4-Star General Blasts Biden Over Chinese Spy Balloon: ‘We Had Plenty Of Opportunity To Take It Down’ Over Aleutian Islands

Jack Keane, a retired four-star Army general, slammed President Joe Biden Saturday was a day of celebration for the non-shooting down of the Chinese spy balloon, which flew over the U.S. during the last few days while it was thousands miles from the continent.

Keane is a former Vice-Chairman of Staff for the United States Army. He made these remarks on Fox News shortly after the U.S. military shot down the spy balloon that passed South Carolina over the Atlantic Ocean.

“Remember, this was approaching the United States over water,” Keane spoke. “It was approaching the Aleutian Islands over water. And we had plenty of opportunity to take it down then. And that’s when it should have happened. We had to be tracking it from mainland China across the Pacific Ocean, and we had plenty of warning to put together an operation that we are conducting now on the east coast that should have been done there.”

WATCH:

TRANSCRIPT:

FOX NEWS HOST ARTHEL NEVIILLE: Yes, that was my last point. And I want to say, as we’re watching this exclusive coverage of this Chinese spy balloon going down there over Surfside Beach, South Carolina, if you could talk to us about what happened in terms of coordinating this to get to this point now, General Keane.

GENERAL JACK KEANE: Well, we’ve had all of our sensors watching this, you know, for some time. Our military capability, which was involved in the attack, was also alerted. It has been planned for several days. I’m assuming the president, you know, made a decision within the last 24 hours to take this out. They likely presented him with several options as to where the best place was to do it. He chose to head to the East Coast, which is much more populous than Montana. They probably decided not to do anything on land. If they weren’t willing to do it over Montana, they’re certainly not going to do it on the East coast of the United States or in transit to the East Coast. And they’re taking advantage of obviously doing this safely in terms of civilians. And it’s not a complicated operation, I don’t believe, for the United States military to take a balloon moving at the speed it’s moving at and bring it down. It’s not difficult to coordinate and gather the intelligence necessary to accomplish this. Can we now recover the sensor package? That’s going to be iffy, given the size of this thing and how much it weighs. However, we did everything right from the beginning. This was happening over water. It was moving towards the Aleutian Islands. It was almost at the Aleutian Islands over water. We had plenty of time to get it down. And that’s when it should have happened. It had to be tracked from China, across the Pacific Ocean. We had ample warning to prepare an operation on the east coast that would have been necessary. And by the way, we have alert aircraft in Alaska for the principal reason of a penetration coming largely from Russia, and that’s why that aircraft are there. They would have been able respond to it if it approached the United States as the Aleutian Islands. Now we’re doing it in the backdoor when it’s leaving the United States — it’s anti-climatic in that sense, but it still sends a message to China that we’re not going to let you get away with this nonsense.

Related: U.S. Military Takes Down Chinese Spy Balloon after Biden Let it Travel Across Country