CNN Features Peter Bergen: The Cost of Chaos: The United States and the World on a Closer Look at the Russian Campaign in Ukraine
Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a vice president at New America. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” His views in the commentary are of his own. View more opinion on CNN.
I was reminded of my father, a lieutenant in the US Air Force, who worked on a program to send balloons into Soviet airspace in the mid-1950s.
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. Those spy balloons were launched from Turkey.
My dad didn’t talk about this part of his career much, likely because the work was secret, but the program has long since been declassified since it happened around seven decades ago.
US officials told Congress on Thursday that the balloon could collect signals intelligence and transmit it to China, but they couldn’t gather as much information as they would have liked because the balloon stopped sending data after the US learned about it.
Now the United States and its rivals have these new-fangled gizmos called “spy satellites,” which can take photos! They can do it with a high-definition camera. They can take thermal imagery of people at night. When the skies are clear, they can spy on pretty much anything, with a resolution of centimeters.
Satellite imagery is now 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.
What has been learned from the alleged spy balloon out of the Atlantic? A senior State Department official says that the U.S. is fully cooperating with China
One thing that shows is the fact that the Biden administration has no reason to worry because as we know, whatever goes up can come down.
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.
Are the latest strange objects flying over North America linked to some other hostile power, corporate or private entity if they are not related to China? Are they connected to one another or is it just coincidences at a time of heightened awareness and tensions?
China has done worse than that. 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. China denied that it was responsible for the hacking of the OPM.
As U.S. Navy crews continue to fish parts of the alleged Chinese spy balloon out of the Atlantic, a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, gave reporters an update on Thursday on some of what has been learned so far.
Recovery effort: Some wreckage from the balloon was gathered from the Atlantic Ocean’s surface. Divers and remote-operated vehicles were also used in “the retrieval of additional debris from the sea floor,” according to the U.S. Northern Command. The FBI is in possession of the debris when it arrives.
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.”
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 shooting down of an unidentified craft by the U.S. government and its espionage program: A case study over Alaskan airspace
“That narrative is probably part of the information and public opinion warfare the U.S. has waged on China,” Mao added. The international community can clearly see who is the world’s number one country for espionage, eavesdropping, and surveilling.
The Pentagon press secretary was asked if the balloon was being controlled by the Chinese government or if it was just floating in the air. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to comment in detail.
The government is also making improvements. In 2018, for example, China launched a project to research materials that can be used to make balloons that can float higher without losing buoyancy.
The US military is still working to recover debris from the balloon on the ocean floor. Ryder said Friday that they have “located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities.”
The administration described Beijing’s espionage program after the shooting down of the Chinese balloon, and are the latest incidents related to that? If there is a sign of another Chinese incursion into US airspace, that would mark a serious twist in the already tense relationship between the US and China.
The U.S. military shot down a “high-altitude object” over Alaska within the last hour, said John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
Did a superpower showdown provoke the U.S. into using a fighter jet to shoot down a hobbyist group’s research balloon in Canada? That’s the question the public — and the FBI — wants to answer, after the U.S. military shot down several unidentified airborne objects last weekend.
On Friday, an F-22 shot down another unidentified craft over Alaskan airspace . US pilots were able to get up around the object before it was shot down and reported that it didn’t appear to be carrying surveillance equipment.
The second object was first spotted on Thursday, officials said, and F-35 fighter jets were sent up to examine the object further. John Kirby said on Friday that the object was at 40,000 feet, making it a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.
There were two efforts to get closer to the object and evaluate it as it flew. The first engagement by fighter aircraft took place late Thursday night and the second Friday morning. Both engagements yielded “limited” information, Kirby told reporters.
“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.
The missile that took down the object was fired on Saturday by a US F-22 warplane that was ordered to do so by Canada’s prime minister. The Canadian defense minister said there was a small object smaller than the Chinese balloon.
The US Northern Command coordinated the operation with the help of the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
What Do We Know About the Object Shot Down Over Deadhorse, Alaska? When China and the Pentagon Reciprocity Comes into Disappearance
The best description of the object we have is what we’re calling it. Kirby said that they don’t know who owns it or if it’s state-owned or corporate-owned.
The object came to the attention of the US government. As soon as the Pentagon realized there was enough information, Biden was briefed.
Since this thing didn’t appear to be itself, at the mercy of prevailing winds, it was much less predictable. The president just wasn’t willing to take that risk,” he said.
The military took action against the object on Friday, causing the FAA to issue a temporary flight restriction around Deadhorse, Alaska.
President Joe Biden said on Thursday that there is no evidence that the objects shot down in North American air space are tied to China’s spy balloon program.
The president and his administration have stood by how they handled that balloon, but they have been criticized by Republicans for allowing the balloon to travel across the country before being shot down.
It was difficult for pilots to get a lot of information because of its size and the ability of the aircraft to travel so fast.
The Pentagon spokesman said the object that was shot down was not a balloon. Gen. Patrick Ryder.
The object appears to be a “cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down previously, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said at a news conference on Saturday.
While the U.S. did successfully locate debris from the Chinese balloon it shot down on Feb. 4, both countries have come up empty-handed in other searches. Both U.S. and Canadian officials ended their searches on Friday.
Ryder said on Friday that recovery teams have “mapped the debris field” and are “in the process of searching for and identifying debris on the ocean floor.”
When asked if the lessons learnt about China’s balloon assisted in detecting an object shot down over Alaska, Ryder said it was a little bit of apples and oranges.
The “Standards in China” Afterglow of the First Airborne Shot Down of a Low-mass K9YO-15
The Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau said the Canadian Forces would recover and analyse the object. The FBI is involved in the effort with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand tweeted Saturday that she had discussed the incident with US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin “and reaffirmed that we’ll always defend our sovereignty together.”
“The amateurs were watching K9YO-15 go towards Alaska before the balloon was shot down,” Dan told NPR.
The risk of intelligence collection against the US was low, while the risk of people and property on the ground was high, since the balloon is large.
“Recovery activities are occurring on sea ice,” the statement said. We have no further information about the object at this time.
The shoot down was approved by the President of the United States and the Prime Minister of Canada.
Pilots gave different accounts of what they observed after coming near the object, a source briefed on the intelligence told CNN; some pilots said it “interfered with their sensors,” but other pilots said they didn’t experience that.
CNN has a version of the story in their newsletter called ” Meanwhile in China”, which dives into what you need to know about China’s rise and how it affects the world. It’s free to join here.
Just hours after the US took out a third object in three days in the airspace over the United States and Canada, China said it would shoot down an object near its eastern coast.
In a text message to fishing vessels, maritime authorities in the neighboring port city of Qingdao told crews to be on alert to avoid danger and assist with debris recovery efforts if possible.
Take photos if debris falls on your boat. The marine development department of the Jimo district said that if conditions allow, they should help save it.
As of Monday afternoon local time, Chinese authorities and state media had not provided any update, and it is unclear if the object has already been taken down.
The United States and China are at odds over balloons. The U.S. sanctions six civilian Chinese aerospace companies it says are supporting Beijing’s military surveillance efforts.
Two related hashtags racked up more than 900 million views by Monday morning as an unidentified object became the top Trending topic on Weibo. Many wondered why there was no update on the shoot down.
The federal government has been affected by the three aerial devices that were shot down over the past few days. The administration is unable to say with certainty what they are doing, where they are from or what type of craft they are.
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.
“What’s gone on in the last two weeks or so, 10 days, has been nothing short of craziness,” Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana said Sunday on “Face the Nation” on CBS, hours before an airborne object was shot down over Lake Huron.
When the Cold War ended, pilots weren’t usually sent to shoot down objects over the US and Canada. It’s not normal for Americans to settle down for the Super Bowl with their president firing off orders to blast unknown objects out of the North American sky.
The recent downing of several objects in the US was likely the first action that NORAD or the US Northern Command had taken against an airborne object.
The Case for a Democratic President: Detecting the Chinese Spy Balloon Crisis on CNN and its Implications for Joint Security Council and Homeland Security
It’s possible that in a unique, fast-moving situation, the government may not know much more than it is saying. The emergence of details is adding to the confusion. 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.
If the latter situation is the case, is NORAD now picking up more objects that are potentially hostile given a state of heightened alert after the Chinese balloon crisis? If the objects are suspicious is there a sudden spike in such flights or did such objects fly across the continent with impunity in the past? Considering the increased threat to civilians from drones, is this a problem that should concern the aviation industry?
The balloon incident was an imposing challenge to smooth out U.S. relations with China. The Secretary of State called off the trip just hours before he was scheduled to leave after learning of the news.
The political blame game is heating up. On CNN’s “State of the Union,” GOP Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio, who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, linked the incursions of US air space to Republican claims that Biden is failing to protect the southern border and complained that senior officials were not briefing Congress enough. The criticism of Biden he adopted was novel because he claimed the president had not acted quickly enough before.
“They do appear somewhat trigger-happy, although this is certainly preferable to the permissive environment that they showed when the Chinese spy balloon was coming over some of our most sensitive sites,” Turner told Jake Tapper.
Biden’s White House Address to State Governors on Black-Tie Intruders and Other “Dangerous” Objects
Biden didn’t speak to Americans in person about the new intrusions at a black-tie event with state governors on Saturday.
According to the president, his team has been directed to develop rules for how we will deal with these objects, which may or may not be dangerous, and which may or may not be harmless. Those classified parameters will be shared with Congress when they are finished.
“They are getting lots of positives that they did not get before. Most of that is going to be airplanes, whatever it may be,” said Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security.
We can’t answer if this bigger program picking up stuff that has been forgiven, because it didn’t pose a threat or if it’s part of something organized for the purpose of watching people.
There was more confusion on Sunday. The Senate majority leader said that the two balloons shot down in the Alaskans were less than the Chinese intruders, after saying that he had been briefed by Jake Sullivan, a Biden national security adviser.
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.
Airborne Detection in the U.S. after the February 22 Shootdowns: Implications for Radar Systems and the American Space Force
He said that he didn’t feel confident knowing that the devices are smaller. I am very concerned with the data being collected. The American people need answers, and I need them.
It is premature to speculate about such things. But fierce political debate over the balloon has clearly changed Biden’s tolerance threshold for unknown aerial objects.
The shootdowns came in steady succession over the weekend, after alarms were raised in early February over an object that the U.S. said was a surveillance balloon deployed by China.
“There is no – again, no indication – of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take-downs,” she said. “Wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that. We wanted to say it from here because we have been hearing a lot about it.
It can be attributed at least in part to increased scrutiny, including enhanced radar techniques, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs Melissa G. Dalton said on Sunday.
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters that the intrusion was part of a group of balloons that had been designed to conduct surveillements and have also violated the sovereignty of other countries.
“We have adjusted some of those gates to give us better fidelity on seeing smaller objects,” VanHerck said. “You can also filter out by altitude. With some adjustments we have been able to get a better categorization of radar tracks. And that’s why I think you’re seeing these overall.”
The officials describe the incidents with language that is purposely vague, such as “high altitude airborne objects.” It’s an attempt to be accurate while still reporting preliminary data, but the approach can be intriguing, and it also provokes public speculation.
The third object that was shot down was not known to the US Coast Guard and they were dispatched to search the site for that object.
He said he hadn’t ruled out anything. “At this point, we continue to assess every threat or potential threats unknown that approaches North America with an attempt to identify it.”
The incident of the 1981-1987 balloon shot down off Myrtle Beach, S.C., revisited by M. van Herck
“We call them objects because they’re there,” VanHerck said. And while the initial incident involved a balloon, he added, “These are objects. I can’t tell you how they stay aloft. It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. They are able to stay aloft.
Location and altitude: The balloon famously crossed much of the continental U.S. before being shot down over the Atlantic Ocean, near Myrtle Beach, S.C. It traveled between 60,000 and 65,000 feet.
A senior Biden administration official says that the structure presented as an octagonal structure with strings hanging off, but no discernable intent.
The military decided not to shoot it down over land because it was too large. He said that if it was shot down there would be people on the ground who were at risk. “Instead, we tracked it closely, we analyzed its capabilities and we learned more about how it operates. Because we knew its path, we were able to protect sensitive sites against collection. 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 Canadian Defense Minister believes that the object shot down off the South Carolina coast could be similar to that of the one shot down.
The Three Downed Objects that Aren’t Airborne: The U.S. Landing-Cover Air Cushion and the Protected Landing Craft
A tiny computer, a gps module and a solar panel package were included in the balloon. Its total payload weight was just 16.4 grams, or about half an ounce, according to a blog post about the launch.
On Thursday morning, a U.S. Navy Landing Craft Air Cushion — basically a high-capacity hovercraft — parked on a beach to retrieve a range of supplies and food for the crew, from fresh produce to Chick-Fil-A and a birthday cake, local paper The Sun News reports.
The military learns that if you search for flying objects in the US skies, you will find them.
That term – “objects” – is deliberately vague with regard to the three objects downed since Friday. Nobody knows what these things are.
The American people should not be concerned about aliens with respect to these craft. The period is over. John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman for strategic communications, told the White House that there was nothing more to say about it.
He also suggested the downed objects posed no immediate threat, were not sending communications signals, showed no signs of “maneuvering or had any propulsion capabilities” and were not manned.
Interactions between the US and China during the Cold War: The case of a suspected spy balloon, as described by a CNN’s John King interview with Beth Sanner
The government is trying to look engaged under scrutiny for Joe Biden’s lack of public comment. Jake Sullivan is going to lead a new interagency team to evaluate the UAPs.
Those intercepted over Alaska and northern Canada, she said, had balloon-like features with small cylindrical metal objects attached, and they were flying at around 40,000 feet.
The filters were only readjusted and broadened in the past week, the source said, after a high-altitude, suspected Chinese spy balloon transited the US and ignited a debate over the United States’ ability to detect and defend against any potentially threatening objects entering its airspace.
The most informative interview I saw Monday was the one CNN’s John King conducted with former Deputy Director of National Intelligence Beth Sanner, who is now a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.
There is a person named Sanner. There was a lot of discussion when we first started looking at this in 2021, that these were aliens. I think that since then, people have pulled back and stated that most of them can be explained. But to me, these stories really come together, right?
Because the things that pilots have been seeing – and many times were discouraged from talking about, there was a stigma with that – they could very well be spy or other kinds of threats. So it’s important to get these things out there.
The man is Sanner. We can’t keep scrambling F-22s if we see an object in the sky. We now have to focus on figuring out how to identify threats.
We have invested in the defense of missiles, but not this. This might be a secret, but it is not to the US military, and the Biden administration put money into the budget this year to start looking at this.
But we have a big gap. We have a gap geographically – we’re really only focused toward anything coming over the North Pole. We might not see it if it comes from south of Alaska.
Most of the radars we have are from the 1980s. The reason the filters are not able to look through that many material is that our processors are attached to the radars. And so we had to filter it to identify threats that look like things we recognize as threats.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/us-mystery-objects-in-sky-what-matters/index.html
The Chinese Are Coming Down, and Is It Going To Take Some Putting a War Against Wall Street Crimes? A Comment on McCabe
SANNER: We’re in a liar, liar, pants on fire moment here. I think the Chinese are going to make up a lot of things in order to cover their tracks.
Andrew McCabe, a CNN senior law enforcement analyst and a former FBI deputy director, thinks it could take a while to figure it out.
“Some of them are coming down in harder to reach places than others,” McCabe told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Monday. “Then those materials have to be transported back to Virginia, to the FBI laboratory at Quantico.
International partners or researchers from the US need to be assembled to participate in the exploitation of that technology.
“All of that takes time. I am pretty sure we will understand the full scope of what they are, but it might take a little bit more time.
There is bipartisan support for shooting objects down, despite criticism by the Biden administration about not communicating more effectively.
Pentagon Briefing on Shoot-down of a Chinese Spy Balloon and Other Airborne Objects: The U.S. Takes the Lead
We have to declare that we are going to defend our airspace, in order to make this more important to our policy discussion. Turner said that we need to invest. “This shows some of the problems and gaps that we have. We need to fill those as soon as possible because we certainly now ascertain there is a threat.”
A defense official told CNN late Monday that the Pentagon has not sent an official memo to Capitol Hill but acknowledged they are continuing to brief and send correspondence to relevant committees.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are pressing for more information on why a Chinese spy balloon was shot down in the US, as new details come in about the shoot down of three unknown objects.
Lawmakers and congressional aides told CNN that the consecutive shoot-downs felt on the surface like an overcorrection to the Chinese spy balloon incident, though they cautioned that it was still too early to say definitively.
I think we’re really looking for them right now as we’re seeing these things happen in quick succession. Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
The students track their balloons, much like the Bottlecap Brigade club. As countries look at balloons and high-altitude objects in a fresh way, it’s impossible to bring them down remotely, as there are 10 to 20 more out there.
Questions about the balloon and other objects that were recently shot down — and the U.S. approach to the airborne objects — prompted a classified intelligence briefing for the entire Senate Tuesday morning. The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a closed hearing on the same day at 2:30PM.
The White House denied on Monday that President Joe Biden was influenced by political pressure to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon.
John Kirby, National Security Council co-ordination for strategic communications, said on Monday that the decisions were based solely on what was in the best interest of the American people.
The Case of the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade: A Response to the Associated Collapse of a Sidewinder and a Missile on Capitol Hill
The radar used by the North American Aeronautical Defense Command was adjusted after a high-altitude balloon was spotted. The official said that they will keep refining the settings because they have found smaller objects.
A White House office of legislative affairs memo sent to Capitol Hill and obtained by CNN said that efforts were underway “to find what is left of these objects” to better understand them.
There was a failure on the first missile that was fired by an F-16 fighter jet, three people briefed on the matter told CNN.
The first missile did not hit the target, but North Com and NORAD said it was difficult to target the object because it was small.
The AIM-9X Sidewinders can see heat contrast between an object and a surrounding area, which is what the pilots chose to use. The first missile did not hit its target. It is not clear what happened to the missile.
The White House has sought to downplay the idea that the objects could have come from outer space or a hostile state. On Tuesday, a top White House official suggested they were likely harmless.
A military spokesman told NPR that the FBI spoke to the group in question, who were from the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon brigade, in an attempt to figure out if their balloon caused a commotion.
On Capitol Hill, senators emerging from a classified briefing on the objects said they were reassured after hearing from administration officials that the objects posed no threat to the American people.
“There are a lot of things in the air at any given time, something commercial, something government, there’s something we don’t know about it,” Romney said.
“Getting our hands on that debris and having investigators look at that debris would certainly be of immense value in terms of our ability to positively identify what these objects were, and, and what their purpose was. Kirby said that we are going to continue intensive recovery efforts because they are important.
A Briefing on Airborne UFOs and Their Searches in the Yukon and South of Alaska and the Challenges of Locating Their Objects
The efforts were hampered by what he described as “pretty tough conditions.” These include the geographic challenges on Lake Huron and in the Yukon wilderness, along with sea ice north of Alaska.
The Chinese spy balloon debris recovery off the coast of South Carolina was hampered by high seas in the Atlantic Ocean, due to the time of the year, Kirby said.
The government is relying on the FAA and the intelligence community to find out more about the mysterious airborne devices.
One administration official said the government is leaning as much as possible on the US intelligence community to assess the objects. The officials said that observations by US military pilots as well as the flight patterns before they were shot down are being studied.
Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau said the search area in the northwest Territories was a large area. The task of recovering debris from high-altitude objects shot down over Canada and the US was candid by other Canadian officials Monday.
“We are working very hard to locate them, but there’s no guarantee that we will. The terrain in the Yukon is rather treacherous right now so it could pose some significant challenges to us in in terms of our recovery efforts the same could be said about what’s taking place in Lake Huron, the marine conditions are also not conducive at the moment,” said Sean McGillis, a spokesperson for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
But in the briefing filled with unanswered questions, one statement from White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was as definitive as anything else: The US military had not shot down any UFOs from outer space.
One official said there had been a risk with the lack of information that there could be a conspiracy.
It would be prudent to publicise that the possibility of extraterrestrial activity is not a priority even if there isn’t much concrete information about the downed objects.
Administration officials continue to say their goal is to provide as much information as they can about the objects, but they have noted the circumstances are less than ideal for effective communication.
Biden himself has expressed a desire to be as transparent as possible about the devices with both Congress and the American public, according to officials, but the president has acknowledged that without a full picture of what the objects were, his ability to communicate on them is limited.
The situation was ripe for Conspiracy theories, so it would be prudent for Biden to address the public, according to one lawmaker who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
The Dec. 4 – 5 U.S./China High-Altitude Airborne Balloon Missing Aircraft Discovery Event: A Brief Briefing
The recovery operation has included the use of a crane to bring up large pieces of the airship, which was kept aloft by a balloon estimated to be up to 200 feet tall.
The payload’s size has been categorized by Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD, as “a jet airliner type of size, maybe a regional jet,” weighing more than 2,000 pounds.
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.
US officials have grown less optimistic about recovering debris from downed objects, despite the Biden administration’s insistence that it was necessary to locate and recover the downed objects to identify what they were.
The news of a Chinese balloon made waves in the U.S. and beyond. The Pentagon said last week that there was a similar high-altitude balloon over Latin America, and China responded by saying it was another research balloon that was badly off-course.
Kirby said that the National Security Council would probably give new guidance by the end of the week on how to handle unidentified aerial objects objects in the future.
In the past few months, the United States and China have been accused of extensive aerial spying by each other.
Beijing’s apology comes less than 24 hours before Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s scheduled travel to Beijing to meet China’s top leader, Xi Jinping. Washington cancels the much-anticipated trip. China responds by saying no such trip had even been announced.
China admits that a high- altitude balloon spotted in Latin America is itss, as well as that it is conducting weather research.
The U.S. informs other countries about the Chinese balloon shoot down. On Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress receive classified briefings on the incident. The House unanimously passed a resolution condemning China’s snooping on the US.
Emily reported from Taiwan. Lexie was in Washington, D.C. The report came from Washington, D.C.
Taiwan Sensitive to a U.S. Shooting Down of a Chinese Spy Balloon and the First State-Owne Satellite
Biden stated that shooting down the balloon sent a clear message that the violation of our sovereignty was unacceptable. We’ll act to protect our country and we did.”
The two people will be at the Security Conference this weekend. US officials have not ruled out a meeting between the two.
I won’t go into any specific intelligence we may have. “Again, we know this is a Chinese balloon and that it has the ability to maneuver, but I’ll just leave it at that.”
Rules and regulations for encounters with snoozing objects above US skies will be updated, and common global rules for similar encounters will be established by the administration.
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 ministry’s statement says the balloon carried equipment that was registered to a state-owned electronics company.
Should China make good on their threats to bring Taiwan under their control, Taiwan will be considered a first line of defense.
The publicity officer of the company was reached by phone and said it had not built the balloon but had provided electronics.
The spokesperson, who gave only his surname, Liu, said Taiyuan was among a number of companies that provided equipment to the China Meteorological Administration.
The balloon was likely among those launched daily to monitor weather and was probably set off from the coastal city of Xiamen with no fixed course, he said.
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.
Taiwan’s diplomatic relations with China: The three shot down by the US military, the Alaskan navy, and the Lake Huron last weekend
Information on the equipment was written in the simplified Chinese characters used on the mainland rather than the traditional on Taiwan, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said.
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.
The new rules were intended to help determine between those who pose safety and security risks, and those who do not, while Biden did not express regret for downing the three objects.
The US military has concluded its recovery operations for the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month, as well as the search for flying objects it later downed off the coast of Alaska and over Lake Huron after days of ultimately fruitless searches.
NORTHCOM said in a statement later in the day that it would end the search for two of the three objects shot down over North America last weekend, stating that”the US military, federal agencies, and Canadian partners conducted systematic searches of each area using a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans, and did not locate the debris.”
The public won’t receive a thorough explanation of what objects were shot down because of the failed search efforts.
National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby suggested as much at a White House press briefing on Friday, telling reporters, “We would like nothing better, but I can’t sit here and promise you that we’ll get to that level of fidelity of detail.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Kirby said, have been unable to find the object downed in the Yukon territory and the Canadians have decided not to look for the object that fell into Lake Huron.
It will be very difficult to find them in the rough conditions, and once you find debris that can be used for forensic purposes, it will be possible to identify it. I cannot promise you that we will know one way or the other.
How A “Pico” Balloon, aka K9YO-15, Was Shotdown by a Warplane: Rejoinders to the Hobbyists’ Concerns
But the hobbyist club’s members are warning that while their balloon, whose radio callsign is K9YO-15, is missing in action, it’s too soon to say whether it was shot down by a warplane. They also say their balloon launches follow all federal regulations.
There are ongoing investigations, so the Biden administration cannot confirm reports that certain objects were shot down.
Officials have not yet offered an explanation about the origin or purpose of the unidentified object. But an intriguing theory quickly emerged in the community of hobbyist balloon enthusiasts: that a high-altitude “pico” balloon, similar to a Mylar party balloon, was shot out of the sky.
Bowen, who 12 years ago helped to research and design small balloons like the one used by the Illinois club, says he and others were using a tracking website to follow K9YO-15. The tool can also predict the likely path of a balloon.
When K9YO-15 was predicted to be heading from Alaska to the NW Territories, we were hopeful it wouldn’t be intercepted. We knew who the intercept was for when it was reported.
A spokesperson for NORAD, the joint U.S.-Canadian military organization, told NPR on Friday that from their understanding, the FBI has spoken with the balloon hobby club.
Representatives from the FBI and NORAD told NPR on Friday that they have no new information to provide, with the FBI saying that “the overall recovery operation is ongoing.”
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo
The Pixar Movie Up: The Rise and Fall of the K9YO-15. V. The Story of a Long, High-Altitude Funnel Balloon
The K9YO-15 is named after the Pixar movie Up, which features both balloons and a bottle cap.
Its journey started with a launch from Libertyville, Ill. Before it disappeared, it was one of the longest flying balloons in the club; in its 123 days aloft, it had traveled around the Earth nearly seven times.
On Tuesday, the balloon’s coordinates were published by the club. Cary wrote that Pico Balloon K9YO was missing in action.
After they’re launched, the balloons expand as they climb, swelling until the Mylar envelope pressesurizes. They stop rising at altitudes where the air density is equal to the balloon’s density. The pico balloons “just float the same way a fish bladder or a submarine does underneath the water,” Bowen said.
A small balloon makes it difficult to shoot it down. “The entire thing that the balloon lifts is a business card-sized circuit board and two little tissue paper-thin solar cells,” he said.
“These balloons are pressurized just below the point of popping,” Bowen said. They’ll pop if you hit them with turbulence. They will pop if they get hit with a sonic boom. Those are the most efficient ways to pop them.
One explanation is that the balloon’s GPS pings require solar power. The balloon’s lightweight systems are powered by the tiny solar panels that can be hard to receive at higher latitudes.
Those who love balloons say they’re happy to see so much interest. And they’re hoping to be able to keep pursuing it, even if the U.S. and other countries adopt new rules.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/18/1158048921/pico-balloon-k9yo
Astronomy in the Schools: How Robots Have Fun and What Kinds Do They Want to Show Us? The Case for a Little Robot
“These are often launched by schoolchildren,” Bowen said. “The amateurs who have figured this out have gone to schools to get them excited about science and engineering, and the kids just love the ability to see their little robot creature wandering the planet.”