Is Chinese balloon spying on Fort Bragg?

More:Blinken postpones China trip amid spy balloon row; US officials scramble to get rid of it

A day after the Department of Defense announced it detected a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the U.S., one of North Carolina’s senators Tweeted concerns about impacts to Fort Bragg.

On Friday, Sen. Thom Tillis issued a Tweet stating the balloon, believed to belong to China, includes a trajectory path that shows "flyovers near Fort Bragg and Camp Lejeune.”

Fort Bragg is the nation’s most populated military installation and is home to the immediate response force Special Forces.

Camp Lejeune, in Jacksonville, North Carolina, is home to the 2^nd Marine Division and other Marine units.

“President (Joe) Biden’s decision not to destroy it even as it passed through sparsely populated areas is puzzling, and we deserve answers,” Tillis Tweeted.

During a press briefing Friday afternoon, White House spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said that after the president was briefed by military officials yesterday, it was decided to “not take kinetic action,” or to bring the balloon down because of the risk to people on the ground.

More:Chinese spy balloon spotted in American skies, Pentagon says; US weighed shooting it down

“The presence of this balloon in our airspace, it is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law, and it is unacceptable,” Jean-Pierre said.

During a news conference Friday, Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder would not confirm the balloon's location to reporters.

" I can tell you that the balloon continues to move eastward and is currently over the center of the continental United States," Ryder said. "Again, we currently assess that the balloon does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground at this time."

Pressed again about the balloon's location, Ryder said officials would not get "into an hour-by-hour location of the balloon, but said it had "changed its course." He said the U.S. government is continuing to track the balloon.

“Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years," he said in a statement Thursday. "Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”

The huge, high-altitude Chinese balloon sailed across the U.S. on Friday, drawing severe Pentagon accusations of spying on sensitive military sites despite China's firm denials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly canceled a high-stakes Beijing trip aimed at easing U..S.-China tensions.

Aside from the government response, fuzzy videos dotted social media as people with binoculars and telephoto lenses tried to find the “spy balloon” in the sky as it headed southeastward over Kansas and Missouri at 60,000 feet.

It was spotted earlier Friday over Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Defense officials said.

The U.S. actually had been tracking the balloon since at least Tuesday, when Biden was first briefed, Jean-Pierre told reporters. According to three U.S. officials, Biden was initially inclined to order the surveillance balloon to be blown out of the sky, and a senior defense official said the U.S. had prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot it down if ordered.

The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations, said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly advised Biden against shooting down the balloon, warning that its size — as big as three school buses — and considerable weight could create a debris field large enough to endanger Americans on the ground. The Pentagon also assessed that after unspecified U.S. measures, the possibility of the balloon uncovering important information was not great.

It was not the first time Chinese surveillance balloons have been tracked over U.S. territory, including at least once during former President Donald Trump’s administration, officials said.

Blinken's trip cancellation came despite China’s claim that the balloon was merely a weather research “airship” that had blown off course. The Pentagon rejected that out of hand — as well as China's contention that the balloon was not being used for surveillance and had only limited navigational ability.

After passing the sensitive military sites in Montana, the balloon was moving southeastward over the heartland of the central United States during the day Friday and was expected to remain in U.S. airspace for several days, officials said.

Staff writer Rachael Riley can be reached at rriley@fayobserver.com or 910-486-3528.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Chinese balloon shows Fort Bragg in its path, Sen. Thom Tillis says