Officials explained their reasoning for not shooting the balloon down sooner, including threats to civilians in Alaska and dangerous recovery conditions.
In response to questions from members of the subcommittee about why, Sims said that it could have had a crash site 20 miles across, and that while Alaska was more sparsely populated than other parts of the U.S., the military could not guarantee no one would be harmed by debris.
Senator Susan Collins addresses the panel of defense officials during the senate subcommittee hearing on February 9, 2022. She said it"defies belief" that there was not a safe opportunity to shoot the balloon down before it reached South Carolina"As the senator for Alaska would tell us all, Alaskan airspace is American airspace," Collins said.
Dalton noted that the water depths 6 nautical miles off the Alaskan and Aleutian coast fall quickly from 150 feet to 18,000 feet, and the freezing cold waters made a salvage operation"very dangerous". There was also ice cover in the waters, which would have complicated efforts to recover the balloon.
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