
President Joe Biden gave the order to shoot the item down this morning, in keeping with John Kirby, Nationwide Safety Council coordinator for strategic communications.
Biden was first briefed Thursday evening “as quickly because the Pentagon had sufficient data,” he added.
Kirby defined that the item didn’t look like self-maneuvering, making it “a lot much less predictable,” which led to the president’s choice to take it down.
There have been two efforts to get nearer to the item because it was within the air — one from fighter plane late final evening and one from a flight earlier this morning, Kirby mentioned, including that each engagements yielded restricted data.
Kirby didn’t present a timeline for recovering the downed object.