Republicans are criticizing the Biden administrations handling of a suspected surveillance balloon from China that entered U.S. airspace this past week while sidestepping questions about similar incidents happening several times under former President Donald Trump .

The balloon, which looked like a large white orb to bewildered civilians on the ground, moved eastward through U.S. airspace for several days before the Air Forces F-22 fighter jet shot it down with a short-range missile off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday. The interception was televised live, showing the balloon exploding before falling into the Atlantic.

China maintains that the balloon was a civilian airship used mostly for weather research, but the U.S. claims it was a spy balloon that carried sensors and surveillance equipment while passing over sensitive military areas .

Citing an unidentified senior Pentagon official, the Defense Department said in a statement on Saturday that Chinese balloons briefly transited the continental United States at least three times during the prior administration. The Associated Press reported that officials also spoke of another such incident earlier in the Biden administration. None of those four incidents reportedly lasted as long as this weeks, and it has not been confirmed whether the previous balloons were shot down.