The downing of the balloon has sparked a fierce diplomatic row between Washington and Beijing. Fighter jets have also shot down three other objects over Canada and Alaska

China’s Foreign Ministry described the balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast as a civilian weather balloon that strayed off course and accused the U.S. of overreacting. Amid escalating tensions, Beijing also accused the U.S. of flying balloons in its airspace for more than a year.

Former Royal Canadian Air Force Major General (ret.) Scott Clancy, who served as NORAD’s director of operations from 2020 to 2021, told MarketWatch that the sheer scale of the Chinese balloon was unusual. 

“I was not necessarily aware of any balloon the size of the one that we saw from China traversing NORAD,” he said, citing his time at the joint American-Canadian organization. “The balloon was 150 feet tall and had a payload the size of three buses.”

“It’s not a weather balloon,” added Clancy, who also served as deputy commander of NORAD’s Alaskan region from 2018 to 2020, and is now a fellow at the Canadian Global Affairs Institute.

Clancy said he thinks that, when the Chinese balloon was spotted, NORAD likely “tweaked the parameters” of its radars, which is how the three other objects were