He said balloons had been spotted near Texas and twice near Florida, as well as previously known sightings near Hawaii and Guam.
Democrats said Biden’s decision to wait to shoot down the balloon until it had passed over the US protected civilians from debris crashing to Earth.
“The president called for this to be dealt with in a way that balanced all of the different risks. That’s exactly what happened,” US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN’s State of the Union programme.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer dismissed the Republican criticism as “premature and political”.
“The bottom line here is that shooting down the balloon over water wasn’t just the safest option, but it was the one that maximized our intel gain,” he said at a news conference.
The Pentagon will brief senators on the balloon and Chinese surveillance on Feb 15, Schumer said.
Republican Mike Turner, chairman of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, said he believed China was using the balloon to figure out how to counter US nuclear weapons and missile defence systems.
“The president has allowed this to go across our most sensitive sites and wasn’t even going to tell the American public,” Turner said on NBC’s Meet the Press programme.
Republican Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told the ABC News programme, This Week, that China was trying to send a message that it could enter US airspace.
Rubio said he doubted that the balloon’s debris would be of much intelligence value.
For all the latest world News Click Here
