Won't hesitate to shoot down anything that threatens US, says Biden

US President Joe Biden said on Thursday (February 16) that if any aerial object is seen as a threat to the nation, he won't hesitate to bring it down. Biden also said that the other three objects that were shot down last week weren't related to China.“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were but 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 balloon saga has escalated tensions between US and China. It started with the spotting of a white-coloured Chinese balloon flying in US airspace last week.

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The US authorities tracked it for a couple of days and eventually scrambled fighter jets to shoot it down. They recovered debris to analyse the balloon, which was suspected to be a Chinese spying object.

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Biden told the White House press briefing, "We acted out of an abundance of caution" at an opportunity that allowed the US to take down the objects safely."

After the suspected spy balloon, the US also shot down two other unidentified objects, a total of three in one week - a "high-altitude object" was shot down when it was flying over Alaska and one was shot down over Canada.

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During the media address, the US president said that he ordered the military to take down unidentified objects over the weekend because of their danger to commercial air traffic. Biden mentioned that they could not "rule out the surveillance risk of sensitive facilities".

Biden said, "The intelligence community's current assessment is that these three ones were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research."

Biden expects 'to be talking to Xi'

Biden said that he is planning to have a conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping. He said, "I expect to be speaking with President Xi and I hope we are going to get to the bottom of this."

He added: "We seek competition, not conflict with China. We're not looking for a new Cold War."

However, he also said that he makes "no apologies and we will compete".

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