The U.S. military is reportedly tracking another mysterious balloon that recently flew over American soil as concerns grow about foreign adversaries using balloons to spy on sensitive military installations around the world.
NBC News reported that the U.S. military began tracking the object late last week and that it has since flown over Hawaii and is now appears to be headed toward Mexico. The report said that U.S. officials are not sure what type of balloon it is or who it belongs to but they do not believe that it poses a current threat.
The report comes after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the U.S. back in February after President Joe Biden refused to shoot it down when it first entered U.S. airspace.
Biden officials initially claimed to Congress that they took measures to prevent the Chinese spy balloon from being able to transmit whatever information that it collected as it flew over sensitive U.S. military installations.
However, a report from early last month revealed that the balloon gathered and reported intelligence from multiple sensitive American military sites despite the Pentagon’s claims that it blocked transmission.
The report, which cites two current American officials and one former administration official, says the balloon was controlled by China, which maneuvered it to make several passes over certain military sites, sometimes in a figure-eight pattern – all while transmitting the gathered data back to Beijing in “real time.” The three officials say the data obtained by China was primarily electronic signals that could be collected from weapons systems or base communications.
The spy balloon was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on February 4 when the U.S. military used an F-22 Raptor to down the object with a single air-to-air AIM-9X Sidewinder missile.
General Glen VanHerck, Commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM), said that the balloon was up to 200 feet tall and weighed “in excess of a couple thousand pounds.”
After the balloon was shot down, the U.S. subsequently downed three more unidentified objects over Alaska, Lake Huron, and Canada.