白宫发言人约翰·柯比周二表示，情报界“正在考虑一个主要的解释”，即周末被击落的三个物体“可能只是一些商业或良性目的的气球。”
但柯比告诉记者，在这一点上，美国仍然不能称他们为“物体”以外的任何东西，并补充说，官员们对排除这些物体属于美国政府“相当放心”。
周五、周六和周日，美国战斗机击落了飞越阿拉斯加、加拿大和密歇根水域的物体。击落事件发生不到一周前，一个中国间谍气球在美国大陆上空飞行了几天，然后在大西洋上空被击落。
美国仍然没有恢复三个“物体”被击落官员们周二表示，由于这些物体是什么或来自哪里的细节仍然很少，军方在周末对这些物体进行了检查。
“我们称它们为物体，因为这是我们目前最好的描述，”科比周二在美国广播公司的“早安美国”节目中告诉美国广播公司的乔治·斯特凡诺普洛斯
Kirby说，这些物体落在“非常偏远的地方”，“我们可能需要一段时间才能到达碎片，但单独收集和分析它。”
国防部长劳埃德·奥斯汀也证实，美国无法收回这些物体，因为它们处于“困难的地形”
“我们最终会抓住他们的。这需要一些时间来恢复，”奥斯汀在比利时布鲁塞尔的新闻发布会上说，在俄罗斯入侵乌克兰一周年之前，奥斯汀在那里与北约盟国举行了会议。
国防部长表示，周日在休伦湖上空击落该物体的第一次导弹袭击没有成功。
奥斯汀说:“第一枪没打中，第二枪命中。”他补充说，第一枚导弹“无害地落在水中。”
“我们非常小心，以确保这些镜头是安全的，”他说，他详细介绍了拍摄背后的一些决策。“这是总统的指示:击落它，确保我们最大限度地减少附带损害，保护美国人民的安全。”
至于这些物体来自哪里，或者它们是什么，柯比在GMA上出现时没有多少新的细节，尽管他重申它们没有任何机动能力，并且比中国的间谍气球“小得多”。
2023年2月13日，国家安全委员会战略沟通协调员约翰·柯比在白宫的每日新闻发布会上回答问题。
Evelyn Hockstein/路透社
周二，所有参议员都收到了一份关于中国间谍气球和其他三起击落事件的机密简报。参议员们表示，简报者对这三个物体的细节知之甚少，许多人表示，他们在闭门会议中了解到的很多东西已经公开了。
参议员罗杰·马歇尔。他在简报中呼吁总统乔·拜登告诉公众他所知道的。
“我们离开了这样的会议，我们被告知的许多事情都是机密的...但是总统可以站在美国面前，直接告诉他们我们很安全，每个人都会没事，我们已经控制住了局势，但是美国需要一个强有力的领导人站出来。
康涅狄格州民主党参议员理查德·布卢门撒尔(Richard Blumenthal)也表示，“美国人民需要并应该知道更多”，与立法者分享的“许多信息”可以在不损害国家安全的情况下告诉美国人民。
参议院多数党领袖、纽约州民主党参议员查克·舒默(Chuck Schumer)和弗吉尼亚州民主党参议员马克·华纳(Mark Warner)在简报会后告诉记者，很明显，这些物体没有对地面上的美国人造成直接伤害。
“没人需要担心这个，”舒默说。
但是参议员汤姆.科顿。他说，他所称的来自政府的相互矛盾的声明提出了一个问题:“一方面，政府说我们还不知道这最后三个物体是什么，在我们找到它们之前，我们不想对它们进行定性。但另一方面，这不是威胁。这两件事不可能都是真的。”
佛罗里达州共和党参议员马尔科·卢比奥和其他共和党参议员表示，不明飞行物在美国领空飞行的问题“不是新问题”
“我们现在必须回答的最重要的问题是，这些东西是什么?谁派他们来的?他们在这里做什么?卢比奥说:“你得到答案的唯一方法不仅仅是找回他们留下的任何东西，而是了解它与数百起其他类似案件的对比。”
柯比周二表示，美国现在正在捕捉所有这些物体，因为在中国间谍气球入侵后，对雷达参数进行了调整，北京近年来增加了对气球的使用。
“他们增强了自己的能力，”他说。“然后因为这个间谍气球，我们改变了一些雷达参数，特别是在我们北半球的北部地区，可能部分是因为调整了雷达灵敏度，我们现在只是看到了更多的物体。”
中国指责美国自2022年初以来向其领空发送了至少10个气球。中国外交部发言人王文斌在周一的新闻发布会上表示，“美国气球频繁借机对中国实施抵近侦察”并不罕见
柯比在GMA问题上否认了这一点，他表示:“我们没有在中国上空部署侦察气球。”
但是当Stephanopoulos问我们是否在中国上空进行间谍活动时，Kirby没有回答，只是重复说美国没有在中国上空部署气球。
A 'leading explanation' is 3 downed objects were commercial, benign balloons, White House says
White House spokesperson John Kirby said Tuesday the intelligence community is "considering as a leading explanation" that the three objects shot down over the weekend "could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose."
But Kirby told reporters the U.S. is still not able to call them anything other than "objects" at this point, adding that officials are "pretty comfortable" ruling out the objects belonged to the U.S. government.
Objects flying over Alaska, Canada and the waters off Michigan were taken down by U.S. fighter jets on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The shootdowns came less than a week after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the continental U.S. for several days before being taken down over the Atlantic Ocean.
The U.S. has still not recovered thethree "objects" shot downby the military over the weekend, officials said Tuesday, as details remain scarce on what the objects are or where they came from.
"We're calling them objects because that's the best description we have right now," Kirby told ABC's George Stephanopoulos Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."
Kirby said the objects fell in "pretty remote locations" and "it could take us a while to reach the debris, yet alone collect it and analyze it."
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin also confirmed the U.S. had not been able to retrieve the objects as they are in "difficult terrain."
"We'll get them eventually. It will take some time to recover those," Austin said during a news conference in Brussels, Belgium, where Austin met with NATO allies ahead of the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The defense secretary said the first missile strike to down the object over Lake Huron on Sunday missed.
"First shot missed, second shot hit," Austin said, adding the first missile "landed harmlessly in the water."
"We're very careful to make sure those shots are safe," he said as he detailed some of the decision-making behind the takedowns. "That's the guidance from the president: shoot it down, make sure we minimize collateral damage and we preserve the safety of the American people."
As for where the objects came from, or what they are, Kirby had few new details as he appeared on GMA, though he reiterated that they didn't have any maneuvering capabilities and were "much smaller" than the Chinese spy balloon.
All senators received a classified briefing Tuesday on the China spy balloon and the three other shoot-down incidents. Senators said briefers were short on details about what the three objects were, and many said much of what they learned behind closed doors is already in the public domain.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., emerged from the briefing calling on President Joe Biden to tell the public what he knows.
"We walked out of a meeting like this, and so much of what we've been told is classified ... but the president can get in front of America and tell them firsthand that we're safe, that everybody's going to be okay, that we've got this under control, but America needs a strong leader to step forward," Marshall said.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also said "the American people need and deserve to know more" and that "a lot of the information" shared with lawmakers could be told to the American people without harming national security.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., told reporters after the briefing that it was clear the objects posed no immediate harm to Americans on the ground.
"No one has to worry about that," Schumer said.
But, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said what he called contradictory statements from the administration pose a problem: "On the one hand, the administration is saying we don't yet know what these last three objects are, and we don't want to characterize them until we recover them. But on the other hand, it wasn't a threat. Both of those things can't be true."
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and other GOP senators said the issue of unidentified aerial objects flying in U.S. airspace "is not new."
"The most important question we have to answer now is, what are these things? Who sent them here? And what are they doing here? The only way you're gonna get answers to that is not just to retrieve whatever is left of them, but to understand how it compares to the hundreds of other similar cases," Rubio said.
Kirby said Tuesday the U.S. is catching all these objects now because adjustments were made to radar parameters following the Chinese spy balloon incursion, and that Beijing has boosted its use of balloons in recent years.
"They have ramped up their abilities," he said. "And then because of this spy balloon, we changed some of the radar parameters, particularly over the northern part of our northern hemisphere, and it is possible that in part because of tweaking the radar sensitivities, we are simply seeing more objects right now."
China has accused the U.S. of sending at least 10 balloons into their airspace since the start of 2022. Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said at a press briefing on Monday that it wasn't "uncommon for U.S. balloons to frequently take the opportunity to carry out close-up reconnaissance against China."
Kirby denied that on GMA, stating: "We do not deploy surveillance balloons over China."
But when asked by Stephanopoulos if we spy over China, Kirby wouldn't answer and only repeated that the U.S. doesn't deploy balloons over China.
