How Great Was the US Navy Detection of an Unmanned UAV in the Subic Bay Bay Area? An Unintentional Example from President-Elect Donald W. Bush

Editor’s Note: Beth Sanner is a former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, a position where she oversaw the elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight throughout the Intelligence Community. She was the intelligence briefer for the president. She is a professor-of-practice at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland and a CNN national security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. You can check out more opinions on CNN.

We risk going over the edge if we don’t have a framework to measure and calibrate our actions toward China. I understand why Americans were alarmed by the balloon, but there are much bigger threats posed by China. We should address the shortcomings this incident exposed — including what appears to be gaps in our air defense and detection systems that would have allowed us to shoot such a balloon down before it ever reached US landfall — but political one-upmanship on such a fraught and grave matter as relations with China is dangerous.

In late 2016 the Chinese seized an American underwater vehicle, which was located in the South China Sea just 50 nautical miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines and hundreds of miles from China. The US Navy base in Subic Bay was home to the largest naval base in Asia until disagreements over leasing costs led to a withdrawal in 1992. The incident was widely believed to have been a message to President-elect Donald Trump, just two weeks before his inauguration and several weeks after he angered Beijing by taking a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s president. Beijing returned the craft three days later, but never apologized nor accused the US of espionage.

The most memorable and instructive example dates back to the presidency of George W. Bush. On April 1, 2001, two Chinese fighter jets harassed a US Navy EP-3 surveillance plane over international waters near China. One collided with the EP-3 and crashed. The EP-3’s pilot managed to regain control of his heavily-damaged plane and made an unauthorized emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. The crew members were held for over a week before they were released.

Had any damage or loss of life resulted when China downed the unmanned US craft, Chinese authorities would have quickly placed both blame and liability on the US. Protests would have erupted in front of the US Embassy and China’s Ambassador to the US swiftly withdrawn.

My first reaction to the balloon being identified was likely the same one you were: “Shoot it down, already!” In my decades as a senior intelligence official, I focused on the facts and provided a measured assessment of the intelligence community’s knowledge and understanding. In meetings probably held in the White House Situation Room multiple times over the past week, a senior intelligence official would have joined the US military, level-setting the discussion in this vein. So I’m inclined to buy the risk-benefit calculus that drove the decision to wait to shoot the balloon down until it was flying over shallow US waters where the risk posed by a large debris field was minimal.

Let’s come up with a plan to hold China accountable, but also allow for needed dialogue. If we follow Beijing’s lead, it will be more difficult to avoid military conflict with China.

Peter Bergen is a CNN national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of a book called The Cost of Chaos. His own views are expressed in this commentary. View more opinion on CNN.

And it reminded me that when my father, Tom Bergen, was a lieutenant in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s, he worked on a program to help send balloons into Soviet airspace.

In 1954 he was assigned to Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. There he worked on the “Grand Union” project, which deployed balloons that carried cameras over the then-Soviet Union. Turkey launched the spy balloons.

The program has been declassified for seven decades, but my father did not talk about it much during his career.

Spy Balloon Histories Bergen: What Have They Learned in Two Decades of Unidentified Objects?

A senior administration official this week said that they could track the exact path of the balloon and make sure there wasn’t anything done around it. “The US military took immediate steps to protect against the balloon’s collection of sensitive information, mitigating any intelligence value to the PRC.”

Now the United States and its rivals have these new-fangled gizmos called “spy satellites,” which can take photos! They can do full-motion video! They can take thermal imagery that detects individuals moving around at night! When the skies are clear, they can spy on pretty much anything, with a resolution of centimeters.

Indeed, commercial satellite imagery is now getting so inexpensive that you can go out and buy your own close-up images of, say, a Russian battle group in Ukraine. Just ask Maxar Technologies; they have built up a rather profitable business on this model, which was just acquired two months ago for $6 billion by a private equity firm.

But it may help explain, at least in part, an element of a little-noticed report published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence last month.

The report examined more than 500 reports of unidentified objects in the sky over the past two decades, many of them reported by US Navy and US Air Force personnel and pilots. These reports were assessed by the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, a fancy name for the office that tries to examine UFO sightings.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/opinions/spy-balloon-history-bergen/index.html

China, the Flight of the Flare F-35 Satellite, and the Security of the Air Force: Detection of a High-Velocity, Low-Redshift Weather Balloon

China has done worse. US officials have accused it of benefiting from the work of hackers who stole design data about the F-35 fighter aircraft as China builds its own new generation of fighters – and of sucking up much of the personal information of more than 20 million Americans who were current or former members of the US government when they reportedly got inside the computers of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in 2015. The China denied that it was responsible for the hacking of the OPM.

CNN has asked the Chinese Embassy in Washington for comment on the suggestion that the balloon that was shot down is part of a wider surveillance program.

Roughly half a dozen of those flights have been within US airspace – although not necessarily over US territory, according to one official familiar with the intelligence.

An official and another source familiar with the intelligence said not all of the balloons seen around the globe had the same model as the one that fell off the coast of South Carolina. These people said that there are multiple variations.

The link to the broader surveillance program, which was uncovered before the latest balloon was spotted last week, was first reported by the Washington Post.

The US has been using a different method to track balloons for the first time due to the findings, according to sources. The existence of this method could further inflame criticism from Republican lawmakers that the administration didn’t act quickly enough to prevent the balloon from entering US airspace last week.

It wasn’t until the balloon entered Alaskan airspace and took a sharp turn to the south that officials came to believe that it was on the way to spy on the US mainland.

The biggest unanswered question, officials say, remains China’s intent. China believes that the vessel was a weather balloon that went astray and that the path over the US was an accident. Officials have acknowledged that this type of balloon has only limited steering capabilities and largely rode the jet stream.

Several defense officials and other sources briefed on the intelligence say that the Chinese explanation is not credible and has described the balloon’s path as intentional.

The US has an elite team of agents, analysts, engineers, and scientists that is responsible for both creation and analysis of technical measures.

OT personnel are responsible for the construction of devices used by FBI and intelligence community personnel targeting national security threats but they also have responsibility for managing court authorized data collection and work to defeat foreign intelligence agencies.

A member of the House Intelligence Committee said there were a number of reasons why they wouldn’t do that. We want to collect off it, you want to see where it’s going and what it’s doing.

The US has procedures that protect sensitive locations from overflight by satellites, like the kind used for overflight in movies.

The Biden administration has faced questions over its handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the nation last week before being shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday.

The idea shooting down a balloon that is gathering information for America makes relations worse. Biden spoke with Judy Woodruff in a wide-ranging interview after his second State of the Union address.

Biden administration officials have stressed that the meeting was not canceled, but instead delayed until a later date. There is not yet a date for that.

Asked by CNN this week if US officials had any indication as to why China would commit such an overt act, Biden laughed off the question. “They’re the Chinese government,” he said.

Biden administration officials have claimed they were able to mitigate the intelligence collection capacity of the balloon by moving quickly and that they will be benefiting from the ability to recover information about the balloon and Chinese intelligence capabilities.

The House will vote on a resolution Thursday condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high altitude balloon over US territory as a blatant violation of United States sovereignty.

Some Republican lawmakers have raised pointed questions about why the Biden administration did not move to shoot down the balloon before it crossed down into the continental US – either while it was over Alaska or sooner.

US Navy photojournal of a possible spy balloon shootdown over the Atlantic Ocean: A telling observation by Xi last year that China is a responsible country

And he detailed a telling observation he shared with Xi last year as US officials warned China not to provide military support to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

The US Navy released photos Tuesday of its recovery effort of a suspected Chinese spy balloon, which US fighter jets shot down over the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.

The commandant of NORAD said on Monday that a balloon was more than a thousand pounds and was about 200 feet tall.

Picture yourself with a lot of debris falling out of the sky. That is what we are talking about, according to VanHerck. It’s also the case that glass off of solar panels is potentially hazardous material because it is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment.

“[T]his gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed, and I think you’ll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value to collect over,” VanHerck said.

It was only when the balloon turned south that it “got strange,” a senior US official told CNN. We started talking about shooting it down.

The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that “it was completely an accident” because the Chinese side had repeatedly informed the US side of the fact that the airship was for civilian use.

The situation resulted in a postponed visit for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, which had been expected to happen within days of the balloon’s sighting.

China admitted that it owned the balloon on Monday, saying it deviated from its flight course while being used for flight tests.

“China is a responsible country,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Monday. “We have always strictly abided by international law. We have informed all relevant parties and appropriately handled the situation, which did not pose any threats to any countries.”

China has paid close attention to other countries’ developments in this region, which has been hailed by Chinese military experts as “a new front for militarization” and “an important field of competition among the world’s military powers.”

And a range of “near-space flight vehicles” will play a vital role in future joint combat operations that integrate outer space and the Earth’s atmosphere, the article said.

The country’s growing interest in these lighter-than-air vehicles is revealed in anexamination of Chinese state media reports and scientific papers, which show the country’s interest in such vehicles for use in a wide range of purposes.

“With the rapid development of modern technology, the space for information confrontation is no longer limited to land, sea, and the low altitude. In the official newspaper of thePLA, the PLA Daily, there was an article that said that near space has become a new battlefield in modern warfare.

Another scientist on the team told the newspaper that compared with satellites, stratospheric airships are better for “long-term observation” and have a range of purposes from disaster warning and environmental research to wireless network construction and aerial reconnaissance.

Mulvaney wrote a paper in 2020 that described China’s interest in using lighter-than-air vehicles for near-space research, including weather.

An example of the advances that China has made in this domain is the reported flight of a 100 meter long dirigible called the Cloud Chaser, which is said to have flown 314 feet. The vehicle traveled across Asia, Africa, and North America in a flight of over 20,000 meters above the earth, stated a professor in a recent interview.

The US has also been bolstering its capacity to use lighter-than-air vehicles. The US Department of Defense contracted a American firm to use their stratospheric balloons as a way to apply effects to the battlefield.

The documentary did not provide further detail about the time and location of the incident, but a paper published last April by researchers in a PLA institute noted air-drift balloons were spotted over China in 1997 and 2017.

The Discovery of a High-Altitude Airborne Object Revealed by the US Defense Joint Intelligence Center (JICA 2016)

“Understanding the atmospheric conditions up there is critical to programming the guidance software” for ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to Hawaii-based analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.

Both the self-governing island of Taiwan and Japan have acknowledged past, similar sightings, though it is not clear if they are related to the US incident.

CASI’s Mulvaney said that whether the balloon itself is characterized as “dual use” or “state-owned,” data collected would have gone back to China, which is now receiving another kind of information from the incident.

“At the end of the day responses and (tactics, techniques, and procedures) from the US and other countries on how they react, or fail to – all of that has value to China and the PLA.”

“The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby announced to the press on Friday.

The report was disseminated through channels accessible to the US government. Sources tell us that it wasn’t flagged as an urgent warning and that intelligence officials didn’t immediately worry about it. The report says that President Joe Biden was not briefed on it, and that the White House was not made aware of it.

Instead of treating it as an immediate threat, the US moved to investigate the object, seeing it as an opportunity to observe and collect intelligence.

But senior Biden officials faced pointed questions on Capitol Hill from lawmakers in public hearings and classified briefings as Congress is demanding more information about why the balloon wasn’t shot down sooner.

Defense officials said that the NORAD sent fighter jets to identify the balloon when it entered the US airspace near Alaska.

How much control China exerted over the balloon’s path remains a matter of debate. Although the balloon was equipped with propellers and a rudder that allowed it to turn “like a sailboat,” according to the senior US official, it largely rode the jet stream – one of the reasons US officials were able to predict its path across the US in advance.

Military officials are not surprised that the president wasn’t briefed until January 31, given the expectations for the balloon.

Congress is interested in the more information about the decision-making process on the balloon.

NORAD and the Pentagon are preparing for a new high-energy travel mission. The case for Alaska, the Senate and the House of Representatives

“There are still a lot of questions to be asked about Alaska,” a Senate Republican aide told CNN. The continental US is different from Alaska, so why is that okay to transit Alaska without telling anyone?

The image of the pilot and balloon in the cockpit has already gained legendary status in both NORAD and the Pentagon, according to these officials.

An official said the Chinese balloon was capable of monitoring US communications, as determined by the Biden administration.

Lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without Chinese President Xi Jinping’s knowledge, sources familiar with the briefing said.

The officials, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. has only collected materials that were on the ocean’s surface so far, including the balloon canopy, some wiring and a “very small amount of electronics.”

Gen. Glenn VanHerck, commander of the US Northern Command and NORAD, told reporters that it wasn’t a significant collection hazard beyond what the Chinese already have.

The House briefing Thursday morning was tense, the sources said, with several Republicans railing against the administration, including GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, who said that the Pentagon made the president – whom she noted she doesn’t like – look weak by their actions.

The Pentagon said in real-time that they were able to limit the damage, according to the Illinois Democrat.

“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. Their capabilities are extraordinary at the same time. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can’t imagine how that would work with almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

Defense officials expressed concern about the military’s assessment of the Chinese spy balloon: Sen. Jon Tester told lawmakers ‘it was not the last time for the Pentagon’

Senators pushed defense officials at an Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday over the military’s assessment of the Chinese surveillance, with Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana telling officials that he did not know how they could unequivocally say it was not a military threat.

“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before and because I am telling you that that this ain’t the last time. We have seen brief incursions and now we have a long incursion, what will happen next? asked the chairman of the senate appropriations defense subcommittee, Tester.

Pentagon officials said that the balloon was not near sensitive sites and that the Defense Department was not concerned about it.

The pieces of the balloon that fell in the ocean have been delivered, but additional pieces of the balloon that sank have not been recovered because of bad weather.

It’s not yet clear where the balloon’s parts were manufactured, the officials said, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. The officials said that there wasn’t a determination as to what the device was capable of doing and its intended intent because analysts have yet to look at the equipment on the balloon.

Of the small portion they have examined, analysts have not identified any sort of explosive or “offensive material” that would pose a danger to the American public.

There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source wouldn’t reveal what parts of the balloon were written in English.

The official said that they had no explanation for why the balloons violated the airspace of Central and South American countries. “The PRC’s program will only continue to be exposed, making it harder for the PRC to use this program.”

A senior State Department official gave reporters an update on what has already been learned, on Thursday, as the U.S Navy continued to fish parts of the alleged Chinese spy balloon out of the Atlantic.

One of the FBI officials said that it was ” very early” to assess the intent of the device and what it was doing.

The High-Altitude Object Shooted Down by an F-22 Fighter Jet in US Airspace over Territorial Water: A Success Story for the United States

“That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the U.S. has waged on China,” Mao added. “As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community.”

The government is spending money on improvements. China has been researching materials that can be used to create balloons that can float higher, without losing their buoyancy.

President Joe Biden told CNN that the shoot down a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska on Friday “was a success,” shortly after American national security officials disclosed that the commander-in-chief gave the US military approval to take the action.

The Pentagon said that the object was taken down by an F-22 fighter jet in US airspace over territorial water. The general told reporters on Friday.

The Defense Department did not have information about the object’sabilities, purpose or origin. He said the object was small and not the same size as the high altitude balloon that fell off the coast of South Carolina.

There were attempts to get closer to the object and evaluate it as it flew. Fighter aircraft engagement took place late Thursday night and Friday morning. Kirby told reporters that both engagements yielded limited information.

“We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby added.

Biden, at the recommendation of the Pentagon, ordered the military “to down the object and they did,” Kirby added. Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command brought down the object that came inside territorial airspace. It went down over frozen Arctic Ocean waters near the Canadian border and northeastern Alaska. The US expects to recover the debris.

The Alaska Command of the US Northern Command coordinated the operation with help from the Alaska Air National Guard, Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Why Is The Object “Non-Self-Maneuvering”? The Case of a Solar-Like Object

The best description we have is why we are calling this an object. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

The US government first became aware of the object. Biden was first briefed Thursday night “as soon as the Pentagon had enough information,” Kirby said.

The object “did not appear to be self-maneuvering, and therefore, (was) at the mercy of prevailing winds,” making it “much less predictable,” said Kirby.

The military took action against the object, leading to a temporary flight restriction by the FAA.