White House to make guidelines for shooting down floating objects

President Biden has instructed his team to create guidelines on how to handle flying objects, like the three still unidentified objects shot down last weekend and the Chinese spy balloon that was taken out the weekend before. The guidelines will be put into a policy that will dictate what poses a safety and security risk, what necessitates further action and what does not.

During a speech addressing the recent incidents, the president said he will share the policy with Congress but it will be classified.

“So we don’t give our roadmap to our enemies to try to evade our defenses,” President Biden said. “These parameters will guide what actions we will take while responding to unmanned and unidentified aerial objects. We’re gonna keep adapting them as the challenges evolve if it evolves.”

After a classified briefing earlier this week, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., told reporters that a policy was needed.

“What are we going to do above commercial airspace up until space? What are we going to do if other balloons come above the United States? Is this something that we are going to tolerate or not tolerate,” Gillibrand said. “Those are fundamental policy decisions that the White House and Congress are going to be making over the next several months.”

President Biden said the intelligence community is still working to figure out what the three objects shot down over the weekend were. But nothing suggests they were surveillance balloons or tied to China. 

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

The president said they don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. They’re just being spotted more because radars have been adapted to pick them up.