The U.S. military is apparently looking into another mysterious balloon that flew over American land recently. This is because there are more and more worries that foreign enemies are using balloons to spy on secret military installations around the world.
The U.S. military started following the object late last week, according to NBC News. Since then, it has flown over Hawaii and now seems to be heading toward Mexico. According to the story, U.S. officials don’t know what kind of balloon it is or who owns it, but they don’t think it’s a threat right now.
The story comes after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. in February, after President Joe Biden didn’t shoot it down when it first entered U.S. airspace.
Officials from the Biden administration told Congress at first that they had taken steps to stop the Chinese spy balloon from sending back any information it had gathered as it flew over secret U.S. military sites.
But a story from early last month showed that, despite what the Pentagon said, the balloon did collect and send information from several secret American military sites.
Two current American officials and one former administration official are quoted in the report as saying that China was in charge of the balloon and that it made several passes over military sites, sometimes in a figure-eight pattern, while sending the data it collected back to Beijing in “real time.” The three sources say that most of the information that China got was in the form of electronic signals that could have come from weapon systems or base connections.
The spy balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on February 4. A single air-to-air AIM-9X Sidewinder missile was fired from an F-22 Raptor at the object.
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) Commander General Glen VanHerck said the balloon was up to 200 feet tall and weighed “more than a couple thousand pounds.”
After the balloon was shot down, the U.S. shot down three more items it couldn’t figure out what they were over Alaska, Lake Huron, and Canada.
