by Madeleine Hubbard
U.S. fighter jets shot down two objects believed to be surveillance balloons over the weekend, according to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other U.S. officials on Sunday.
Schumer, a New York Democrat, told ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that national security advisor Jake Sullivan told him that “they believe” the objects shot down Friday and Saturday over Canada and Alaska were surveillance balloons.
“I think the Chinese were humiliated” by the balloon program being discovered, Schumer said.
A U.S. F-22 plane shot down the balloon off the northern coast of Alaska Friday. “The object was about the size of a small car, so not similar in size or shape to the high altitude surveillance balloon that was taken down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4,” Pentagon press secretary Gen. Pat Ryder said.
The U.S. shot down the second aircraft over Canada the next day with cooperation from the Canadian authorities.
Schumer predicts that China may end their surveillance balloon program after the U.S. shot down three of its balloons in a week.
“I think they’re probably going to have to get rid of it or do something, because they look really bad,” he said.
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Madeleine Hubbard joined Just the News as a fast file reporter after working as an editor at Breitbart News. Hubbard previously served as the special assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.
