Biden says 3 aerial objects were 'most likely' tied to private companies or research

Updated February 16, 2023 at 2:25 PM ET

President Biden said the three aerial objects shot down by U.S. military were most likely tied to private companies, recreation, or research institutions.

"We don't have any evidence that there have been a sudden increase of objects in the sky," Biden said. "We are just seeing more of them partially because of the steps we have taken to narrow our radars and we have to keep adapting our approach to dealing with these challenges."

Moving forward, Biden says the administration will establish an inventory of unmanned aerial objects above the U.S. airspace, implement measures to improve the capacity to detect these objects, update rules and regulations for launching and maintaining objects, and the Secretary of State will "help establish common global norms in this largely unregulated space."

The public address comes after lawmakers called on Biden to provide Americans with more information about the four objects shot down this month.

The first object was a surveillance balloon deployed by China, which the administration has called a "violation of U.S. airspace" and "irresponsible action." The other objects have not been publicly identified, and recovery efforts are underway, but the White House has ruled out the possibility of aliens.

Lawmakers want more information

Senators on the Hill received a classified briefing on Tuesday following questions about the succession of objects being shot down over one weekend. But even after the briefing, lawmakers from both parties have been asking for Biden to publicly address the objects to reassure the American people that there is no active threat. Others were not impressed with the information they received.

In an interview with All Things Considered, Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said she did not find the Biden administration's all-Senate classified briefing "very informative."

"I do not believe that the administration has been sufficiently transparent. Now, to be fair to the administration, they are still gathering information. They're still trying to recover debris from the second, third, and fourth objects that were ... shot down, and I encourage them to be more forthcoming — once they have recovered and analyzed the debris," Collins said, adding that the administration should have been better at coordinating communication between Congress as the Chinese spy balloon flew over specific states earlier this month.

Crews were able to retrieve parts of the balloon, including the priority sensor, electronic parts and large sections of the object.

What the White House has said so far

The National Security Council said it expects to have new guidance in the coming days on how the U.S. government should treat unidentified aerial objects going forward, spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Tuesday.

So far, the Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence agencies have reviewed visuals from the fighter pilots who flew past the objects before they were shot down – visuals that were limited because of the high speed of the planes and the relatively small size of the largely stationary objects, Kirby said.

Biden's national security adviser Jake Sullivan is conducting the interagency review and is likely to have "a set of parameters" for making decisions about how to handle the kinds of objects shot down by U.S. fighter jets in the past several days, Kirby said.

The U.S. intelligence community so far thinks that the three objects shot down over Alaska, the Yukon in Canada, and Lake Huron near Michigan could be commercial or research balloons, but the government is hoping to recover debris to forensically examine. That could take some time to fully complete, said Jean-Pierre on Thursday, because of weather conditions.

"We can't definitively say without analyzing the debris what these objects were," she said, noting that so far there is no indication that the balloons were part of China's spy balloon program or foreign external spy programs. They have also ruled out that they were a part of the U.S. government.

Echoing comments from Kirby earlier in the week, Jean-Pierre said the balloons could be tied to commercial or benign purposes.

This story will be updated.

[Copyright 2023 NPR]