According to sources, the United States Air Force (USAF) employed a $439,000 missile to knock down the soaring balloon, which was a $12 hobby balloon and not the alleged Chinese spy device.
Northern Illinois Balloon Brigade, a hobbyist group in the United States, has reportedly claimed that one of its pico balloons went “missing in action” in Alaska on February 11, coincidentally when the suspected balloon was shot down by a USAF F-22 fighter jet using a $400,000 Sidewinder missile in the vicinity of Yukon territory in Canada.
Trackers are fitted in pico balloons to measure humidity, temperature, pressure, and wind currents.
The last location reported by their ‘K9YO’ balloon was off the coast of southwest Alaska at roughly 1 a.m. GMT on Saturday, according to NIBBB (February 11)
The US has concluded its hunt for the wreckage of a downed Chinese spy balloon
Meanwhile, the hunt for the purported Chinese spy balloon that was shot down earlier, as well as the two unexplained items that crashed on Lake Huron and near Alaska, was called off by the US military’s Northern Command on Friday.
“Recovery operations concluded February 16 off the coast of South Carolina, after US Navy assets assigned to US Northern Command successfully located and retrieved debris from the high-altitude PRC surveillance balloon,” NORTHCOM’s statement read, as it referred to China.
“Final pieces of debris are being transferred to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation,” it added.
In a press conference on Thursday, Biden stated that there was no proof that the objects were used for malicious reasons.
“Nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country,” Biden said. “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”