President Joe Biden has said that the last three Chinese spy balloons were “benign” tied to “private companies, recreation or research institutions.” He cited that their use was most likely for “studying weather or other scientific research.”

Almost one week after the first Chinese balloon sighting, Biden broke his silence on Thursday stating “I gave the order to shoot it down as soon as it would be safe to do so.” 

“The military advised against shooting it down over land because of the sheer size of it. It was the size of multiple buses and posed a risk to people on the ground,” said Biden in a White House press conference.

Biden declared that the balloon flights over U.S. airspace[s] by China to be “unacceptable.” The President affirmed that the U.S. military recovered “substantial components for further analytics” from the balloon’s debris. The president affirmed that he acted to protect our country “and we did.”