Senator Mike Rounds (R-SD) said Friday on FNC’s “Your World” the Chinese balloon should have never been allowed to enter U.S. airspace.
Rounds said, “I was advised yesterday that there was a possibility of sightings. That was a classified discussion. I can tell you that they apparently knew about it earlier. The real question, the first question, why would they ever let it get into our airspace in the first place? It should never have been allowed in the airspace. We have the technical capabilities. We could have taken it out before it came in. I want to know why.”
He added, “Second of all, what happened to the chain of command here? Was there not someone along the line that had the authorization to make that decision? Did it have to go all the way through to the president of the United States under this administration in order to protect the airways that we’ve got? Recognizing this was supposedly an observation balloon, the real question after that is how soon do they find out that it was only an observation balloon and along with that, who made the political decision that it should be allowed to enter because they felt that it was harmless? What does that do on the political basis to the United States in terms of how the rest of the world looks at us? Can you simply just walk all over us or, for that matter, just invade our airspace and move on? Those are the questions. It starts with why was it ever allowed in our airspace in the first space. We have the capabilities. Never should have happened.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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