The Case of Two UAVs Colliding Over China’s Hainan Island (The Case of a Weather Balloon that Passed over the US Airspace)

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 served as the intelligence briefer when she was in this role. 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 commentary is not written by her. View more opinion on CNN.

The US and Chinese governments have been clashing publicly over the vessel, which China has said was a weather balloon that accidentally entered US airspace.

The uncomfortable fact is that the Biden Administration’s attempt to set “guardrails” on its relationship with China is not working well. This is mostly because China not only has failed to stop spying, stealing, and exploiting vulnerabilities in the US democratic and open-market system, but is becoming more aggressive than ever. But it is also partly because actions undertaken by the administration to hold China accountable for this behavior have threatened core Chinese interests.

George W. Bush’s presidency was the most memorable example. 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 pilot of the aircraft made an unauthorized emergency landing in China’s Hainan Island after regaining control of his plane. The 24 US crew members were held for 11 days, and some were repeatedly interrogated before US officials negotiated their release.

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. There would have been protests in front of both the US Embassy and China’s Ambassador to the US.

But military and intelligence officials believed the best course of action would be to continue tracking the balloon and collect intelligence on it, as it was not deemed a threat as it crossed over the US and shooting it down would risk civilian lives and reduce the chances of recovering the balloon’s equipment intact.

The Cost of Chaos: The War Between the USA and China? Commentary on Bergen’s Theoretical Analysis of CNN’s Peter Bergen

Let’s work on a more strategic, measured plan to hold China accountable with room for needed dialogue. If we follow Beijing’s lead it will surely be a race to the bottom, making it harder to avoid what we all wish to avoid — military conflict with China.

Peter Bergen is a professor at Arizona State University, a vice president at New America, and is a national security analyst for CNN. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” 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 the time, which was near Dayton, Ohio. There he worked on the “Grand Union” project, which deployed balloons that carried cameras over the then-Soviet Union. Those spy balloons were launched from Turkey.

It was a secret work that my dad did for a long time but has finally been declassified after seven decades.

US officials briefed members of Congress on Thursday that the balloon had the ability to collect so-called “signals intelligence” and transmit data to the mainland of China – but that it appeared to stop transmitting once the US learned about it, limiting how much intelligence it was able to gather on behalf of Beijing, according to sources familiar with the briefing.

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 shows people moving around at night. When the skies are clear, they can spy on pretty much anything, with a resolution of centimeters.

Satellite imagery is getting so cheap that you can purchase your own close-up images of 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.

Why the latest spy balloons over North America have been seen by the U.S. intelligence agency, according to the China Department of National Intelligence

It may explain a part of the little-noticed report published last month by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence.

Are the latest strange objects over North America linked to a hostile power, corporate, or private entity? Are they connected to each other or are they just coincidences at a time of heightened awareness and tensions?

The US has used warships and planes to collect intelligence on China more than 700 times in the last one year, according to the Chinese. All this was proof that the U.S. is a giant of the internet’s illegal activities, Wang claimed.

There is a portion of the program that is run out of the Chinese province of Hainan, officials tell CNN. The US does not know the precise size of the fleet of Chinese surveillance balloons, but sources tell CNN that the program has conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years.

The suspicion that foreign countries are gathering intelligence from the air runs both ways. Earlier this month, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson accused the U.S. of flying its own surveillance vehicles “more than 10 times” into Chinese airspace above Xinjiang and Tibet — which the U.S. has denied.

One source with knowledge of the intelligence said that not all of the balloons being seen around the globe are the same model as the one that went down off the coast of South Carolina. These people said that there are multiple variations.

The link to the broader program was found before the latest balloon was spotted, which was reported by the Washington Post.

A source in the FBI operation said that the intelligence community will be looking for any resemblance to technology built by the US intelligence community and military in the Chinese balloon, since the Chinese government has been accused of stealing American defense secrets.

A US military commander on Monday acknowledged that the US has a “domain awareness gap” that allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental US undetected during the previous administration.

The Foreign Ministry of China said that the airship deviated from its route due to the westerly wind and limited self-control. The airship went into the US as a result of force majeure. China will continue to maintain communication with the US to properly handle the unexpected situation.”

But multiple defense officials and other sources briefed on the intelligence say the Chinese explanation isn’t credible and have described the balloon’s path as intentional.

The elite team is composed of agents, analysts, engineers and scientists, who are responsible for both creating and analyzing technical surveille measures.

OTD personnel, for example, construct surveillance devices used by FBI and intelligence community personnel targeting national security threats — but they also are responsible for managing court-authorized data collection and work to defeat efforts by foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate the US.

There is a number of reasons why we wouldn’t do that according to one member of the House Intelligence Committee. We want to take it, you should be able to see what it is doing.

The US has procedures in place that are similar to a digital black out to protect sensitive areas from overhead monitoring, according to a defense official.

The US Navy and the Foreign Ministry have taken measures to resolve the China-Suzhou spy balloon incident of Saturday afternoon over the Atlantic Ocean. The balloon shot down

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.

On Monday, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters that the balloon was roughly 200 feet tall and carried a payload weighing more than a couple of thousand pounds.

If thousands of pounds fall out of the sky, picture yourself with a safety standpoint. That is what we are talking about, VanHerck said on Monday. There’s potentially hazardous material such as material that is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment, as well as the possibility for explosives to explode and destroy the balloon that could have been present.

VanHerck said there will be a future when the time frame given to assess what they were doing, what kind of capabilities were on the balloon, and what kind of transmission capabilities existed is worth its value.

The balloon was ultimately shot down on Saturday afternoon by a single missile from a F-22 fighter jet out of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. The operation was carried out by active duty, Reserve, National Guard, and civilian personnel, according to the Navy’s photo captions.

According to a statement from the Foreign Ministry, the Chinese side has told the US side that the airship is civilian and entered the US because of force majeure.

The Secretary of State was expected to go to Beijing within days, but there was a postponement due to the situation.

China admitted ownership of the balloon on Monday, saying that it deviated from its flight course by mistake and was 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 is paying close attention to other countries developments in the region which have been described as a new front for jingoism and as an important field of competition among the world’s military powers.

The Times reports that Chinese spy balloons can fly up to 50 miles above Earth and vice versa in the near-space warfare of the United States

Lying above the flightpaths of most commercial and military jets and below satellites, near space is an in-between area for spaceflight to pass through – but it is also a domain where hypersonic weapons transit and ballistic missiles cross.

Earlier this week The New York Times published a story about Wu Zhe, a Chinese scientist who is the alleged mastermind of his nation’s balloon surveillance program. You may have noticed that Chinese spy balloons have been in the news because one of those near-space visitors meandered over the US for days until Joe Biden ordered it shot down. The Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group were celebrated by the reporters of the Times. The team that lost the Super Bowl was not related to it at all.

The space for information confrontation is no longer limited to land, sea or low altitude thanks to the rapid development of modern technology. Near space has also become a new battlefield in modern warfare and an important part of the national security system,” read a 2018 article in the PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Spontaneity airships and high-altitude balloons can fly for a long period of time without being detected by a radar, according to Shi Hong, the executive editor of Shipborne Weapons.

“They are cheap, provide long-term persistent stare for collection of imagery, communications and other information – including weather,” said Mulvaney, who authored a 2020 paper that detailed China’s interest in using lighter-than-air vehicles for “near-space reconnaissance.”

If satellites are knocked out in war, China’s military researchers have said that airships could be an alternative. Last year, China experimented with using rockets to send balloons up to 25 miles above earth.

Lighter-than-air vehicles have been increased in the US. In 2021, the US Department of Defense contracted an American aerospace firm to work on using their stratospheric balloons as a means “to develop a more complete operating picture and apply effects to the battlefield,” according to a statement from the firm, Raven Aerostar, at the time.

The research paper published in April of last year stated that air-drift balloons were reported over China in 1997 and 2017, and that the time and location wasn’t given in the documentary.

Schuster, VanHerck, and the President of the US Pacific Command: Why the US had no intention of shooting down the balloon

Carl Schuster, a Former Director of Operations at the US Pacific Command, said that it was critical to know the atmospheric conditions up there to programming the guidance software.

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.

Responses and techniques from the US and other countries on how they react or fail to has value to China and the PLA.

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.

The Secretary of State made it clear that the US knows China was attempting to surveil the US via a balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.

Sources said that lawmakers were told Thursday that the order to send the balloon was sent without the knowledge of the Chinese President.

Only evidence that was on the surface of the ocean has been delivered to FBI analysts so far, one official said, which includes the “canopy itself, the wiring, and then a very small amount of electronics.” The official said analysts have not seen the load, which would mean they haven’t seen the lion’s share of electronics.

According to Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, the Chinese have already created a collection hazard with their technical means.

US officials were worried enough about China changing its stance to give the intel to allies and partners over the past few days, but wouldn’t describe what intelligence they had.

Rep. Mike Quigley: “The Pentagon is Taking a Long Defend” and “Is it the Last Time for a Spy Balloon to Be Shot Down”

The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

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 was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”

The administration, president, military and intelligence agencies acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? That is not the case of almost anything we do. Romney said he came away more confident.

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 have to help me understand why this baby was not taken out long before and I am telling you that it isn’t the last time. We’ve [seen] brief incursions, now we’ve seen a long incursion, what happens next?,” said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/politics/spy-balloon-technology/index.html

What Have we learnt about the alleged Chinese spy balloon? A senior State Department official update on what had been learned and how well the Navy used it

The Pentagon officials said that the Defense Department was not concerned about the intelligence gathered from a balloon over Alaska as it was not near sensitive sites.

The parts of the balloon that ended up in the ocean have already been delivered, officials said, but more parts of the balloon that sank have been complicated by bad weather.

The officials said that it wasn’t clear where the balloon parts were manufactured, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. The officials said that there was no determination as to what the device was capable of, 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.

One of the congressional sources that had been briefed said that parts of the balloon were written in English, but they were not high tech components. The balloon contained English writing, but the source refused to provide any details on what it contained.

The official said that based on China’s “messaging and public comments, it’s clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and still have no plausible explanation – and have found themselves on their heels.”

The official noted that they also have no explanation for the airspace violations by the second balloon over Central and South America. The PRC will become harder to use the program because it will only continue to be exposed.

A senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity gave reporters an updated on some of what has been learned as Navy crewmen continued to fish the parts from the alleged Chinese spy balloon.

The main electronics payload, however, has not been recovered yet, one of the FBI officials said, adding that it was “very early” to assess what the intent was and how the device was operating.

The fallout of the China-US Xi Balloon Mission could undermine Blinken’s Visit to the United States, according to a Beijing-based source

Wang said this shows the U.S. is the world’s largest spy empire. The U.S. National Security Council denied the allegations.

The government is investing in improvements of its own. China launched a project to develop materials that can be used to make balloons that can float higher without losing their buoyancy.

A source said Biden officials believed that the Chinese were aware of the balloon mission, and that China was still trying to understand how it happened.

The assessment was communicated to American lawmakers in briefings Thursday, according to CNN reporting – and if true, could point to what analysts say would be a significant lack of coordination within the Chinese system at a fraught period of China-US relations.

It could mean that Xi and his top advisers underestimated the potential gravity of the fallout of the mission and the possibility it could imperil Blinken’s visit, which would have been the first from the most senior US diplomat since 2018 and had been welcomed by Beijing as a path to easing strained ties.

A statement issued by Beijing last weekend implied the device was related to companies rather than the government or military.

According to Drew Thompson, the situation could have been worsened by the level of control that Xi had as he entered his third term atop the Communist Party.

Lower-level officials who may be able to more closely monitor such missions will not be given the power to make political judgments about their impact. He said that power struggles between lower and higher ranking officials could make communication difficult.

He said that there was a lot of tension in the Chinese system of governance, with lower levels fighting for independence and upper levels fighting for control.

Past crises in China have pointed to these tensions, including the outbreaks of both SARS in 2002-2003 and more recently Covid-19, where reporting delays were widely seen as having slowed the response and compounded the problem. Some blamed local officials who feared repercussions, or were accustomed to a system where information flows from the top down, not the bottom up.

Balloon launches could also fall into a gap in which operations were not managed or overseen in the same way as space or other aircraft missions, according to Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

The entities launching balloons could have received little or no push back from other countries, including the United States, and they may be seen as routine because of weather conditions.

“As a result, while the leaders of these programs have also become emboldened over time to test new routes, it was likely that they didn’t get top priority attention from the perspective of political risk,” he said.

The Foreign Ministry of China in the Light of the Chinese Balloon Detection and the Discovery of Vice Presidential Documents at Biden’s Home and Office

The foreign ministry of China was caught off guard as it released its first explanation of the situation more than 12 hours after the Pentagon announced it was following a balloon.

“Because of his personality, he wants 100% (control),” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor, also at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “I don’t think Xi Jinping allows for that kind of autonomy.”

In retrospect, it may have been wise for the president to ignore the public’s frustration in regards to the economy after years under the zero-Covid policy, but he failed to see the domestic backlash that resulted in the postponement of the talks.

Meanwhile, Washington may be offering its message that Xi wasn’t aware of the situation as it seeks to “continue the dialogue” started during a meeting between Xi and US President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Bali, according to Wu.

China has imposed sanctions on two American defense manufacturers over arms sales to Taiwan, a day after Beijing pledged to take “countermeasures” in response to Washington’s handling of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that entered US airspace late last month.

The Chinese government brought in private players due to the importance. Less than a week after the U.S. shot the Chinese balloon out of the sky, the U.S. Commerce Department slapped sanctions on six Chinese entities “for their support to China’s military modernization efforts, specifically the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) aerospace programs including airships and balloons and related materials and components.”

“The Commerce Department will not hesitate to continue to use the Entity List and our other regulatory and enforcement tools to protect US national security and sovereignty,” Deputy Secretary of Commerce Don Graves said in the statement.

A deepening national security mystery is threatening a political storm after US fighter jets scrambled three days in a row to shoot down a trio of unidentified aerial objects high over the North American continent.

It might be that in a fast- moving situation the government doesn’t know as much as it says. There is confusion because of the piecemeal emergence of details. On issues including the Chinese balloon and the discovery of classified vice presidential documents at Biden’s home and office, the administration has sometimes struggled to control a media narrative to its own political detriment.

The intrigue is also unfolding against a tense global situation, with already difficult relations with rising superpower China becoming ever more hostile and with the US leading the West in an effective proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.

In the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of crazy, according to Jon Tester, a Democratic Senator from Montana.

The shooting down of the Chinese balloon off the South Carolina coast has led to US fighter jets firing three objects out of the sky.

The US warplane fired a missile on Saturday at a flying object that was 40,000 feet above the ground in the far north of Canada, after being told to do so by Trudeau and Biden. Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand described a “cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese balloon.

The US Northern Command and the NORAD had taken against airborne objects over the US airspace in the past.

So the events of the last few days do provoke serious national security and political questions that stretch far beyond the often narrow political battle in Washington, and that can only be assessed once more details are understood.

New speculation and criticism could be premature as officials work to fully understand the sequence of events and more about the objects. NORAD has recently changed the filters it uses in order to find faster moving objects below a certain altitude, according to a report by CNN. Early warning filters had previously been set to avoid picking up other objects, including birds and weather balloons, a source briefed on the matter said.

The lack of specificity is unlikely to quell speculation or partisan maneuvering in Washington. At the start of a new presidential election cycle and at a age where social media can be used to promote conspiracy theories, this odd series of incidents is raising fresh pressure on Biden following his decision to wait until the Chinese balloon crossed the country before shooting it down.

There is a political blame game going on. Republican claims that Biden fails to protect the southern border is linked to the incursions of US air space by GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee. And he also adopted a novel critique of Biden given claims that the president didn’t act quickly enough before.

Turner told Tapper that the Chinese spy balloon was preferable to the permissive environment that they showed when it was coming over some sensitive sites.

Such speculation may be premature. Biden has changed his tolerance threshold for unknown aerial objects because of the political debate over the balloon.

Biden, who didn’t address the new intrusions at a black-tie event with state governors on Saturday, has yet to speak to Americans in person about the trio of incidents over the weekend.

The Search for Objects that Haven’t Been Shooted: When Did the President Open the Pandora’s Box Come to Earth?

The president directed his team to develop rules for dealing with unidentified objects that are likely to pose safety and security risks and those that don’t, while distinguishing between them and those that do not. When they’re finished, the parameters will be shared with Congress.

There are a lot of positives that they don’t get before. Kayyem is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.

“What we can’t answer now is, is this bigger aperture picking up lots of stuff that has essentially been forgiven, around in the skies, because it didn’t pose a threat, or is it part of something organized for whatever surveillance?”

There was more confusion on Sunday. The objects shot down over Alaska and the Yukon were balloons, but smaller than the first person they shot, Chuck Schumer said on ABC’s “This Week”.

Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana appeared to make a direct link Sunday on “CNN Newsroom” between the Chinese balloon and the latest objects, even if there is no confirmation so far that they are connected.

“It doesn’t give me much safe feelings knowing that these devices are smaller,” he said. I am concerned about the data that is being collected. … I need some answers, and the American people need answers.”

Recovery and Debris from a Spy Balloon Launching on Feb. 4: A U.S.-China Correspondence

“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,” U.S. Northern Command said.

A crane was used to haul up pieces of the balloon that was up to 200 feet in height.

The U.S. has dismissed that explanation emphatically — most notably by blowing the balloon out of the sky on Feb. 4, after it had soared over much of the continental U.S.

Even before that shootdown, analysts urged the Biden administration not to allow the craft to return to China — both to limit the data it might convey, and to allow the U.S. to gain its own insights by recovering the equipment.

All of those objects have been described as smaller than the reputed spy balloon that triggered the initial uproar in early February. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that while recovery operations for those objects were ongoing, but no debris had been recovered yet.

Kirby said on Tuesday that the National Security Council probably will give new guidance about how the US will handle aerial objects by the end of the week.

Questions about the balloon and the US’s approach to the object caused a classified intelligence meeting for the Senate Tuesday morning. A closed hearing will be held by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

In the past year, both the US and China have accused each other of conducting extensive aerial espionage programs.

The First Balloon It Shot Down: The Case of the U.S. Capitol Hill Response to Biden’s ‘Reply to Beijing’

Biden was criticized by Republicans on Capitol Hill for not approving the military to shoot down the first balloon quickly enough. They had also called on him to speak on the matter.

Feb. 9: The U.S. briefs diplomats from 40 countries about the Chinese balloon it shot down. On Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress receive classified briefings on the incident. The House condemns China’s alleged snooping on the U.S.

And the White House separately reassures Americans: “There is no – again, no — indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns,” Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre says at her daily briefing.

Emily reported from Taiwan. Lexie was in Washington, D.C. Vincent Ni and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report from Washington, D.C.

But the balloon instead went north unexpectedly and crossed into Alaska, Canada, and then downward, reentering the US through northern Idaho and moving towards Montana – a path that US officials are not sure was purposeful, and may have been determined more by strong winds than deliberate, external maneuvering by Beijing.

China’s nuclear sanctions against Lockheed, Raytheon and RTN: a statement says it is “not ready” to leave the United States

There will be two people attending the Munich Security Conference this weekend. US officials said a meeting between the two is not currently planned but have not fully ruled out the possibility.

Asked earlier this month whether the Chinese government is “controlling the movement of the balloon, or is it just floating with air streams,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to comment in detail.

“The balloon went over many of them. He said that it loitered in some cases. “We took measures to protect that information. We took measures to get information about the balloon. And I think we’ll know more when we … actually get the remains.”

Lockheed

            (LMT) Martin Corporation and Raytheon

            (RTN) Missiles & Defense, a subsidiary of Raytheon

            (RTN) Technologies Corp, will be added to China’s sanctions list, its Ministry of Commerce said in a Thursday statement. They aren't allowed to invest, export or import in China.

Both companies are also subject to fines “twice the amount” of their arms sales to Taiwan dating back to September 2020, and their senior executives will be prohibited from entering and working in China.

After the U.S. Shot Down the Chinese Balloon, Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and the First Airborne Objects: The Interagency Team

Biden has directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an “interagency team” to review U.S. procedures after the U.S. shot down the Chinese balloon, as well as three other objects that Biden said the U.S. now believes were most likely “benign” objects launched by private companies or research institutions.

Specifically, the administration will be establishing an improved inventory of unmanned airborne objects above American airspace, implementing further measures to detect the objects, update rules and regulations for encounters with these types of objects above US skies, and establishing common global norms for similar encounters.

Administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community have briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill on the initial Chinese spy balloon in recent days.

The president’s public remarks about the objects had been delayed until more information was collected about the three downed objects.

Because it is so large, the military advised against shooting it down. He says that if it was shot down where people lived it posed a risk to the people on the ground. “Instead, we tracked it closely, we analyzed its capabilities and we learned more about how it operates. We protected sensitive sites against collection, because we knew its path. We waited until it was safely over water, which would not only protect civilians, but also enable us to recover substantial components for further analytics.”

The Defense Ministry of Taiwan says a Chinese weather balloon made it to one of its outlying islands.

On Thursday the ministry said the balloon carried equipment for a state-owned electronics company.

Taiwan’s Air Identification Zone, a Taiwan Strait, and a U.S.-Britain Airborne Identification Zone: China’s Defense Ministry and the Pentagon

There is a Taiwanese air identification zone, and a middle line of the Taiwan Strait. Taiwan increased purchases from the U.S., expanded domestic production, and extended compulsory military service for all males, because of that.

A publicity officer at the company said it had provided electronics but had not built the balloon, as reported in the report.

The company that provided equipment to the China Meteorological Administration was Taiyuan, according to the spokesman.

The balloon may have been set off from the coastal city of Xiamen with no fixed course, but it was among those launched daily to monitor weather.

Its deflation was likely a natural outcome of it having reached maximum altitude of around 30,000 meters (almost 100,000 feet), Liu said. Such balloons regularly fly over the Taiwan Strait but have only recently begun to draw attention, he said.

Information on the equipment was written in simplified Chinese characters and not the traditional Taiwanese characters, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

Washington is Taiwan’s closest military and diplomatic ally, despite a lack of formal ties, which were cut in 1979. Beijing protests strongly over all contacts between the island and the U.S., but its aggressive diplomacy has helped build strong bipartisan support for Taipei on Capitol Hill.

While not expressing regret for downing the three still-unidentified objects, Biden said he hoped the new rules would help “distinguish between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not.”

How Did the Loon Air Balloons Go Around the World? How Did Loon Go Airborne? A Military Intelligence Analyst’s Story

The Chinese military’s Strategic Support Force is most likely responsible for near-space programs, according to a former U.S. intelligence analyst. It reports to the Central Military Commission, who have the same rules and structure as all other branches of the military. It supervises space programs, intelligence collection of electronic communications and cyberoperations.

While Chinese military officials are very concerned about the American expansion into near space, the US government ignores the area according to current and former officials. That is part of the reason, because military and intelligence agencies use space-related budgets to deploy assets into far flung outer space.

We know how to kill them and we know how to detect them. “We just weren’t looking for them, we just weren’t looking for them.” According to a retired commander of the U.S. Northern Command. Finding our seams and the enemy located within them is one of the tasks this is about.

After reading the story, Mike Cassidy just broke a gut. Prior to his departure from the company in 2017, he was in charge of a project that meant to give internet access to areas that didn’t have it. A separate unit was created after Loon started inside the company’s X “moonshot” lab.

The first announced in New Zealand, Loon had met and surpassed every single milestone that it had been bragged about. What is the relative level of altitude? The materials used to make Loon’s skin are so thin that it had no problems sustaining its highest heights. Circumnavigating the globe? Cassidy says “At least one of our balloons went around the world 14 times,” contributing to a total of over 40 million kilometers in the air. How about networking three balloons? “At one point we had several dozen in the air at the same time,” Cassidy says. All of them networked. What made the Loon balloons even more impressive was how much they were able to steer themselves by taking advantage of AI-powered predictions of wind currents, informed by real-time government weather data. Armed with that data, the balloons could autonomously change altitude to find a favorable wind direction. And it was all controlled by software that could be operated by a staffer’s laptop or cell phone.

U.S. High-Altitude Surveillance Balloons: What Do They Really Mean to China, and Why Does China Want It?

In a U.S. summary of the meeting in Munich, Price said Blinken “directly spoke to the unacceptable violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law by the [People’s Republic of China] high-altitude surveillance balloon in U.S. territorial airspace, underscoring that this irresponsible act must never again occur.”

Blinken also discussed other ongoing affairs with Wang, according to Price, including discouraging China from supporting Russia in its ongoing war with Ukraine and condemning North Korea’s firing of a missile into the sea of Japan.

The U.S. requested the meeting between Blinken and Wang, Xinhua reported. In a news report, the China Global TV Network said Wang made it clear China’s sole position on the so-called airship incident.

CGTN also said Wang “urged the U.S. side to change course, acknowledge and repair the damage that its excessive use of force caused to China-U.S. relations.”

He said that China’s stance on the issue was about supporting negotiations for peace, and that Beijing would propose a solution to the issue.

It’s too soon to tell how the meeting will impact relations between the U.S. and China. Earlier this week, Biden said he would speak with China’s leader Xi Jinping but would not apologize for shooting the balloon down.

“I can’t say dispositively what the original intent was, but that doesn’t matter because what we saw when it was over the United States was clearly an attempt to surveil very sensitive military sites,” Blinken said on ABC’s “This Week” in an interview taped Saturday.

On the topic of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the top US diplomat said Sunday he has concerns over China’s support of Russia’s military, specifically that Beijing is considering supplying Moscow with “lethal support.”

“The concern that we have now is based on information we have that they’re considering providing lethal support, and we’ve made very clear to them that that would cause a serious problem for us and in our relationship,” Blinken said.

Beijing Launches a Hypersonic Launch Program in the Near-Space Periphery of China’s Air Space: “The Kill Chain”

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Back in March 2018, Chinese officials and key state scientists gathered in Beijing to celebrate the start of a new front in research: near space.

That’s a part of airspace 60,000 to 330,000 feet from the ground, just before the beginning of outer space — and historically overlooked by militaries, until recently.

“Strengthening the exploration of near space, seizing the important strategic heights of near space, and cultivating emerging high-tech industries have become the focus of competition among countries around the world,” stated Xiang Libin, a vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. A Chinese engineer who specializes in space technology and is also the chief commander of the nation’s competitor to the U.S.-run Global positioning system serves as the country’s deputy defense minister.

The balloons float along a band of the atmosphere up to 164,000 feet high, just before outer space begins — the peripheral area called near space. The balloons are useful in targeting hypersonic weapons which China is developing, because they are straddled between outer space and commercial airspace.

Slow moving balloons have been turned into a surveillance and navigation tool by the hypersonic application.

An editorial in Chinese state media declared that the pace of future wars will be dramatically accelerated due to near-space vehicles becoming the new darling of long-range and rapid strike weapons.

The Honghu Program’s researchers focused on developing materials light enough to prevent gas leaks at such high altitudes and to improve the steering abilities of the blimps.

Over the next two years, scientists affiliated with the project would conduct six experiments launching balloons from northwestern Qinghai province, off the elevated Tibetan plateau that extends into the province. The experiments were designed to collect atmospheric and wind data as well as ground data from the balloons, according to state media.

Beijing’s claims that the balloon shot down over the US was a research balloon are consistent with much of the research that appears to be scientific. Yet even simple meteorological data can have military applications, say analysts, collected at a fraction of the cost of operating a satellite.

“Balloons are capable of doing what the U.S. military calls a kill chain.” It’s basically all the steps to find the target, get the information to the missiles and give updates to the missiles according to William Kim.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/03/1159414026/china-balloon-near-space-scientific-research-weapons

Beijing and China’s civil military fusion program: How two men meet to build more private enterprises: Wu Zhe, Wang Dong, and a Washington think tank visitor

Four of the six companies are private enterprises founded or run by just two men: Wu Zhe, an aerospace engineer and professor, and Wang Dong, a technology investor.

“Beijing’s own program of civil military fusion seeks to bring in more private companies, mostly because of the Chinese government’s view that they are more innovative and providing better capabilities than what state-owned enterprises have been able to do in the past”, says Matthew Turpin, who

An online biography for Wu showed a career first built within the public sector, teaching at Beihang University, a state aeronautics institute now sanctioned by the U.S. government for its military ties. He became a member of the Chinese army’s general armories department.

In 2015, he formed an company devoted to developing “near-space vehicles,” including balloons. In 2019, one of his companies said it successfully circumnavigated the globe with a silvery, high-altitude blimp.

Such private innovation seems to be spurred by a rivalry between the United States and Russia. China’s government-affiliated research bodies publish papers that closely monitored the U.S. private companies and technology.

“You can know who the top people are in certain areas” said Turpin, a Washington think tank visitor. Beijing can use high resolution imagery to map out the routines and locations of important personnel who work in military sites.