US military finishes Chinese balloon recovery amid simmering tensions

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) - The US military said on Friday that it has completed the recovery of a Chinese suspected reconnaissance balloon that it downed earlier this month, eliciting fierce backlash from Beijing.

The recovery operation concluded on Thursday off the coast of North Carolina following the successful location and retrieving of "debris from the high-altitude PRC surveillance balloon shot down on Feb. 4, 2023," US Northern Command said in a statement referring to China by its official acronym.

"Final pieces of debris are being transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation, as has occurred with the previous surface and subsurface debris recovered," it added.

All air and maritime safety perimeters in the area have been lifted.

US President Joe Biden's decision to down the Chinese high-altitude balloon elicited furor from Beijing, which has threatened to designate US entities associated with the downing of its aircraft. It has yet to explicitly do so but on Thursday it imposed sanctions on Lockheed Martin and a branch of Raytheon Technologies over their arms sales to Taiwan, which China views as a breakaway province.

Still, already rampant tensions in US-Sino relations have only grown worse in the wake of the balloon's downing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken indefinitely postponed a long-planned trip to Beijing that was intended to soothe growing divides between the world's preeminent super powers just days before he was slated to depart.

China acknowledged its ownership of the balloon, but said it was a wayward weather monitoring device that was blown off course.

In the face of China's consternation, Biden has been unrepentant, saying his decision to shoot down the aircraft was intended to send "a clear message" to Beijing that the "violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable."

Biden said he expects to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying "we're going to get to the bottom of this."​​​​​​​