that weather services around the world use. it s kind of tan, it s made out of latex rubber. whereas a research balloon going longer distances with larger payloads, is like one of these. these are about 60 feet