Mystery balloon discovery leads to trip being postponed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a planned highstakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighs a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States, U.S. officials said Friday.

The abrupt decision came despite China's claim that the balloon was a weather research "airship" that had blown off course. The U.S. has described it as a surveillance vehicle.

The development came just before Blinken had been due to depart Washington for Beijing and marked a new blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations.

President Joe Biden declined to comment when questioned at an economic event. Two 2024 reelection challengers, former President Donald Trump, and Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and U.N. ambassador, said the U.S. should immediately shoot down the balloon.

Discovery of the balloon was announced by Pentagon officials who said one of the places it was spotted was over the state of Montana, which is home to one of America's three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.

A senior defense official said the U.S. prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the balloon if ordered. The Pentagon ultimately recommended against it, noting that even as the balloon was over a sparsely populated area of Montana, its size would create a debris field large enough that it could have put people at risk.

The official said the balloon was headed over the Montana missile fields, but the U.S. has assessed that it had only "limited" value in terms of providing intelligence China couldn't obtain by other technologies, such as spy satellites.