United States intelligence officials believe the Chinese balloon shot down recently over the Atlantic Ocean is part of part of a larger spying campaign by the Asian super power.

The high-altitude balloon is one of at least five the Pentagon has revealed to the public to have flown through U.S. airspace during the current and previous administrations with another recently discovered floating over Latin America.

The most recent one identified over the United States was downed Saturday by the U.S. Air Force in about 50 feet of water. Military personnel are currently scouring a debris field of roughly 1 mile by 1 mile to retrieve what remains of the balloon, attacking condemnation for China, which claims the aerial was for civilian purposes and had been blown off course.

U.S. military and federal officials said they are analyzing the retrieved parts to better understand China’s spying program.

“This is a program that’s been operated for several years,” Brig. Gen. Pay Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday.

Few specifics about the Chinese program were made public, though Ryder said the balloons that traversed over the United States were “looking to surveil strategic sites,” including “our strategic bases in the continental United States.”

U.S. officials said Chinese balloons have operated over at least five continents in regions such as Latin America, South America, Southeast Asia, East Asian and Europe.

“It demonstrates why, for the Department of Defense, that China remains the pacing challenge, and something that we’ll continue to stay focused on,” he said.

Ryder added, without going into details, that China has deployed balloons of various sizes and “capabilities” and without specifying what they were spying on, their presence “calls into question why China, the PRC, feel that it’s okay to violate sovereign airspace of nations in a way that is inappropriate and unacceptable.”

The PRC are the initials of China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

Of the five balloons detected over the United States, Ryder said three occurred during the prevision administration of former President Donald Trump and two, including the one shot down, during the administration of President Joe Biden.

CURRENTPH NEWS SERVICE