A balloon flying off the coast of Hawaii last week was being tracked by the Defense Department and the Federal Aviation Administration. On Tuesday a defense official said there’s no indication that it is connected to China or any other adversary, and did not present a threat to aviation or national security. Friday the balloon was detected by radar when “Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object,” according to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, and they “assessed that it posed no threat.” This comes about three months after a Chinese spy balloon flew over the country for several days and was finally shot down by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
