will simply filter them out. the wider you make those kind of velocity gates in terms of what the radar is looking at and what it s disregarding, the more clutter you ll have to deal with, and so the better processing you ll require in order to get usable results for military purposes. what s happened since the chinese spy balloon incident in the us is that the us appear to have reprogrammed a lot of their surveillance radars for air defence purposes with much, much wider velocity gates. so they re suddenly seeing a lot of sort of floating objects, of which there are many that are not spy balloons. you know, weather balloons, research balloons, just hobbyists putting cameras up on high altitude balloons. but they just weren t seeing those before. and so now, having opened up the velocity gate, they re now having to try and classify and potentially intercept a lot more things that they just weren t noticing before.
us. with the advent of the chinese balloon coming across, we start to look more closely. then we found a lot more objects. as we re all learning, now there are a ton of organizations out, they re obvious, individuals, companies, yes, meteorologist who are watching a variety of different objects up in the sky. we don t have a very good idea what all of those are. yes, we definitely need a clear set of rules to say, you know, what are we gonna look for first of all? and finally, what are we gonna do about? it we can t be shooting down these things every week. we need to get a clear set of rules about what is up there, and how to identify. it s one thing to have hobbyist, to have weather related balloons out there, but how worried are you that there are spy intelligence compromising entities up there? that we just haven t seen it? no, absolutely worried about it. because of hobbyists and meteorologist, so can the russians and the chinese.
we don t yet know exactly what these three objects were. but nothing right now suggests they were related to china s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country. intelligence communities current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions studying whether or conducting other scientific research. jericka, hold on a second. recreation? someone s recreational drone goes 40,000 feet up in the air? recreational balloon. what i think seems to have happened is that some people are hobbyists. we like to put little radios next to and on to their balloons. they like to fly them around, take a look at the weather, take a look at the sky, and one of them got caught at the end, at the wrong end of a 1 million dollar missile. i think what seems to have happened, the big picture here, is that when the chinese spy balloon floated over to the u.s., which might have been
acknowledge that they may never find the objects or balloons which some hobbyists said could be their research balloons. the president acknowledged this yesterday. nothing acknowledged that they were related to the china balloon program. the current assessment is that the three objects were most likely balloons tied to private company, recreation or research institutions. meanwhile, the u.s. navy and coast guard have ended their recovery operations off of south carolina s coast after the u.s. military retrieved china s spy fly pay load. it s filled with sensors and equipment. the debris was sent to fbi labs in quantico. the intelligence community hopes it will show why the chinese
people were told about this, and we were following from the island over the alaska and montana and then it came out, and why isn t congress informed and why aren t we spending money it takes to upgrade the radar and missile systems to update these thing, and hobbyists balloons on one hand, and chinese balloons on the other, and the rules of engagement which the president is going to set out, and keep in classified so we know what to evade. when listening to president s remarks, he is not seeking another cold war with china, but he is anticipating speaking to president xi, and how is that first balloon shootdown going to affect the relations with china? well, no question, it is going to make the relations tougher, and the president has to be realistic with the fact that he may not want conflict or