The pilots sound as confused as the folks on the ground.
Cockpit audio from the F-16 fighter jets that intercepted the first Chinese spy balloon has been released. Pilots can be heard discussing the object’s appearance and approximate size.
“I wouldn’t really call it a balloon … I don’t know what … I can see it outside with my eyes,” one of the pilots from the Wisconsin Air National Guard said in a recording obtained by The Drive. “Looks like something … there’s some kind of object that’s distended in the air. It’s hard to tell, it’s pretty small.”
Another pilot said he could not tell if the object was “metallic or what.”
“I can see, like, lines coming down below, but I can’t see anything below it,” he continued, adding that the object was “definitely smaller than a car.”
“The size of it, that would be challenging … it’s so slow and so small, I just can’t see it because it’s so close,” a pilot said.
“I’m going to call it a balloon,” another pilot said. “You can definitely see strings hanging down below but I don’t see anything more. … It’s pretty small, I don’t know, about the size of, like a four-wheeler or something.”
Listen to the audio above.
[h/t The Daily Wire]