President Joe Biden has directed the US Intelligence community to do a "broad assessment" of China's intelligence capabilities after assuming office, the White House said following the detection of a spy balloon and high-altitude flying objects over American airspace.

In recent days, there have been three incidences of balloon sightings in the US. A US F-22 fighter jet on Saturday shot down an unidentified cylindrical object over Canada, a day after another similar object was downed near Alaskan waters, and a week after the American military brought down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the South Carolina coast.

“When President Biden came into office (in 2021), he directed the US Intelligence community to do a broad assessment of Chinese intelligence capabilities and assure -- and to ensure that we were working to detect and to protect against them,” John Kirby, Coordinator for Strategic Communications at the National Security Council in the White House, told reporters on Monday at a news conference.

“I think for reasons that you will all understand, we cannot publicly go into many details about how we discover and counteract foreign intelligence collection efforts, because much of what we have done and are doing is, of course, sensitive. But we were able to determine that China has a high altitude balloon programme for intelligence collection that's connected to the People's Liberation Army,” he said.

It was operating during the previous administration, but they did not detect it. “We detected it. We tracked it. We have been carefully studying it to learn as much as we can. We know that these PRC (People's Republic of China) surveillance balloons have crossed over dozens of countries on multiple continents around the world, including some of our closest allies and partners,” Kirby said.

The United States, he noted, assessed that at this time these balloons have provided limited additive capabilities to the PRC's other intelligence platforms used over the United States. But in the future, if the PRC continues to advance this technology, it certainly could become more valuable to them. Biden also instructed the intelligence community to take a broad look at the phenomenon of unidentified aerial objects, he said.

Indeed, Biden conducted the first-ever daily intelligence briefing session devoted to this phenomenon back in June of 2021. “He was briefed that this is not just an issue for the United States, but one for the rest of the world. And as I said, our friends and our partners are dealing with this as well,” Kirby said.

In light of the Chinese balloon programme and this recent incursion into its airspace, the United States and Canada through NORAD have been more closely scrutinising that airspace, including enhancing their radar capabilities which may at least partially explain the increase in the objects that have been detected.

Slow-moving objects at high altitudes with a small radar cross-section are difficult to detect on radar. Even objects the size of a Chinese spy balloon, which had a payload the size of roughly three school buses, were not picked up by previous administrations or other countries. A range of entities, including countries, companies, research and academic organisations, operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious at all, including scientific research, he said.

“That said, because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these most recent objects are, we acted out of an abundance of caution to protect the security, our security, our interest, and flight safety. In Saturday's case, we acted in consultation with the Canadian government, the president speaking personally with the -- with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,” said the White House official.

“The spy balloon was of course different because we knew precisely where that was. As we have said, we do not assess that these most recent objects posed any direct threat to people on the ground, and we are laser-focused on confirming their nature and purpose, including through intensive efforts to collect debris in the remote locations where they have fallen,” he said.

In each instance, the United States has followed the same basic course.

“We assessed whether they posed any kinetic threat to people on the ground. They did not. We assessed whether they were sending any communications signals. We detected none. We looked to see whether they were manoeuvring or had any propulsion capabilities,” Kirby said.

“We saw no signs of that. We made sure to determine whether or not they were manned. They were not. We did, however, assess that their altitudes were considerably lower than the Chinese high-altitude balloon and did pose a threat to civilian commercial air traffic,” he said.

Biden, he said, has blanket orders to shoot them down.

The United States is continuing to monitor the situation.

“There are no active tracks today, but the professionals at NORAD will continue to do their important work. Secondly, we are consulting with allies and partners on the challenge of identified aerial phenomena and how we can all work together to deal with that challenge,” he said.

Biden has directed the Secretary of State, Secretary of Defence, and the Director of National Intelligence to engage with their relevant counterparts to share information and to try to gain their perspectives as well.

“Again, this is an issue that affects everybody around the world. We will continue to brief members of congress and relevant state leadership on what we are doing and what we learn,” he said.

Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by The Telegraph Online staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.