WASHINGTON: The suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down by an American fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on February 4. The U.S. military announced on Monday that it had recovered critical electronics from the balloon, including important sensors likely used for intelligence gathering.

The U.S. military's Northern Command said in a statement that "crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure."

Before President Joe Biden ordered its destruction, the Chinese balloon had been flying over the United States and Canada for a week. Beijing denies that it was a government spy vessel. The incident soured relations between Washington and Beijing and forced the United States' top diplomat to cancel a trip to China.

Additionally, it prompted the American military to search the skies for additional targets that were not being picked up by radar, which resulted in an unprecedented three shootdowns between Friday and Sunday.

The U.S. military and the Biden administration have acknowledged that many details about the most recent unmanned objects are still unknown, including how they maintain their altitude, who built them, and whether or not they may have been gathering intelligence.

On Monday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin attempted to reassure people about the dangers posed by the unidentified flying objects.

Austin told reporters as he touched down in Brussels for a NATO meeting, "I want to reassure Americans that these objects do not present a military threat to anyone on the ground."

"They do, however, pose a threat to intelligence gathering and a risk to civil aviation."

According to the U.S. military, given their smaller size and lack of a conventional radar signature, the latest objects have proven more challenging to target than the Chinese spy balloon.

A U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity, that the latest shootdown of an unidentified object by an F-16 fighter jet on Sunday required two sidewinder missiles because one of them had failed to bring the target down.

Austin claimed that none of the three most recent targets shot down, one of which landed in ice and snow off the coast of Alaska, have had any debris recovered by the American military. Over the Canadian territory of Yukon, there was yet another shootdown.

United States officials have refrained from linking the incidents.

However, without going into further detail, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated on Monday that there was some connection between the four aerial objects that were shot down recently.

Trudeau told reporters at a news conference in Whitehorse, the capital of Yukon, that "obviously there is some sort of pattern in there, and the fact we are seeing this to a significant degree over the past week is a cause for interest and close attention."