[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 29 (Monday, February 13, 2023)]
[Senate]
[Page S338]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                      Unidentified Flying Objects

  Madam President, now, on another subject, over the weekend, U.S. 
forces shot down three unknown objects that entered U.S. and Canadian 
airspace that were deemed to pose a potential threat to civilian 
aviation. At the moment, we only have preliminary details. I have 
scheduled for Senators to receive a briefing tomorrow on what we know 
and do not know about where these objects come from and what threats, 
if any, they pose to the United States.
  So that is tomorrow. I believe, and my office can check me on this, 
it will be at 10 a.m., but we will send a notice out so people can 
check the time.
  I commend President Biden and all our servicemembers who acted 
quickly to shoot these objects down before they endangered American 
aircraft or civilians. Unlike the balloon shot down last week, these 
objects demanded a swift response to ensure they didn't get in the way 
of commercial jets or pose any other risk on the ground.
  The American people can rest assured that our defense and 
intelligence Agencies are focused like a laser to determine where these 
objects came from and what their capabilities were.
  And while there is still plenty that we don't know about this past 
weekend's events, in the case of the Chinese balloon, we do know now 
that is was not the first time Chinese surveillance balloons entered 
U.S. airspace. It has been confirmed that three balloons flew over the 
United States during the previous administration without detection. 
China's deployment of these balloons is brazen.
  I bring this up to emphasize that this issue is bigger than any one 
administration and should be free from partisan sniping.
  Congress is going to conduct a careful, bipartisan examination of 
these various incidents and also look into why U.S. authorities didn't 
find these Chinese surveillance balloons sooner. My friend Senator 
Tester has been taking the lead in this effort. I want to commend him 
for his leadership.
  And so as we recover the items shot down over the weekend, I once 
again commend the President, and I fully support the Senate taking a 
thorough look at finding out why it took so long to find these 
balloons. It is something we must do because, as I mentioned, three of 
them occurred during the Trump administration, and the authorities knew 
nothing about them.
  I, finally, want to thank our servicemembers for their excellent 
work, and Congress is going to work in the coming weeks to get the full 
story of what happened and how we keep the American people safe.