the pentagon has confirmed that they are seeing reports of a balloon transiting over latin america. brigadier general patrick ryder says that the us department of defense now assesses that it is another chinese surveillance balloon. this comes after washington accused beijing of acting irresponsibly after a first such balloon was detected over the united states. secretary of state, antony blinken postponed a much anticipated trip to beijing over the incident. china says that balloon was a civilian airship which had deviated from its planned route. we ll have more on the second balloon sighting in a moment, but first this report from gordon correra. i.have no idea what this thing is. a strange object in the sky, filmed by a member of the public in rural montana. and for those of you who think this mightjust be the moon, it is not the moon, the moon is off to my right i can see it. it s not the moon, nor a ufo, but, us officials claim, a chinese spy balloon. it seemed so br
hello and welcome to bbc news. us defence chiefs have identified what they say is a second chinese surveillance balloon, this time over latin america. the first balloon is floating across the us mid west. antony blinken, the us secretary of state, has cancelled a trip to beijing, and accused the chinese authorities of being irresponsible. china insists the balloon is a weather monitoring device which has blown off course. our north america correspondent, peter bowes, reports. a surreal but increasingly serious international row. this spec on this guy could be spying on the us. the chinese balloon that has been hovering over the country for several days. china insists it is a platform to conduct weather related research that has deviated from its root. beijing has apologised but the us state department says it stands by its assessment that the balloon is being used for surveillance. and defence officials now say there is a second balloon. we have seen reports of a balloon tran
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
actually, what surprises me is that they re paying attention to it. at any given time, there are literally thousands of these balloons flying over the world. literally thousands are launched every day, they re flying over the us, they re flying over europe, they re flying overjapan. weather balloons will sometimes circle the globe a couple of times before landing. there are actually a lot of balloons up there in the sky. why these are 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 being launched but everyone is talking to each other. they gave no notice of the balloon until it was spotted out of place. you are an expert on balloons. we don t know much about the second balloon, but what can you tell us about the first? one of the things we can tell is the type of balloon it is.