Chinese surveillance balloon picked up intelligence from US military sites: report

China managed to pick up information from U.S. military sites using the large surveillance balloon that American officials shot down in early February, according to a new report.

The balloon was operated by China as it flew overhead and mainly took away electronic signals, NBC News reported Monday, citing a pair of senior U.S. officials, as well as a former administration authority.

The U.S. succeeded in stopping the balloon from gaining more intelligence through its preventative measures, the unnamed officials said. The balloon could send information to Beijing in real time, according to the report.

An American fighter jet shot down the balloon near the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4. China has maintained the object was being used for “meteorological research” and had blown off course.

The balloon – which was almost as big as three school buses – was first spotted above Alaska on Jan. 28, according to the Biden administration. The U.S. opted to shoot down the balloon once it cleared land.

China later claimed the U.S. had sent numerous spy balloons over its airspace, which the U.S. has denied.

“This is the latest example of China scrambling to do damage control,” Adrienne Watson, spokeswoman for the National Security Council, said in February. “It has repeatedly and wrongly claimed the surveillance balloon it sent over the United States was a weather balloon and to this day has failed to offer any credible explanations for its intrusion into our airspace and the airspace of others.”

The U.S. also downed unidentified objects over Alaska, Lake Huron and Canada’s Yukon in February. President Joe Biden said there was no evidence to suggest those objects were related to Chinese surveillance.