The Pentagon said on Friday night that they had seen a second Chinese spy balloon above Latin America.
Reports indicate that a balloon has been observed in the skies above Latin America. Pentagon spokesperson Brigadier General Pat Ryder stated, “At this point, we believe it is another Chinese surveillance balloon.”
Following Thursday’s sighting of a Chinese surveillance balloon above North America, this one has also been tracked down.
This past Thursday, Ryder made the following statement:
NORAD and the rest of the US government are still keeping a close eye on it. At its current altitude, the balloon does not endanger anyone on the ground either militarily or physically because it is too high for commercial aviation traffic. Several incidents with balloons behaving similarly have been reported during the past few years. As soon as the balloon was seen, the US government moved quickly to shut down any private data collection that could have been taking place.
At the same time, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has described the balloon as a “civilian airship employed for study, notably meteorological ones.”
Before the second spy balloon tale broke on Friday, a spokeswoman said that the blimp “deviated greatly from its scheduled trajectory” because it was “influenced by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capabilities.”
It is unclear where in Latin America the second balloon was sighted, but U.S. authorities told CNN that it did not appear to be headed in the direction of the United States.
The American government asked President Joe Biden to fire down the first balloon after it was seen flying in American territory.
Marco Rubio, a Republican from Florida in the Senate, said, “It was a mistake not to fire down the Chinese surveillance balloon when it was over a sparsely populated territory.”
Trump reportedly told Biden to “SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON!” about the previous president.
But the Pentagon stated that “any probable debris field would be huge” and may cause “civilian injuries or deaths or severe property damage,” therefore they voted against shooting down the balloon on Friday.