WASHINGTON — The United States fighter jet shot down a Chinese spy balloon with a missile on Saturday after it had spent the last week traversing the country, American officials said. The downing of the balloon was an explosive end to a drama that had caused a diplomatic crisis between the world’s two great powers.
The balloon had spent five days traveling in a diagonal southeast route from Idaho to the Carolinas and had moved off the coast by midday Saturday, when it was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean. The debris fell into 47 feet of water, and the U.S. Navy and Coast Guard were trying to recover it, officials said.
“I told them to shoot it down,” Mr. Biden told reporters in Hagerstown, Md., on his way to Camp David on Saturday. “They said to me, let’s wait until the safest place to do it.”
The Chinese foreign ministry declared its “strong discontent and protest” about the United States’ downing of the balloon. In a statement, the ministry said that China had told Washington repeatedly that the balloon was a civilian aircraft that had inadvertently flown over the United States and its presence was “totally accidental.”
“In these circumstances, for the United States to insist on using armed force is clearly an excessive reaction that seriously violates international convention,” the statement said. “China will resolutely defend the legitimate rights and interests of the enterprise involved, and retains the right to respond further.”
Pentagon officials said two fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base attacked the balloon at 2:39 p.m., some six miles off the coast of South Carolina. One of the F-22 fighters fired a Sidewinder air-to-air missile, downing the balloon, which was flying at an altitude of between 60,000 and 65,000 feet.
The Chinese government has maintained that the balloon was a weather device that drifted into U.S. airspace by accident, calling it “a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes.”
But Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III said in a statement on Friday that the balloon was being used by China “to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States.”
The president had been discussing military options with the Pentagon since Tuesday, when he was alerted by the Pentagon that a spy balloon had entered the continental American airspace near Idaho. By Wednesday, the balloon was hovering over Montana, and a full-blown diplomatic crisis was underway.
Military leaders advised then against shooting down the balloon, whose belly structure was roughly the size of three buses, because of the possibility of harm to civilians and infrastructure while it was over land. But the arrival — and extended stay — of the balloon over American territory prompted furious calls from senior U.S. officials to their Chinese counterparts, and the cancellation of Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken’s planned visit to China.
That trip would have been the first by a Biden Cabinet secretary to China.
Republican lawmakers and politicians began criticizing Mr. Biden on Thursday, after news of the balloon became widespread, for not taking harder action against the balloon and against China, and some demanded that Mr. Blinken cancel his trip.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said Friday that the machine was a weather balloon that had strayed far — very far — off course and entered U.S. airspace by accident. But Mr. Blinken said the entry of the spy balloon was a “clear violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law.”
U.S. officials conveyed to Chinese officials several times in recent days that the U.S. military might shoot down the spy balloon. Mr. Blinken told a Chinese diplomat in Washington on Wednesday evening that the American government had the right to take any actions to protect its interests, and he said the same thing on a phone call on Friday with Wang Yi, the top Chinese foreign policy official, a senior administration official said.
U.S. officials are now watching closely for China’s reaction to the downing of the balloon — and whether the Chinese military will retaliate against an American asset.
Evan Medeiros, a Georgetown University professor who was senior Asia director on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, said the episode underscored the risks of accidents or miscalculation, as well as “the role of domestic politics in American debates about China — and the role of Congress in interpreting Chinese strategic intentions, including by constraining the administration’s options.”
The spy balloon began its controlled drift into American territory on Jan. 28, when it entered Alaskan airspace near the Aleutian Islands for what at first appeared to trackers at United States Northern Command to be just another one of China’s light probes around the edges of America’s defensive borders.
It had happened before. Military officials say that China has spy balloons orbiting around the world at 60,000 feet at any given time, and the balloons occasionally stray into American territory. Spy balloons from China and other adversaries are sometimes categorized by the Pentagon as unidentified aerial phenomena, which also includes U.F.O.s, the defense officials said.
But this balloon stayed. Although it exited American territory on Monday, officials said, carrying its solar panels that power propulsion and its cameras and surveillance equipment, the next day it was back. It entered the continental United States over Idaho, to the surprise of officials at Northern Command as well as at the Pentagon.
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, alerted Mr. Biden. The president asked for military options.
By Wednesday, the balloon had made its way to the skies above Billings, Mont., which alarmed Pentagon officials because the state is home to the 341st Missile Wing at Malmstrom Air Force Base, one of three U.S. Air Force bases that operate and maintain intercontinental ballistic missiles. One Pentagon official described shock at what officials viewed as a blatant, and poorly concealed, effort at spying. A White House official called the move “audacious.”
Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, in the Philippines at the time, called a meeting on Wednesday of senior military and defense officials to review options, per Mr. Biden’s order. General Milley and Mr. Austin advised against shooting down the balloon while it was over land.
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting from Syracuse, N.Y., and Michael Crowley from Washington.
Melina Delkic
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