WEBVTT

NOTE recognizability 0.853

NOTE language en-us

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In February, a suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over the United

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States before being shot down by an F22US warplane off the coast of

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South Carolina. the US Navy recovered the debris from the 200 foot

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tall vessel to examine its capabilities and the potential

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intelligence it gathered along its journey at 65,000 feet. So what

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kind of information could this spy balloon have collected? Let's

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start by looking at the path it took. Well, we know that it started.

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Entered the United States at the Aleutian Islands and then it flew

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over parts of Alaska Re entered the United States at Idaho, but went

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over Montana where Malmstrom Air Force bases and other sites that

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have nuclear missile silos. We can surmise from other sightings of it

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over Kansas that it probably went over Nebraska as well where

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Strategic Air Command is. So it probably went over nuclear missile

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sites as well as command and control. These sites are sensitive for a

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reason, right? I mean they're the.

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Most strategic assets that the military has, they have nuclear

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weapons that could destroy the world. So.

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They need to be have the utmost security, and if you have a foreign

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adversary looking at them, presumably they're picking up some

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information from that. They would certainly have had high resolution

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cameras on it to take still photos, but they probably had full motion

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video as well. They may have also had devices that would have picked

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up on communications. The balloon itself was 200 feet tall and the

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payload that carried the surveillance gear was the size of a regional

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jet. Airliner and it weighed thousands of pounds, so if you're

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dropping that. Shooting it down and it drops from 60,000 feet, it's

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gonna hit something. And the other factor was that.

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We spied on the spy, we picked up on its capabilities because it was

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over the United States and we were able to monitor it and see what it

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was doing. So we learned just as much as the Chinese in examining

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what was going on with their balloon.