Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Unknown Objects Entering US Airspace

Washington, D.C. –  Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor on US forces shooting down three unknown objects that entered US and Canadian airspace over the weekend. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

Over the weekend, US forces shot down three unknown objects that entered US 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’s tomorrow. I believe—and my office can check me on this—it would be at 10:00 A.M. But we’ll send a notice out so people check the time.

I commend President Biden and all our service members 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’s 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 it was not the first time Chinese surveillance balloons entered United States 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 at these various incidents, and also look into why US 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 service members 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.

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