The 2001 December Flydown by a Chinese RC-135 Balloon Over the Atlantic: How President Xi Jinping Met with the US Navy
Since the actions have happened, it is worth taking a look at the report by America’s intelligence community.
Washington believes the balloon shot down over the Atlantic on Saturday is part of an extensive Chinese surveillance program – but that Xi Jinping, China’s most powerful leader in decades, may not have been aware of the mission.
In December, a Chinese fighter jet flew 20 feet in front of a US Air Force RC-135 plane carrying 30 crew over international waters, as the Navy reported an increase in unsafe intercepts by Chinese fighter jets. This was exactly five weeks after the meeting between President Biden and President Xi at the G20 Summit, in which they promised new mechanisms for stabilizing the bilateral relationship.
The most memorable example was that of George W. Bush. Two Chinese fighter jets harassed a US navy plane over the ocean on April 1, 2001. 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. Some of the 24 US crew members were held for as long as 11 days and some were repeatedly questioned before they were released.
Chinese authorities would have taken responsibility for any injuries or deaths caused when the US craft was downed. Protests would have erupted in front of the US Embassy and China’s Ambassador to the US swiftly withdrawn.
US officials registered their objections to Chinese officials while the balloon was in flight. They also communicated with Chinese officials after the balloon was shot down, according to senior administration officials.
What Do We Need to Know about China and Why Does It Matter? CNN’s Peter Bergen Explains the “Grand Union” Project
Instead, let’s come up with a more strategic, measured plan to hold China accountable, but also allow 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.
Editor’s Note: Peter Bergen is CNN’s national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of The Cost of Chaos. His own views are expressed in this commentary. There is more opinion on CNN.
My dad worked on a program to send balloons into Soviet airspace when he was in the US Air Force.
In 1954 he was assigned to Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio. He was a part of the “Grand Union” project which used balloons to place cameras over the 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.
Xi, Maxar Technologies, the World’s Largest Surveillance Fleet, and a Report on the US’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office
On Thursday, officials revealed that they believe the spy balloons the US has discovered are part of a large fleet that is conducting surveillance operations globally. 40 countries across five continents were traced by the US.
The US and its competitors now have spy satellites that 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.
This raises some interesting questions regarding the work of the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office: could some balloons they identified be from China? And could some of the 171 “unexplained sightings” of UFOs that they also assessed be Chinese balloons?
The U.S. has used warships and planes to gather intel on China more than 500 times since the beginning of last year, according to the Chinese spokesman. All this was proof, Wang claimed, that the U.S. is “without a doubt the world’s largest surveillance habitual offender and surveillance empire.”
Whether the balloon was civilian or military, the location over the US raises questions about how closely Xi is aware of potential sensitive missions under his watch within the top down Chinese system.
A number of the flights have been within US airspace, according to one official familiar with the intelligence.
The White House stated on Tuesday that the three objects shot down over North America last Saturday were balloons being used for benign purposes.
The Washington Post reported the link to the broader program that was uncovered before the latest balloon was spotted.
The FBI will be analyzing the recovered parts from the balloon shot down in the United States as Biden administration officials revealed new information regarding the balloon’s capabilities.
The commander of NORAD said on Monday that the domain awareness was there as it approached Alaska. It was my opinion that there wasn’t a physical threat to North America from this balloon. I could not immediately take action because it wasn’t demonstrating hostile intent.
China offered a rare expression of regret over the downed vessel, asserting that it was thrown off course by the US.
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 team consists of agents, analysts, scientists, engineers, and consultants, who are tasked with 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.
But, according to one member of the House Intelligence Committee, “there’s number of reasons why we wouldn’t do that. We want to collect it, but you want to see what it is doing.
A defense official said the US has procedures – akin to a kind of digital blackout – to protect sensitive locations from overhead surveillance, typically used for satellite overflight.
The Chinese Communist Party’s response to the shooting of a high-altitude surveillance balloon as a braneworld violation of US sovereignty
Biden, who ordered the US military to shoot down the balloon over open water last week, said he has not spoken to the Chinese leader since the balloon was spotted. But he pointed to continued contacts between officials in his administration and their Chinese counterparts.
Biden said that shooting the balloon down sent a clear message that the violation of our sovereignty was unacceptable. We’ll act to protect our country and we did.”
Biden administration officials say the meeting was delayed until a later date and that it wasn’t canceled. That date has not yet been set.
The official said that, based on themessaging and public comments, it is clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and have found themselves on their heels.
The Biden administration believes that they can mitigate the intelligence collection capacity of the balloon and that they will benefit from the ability to collect information from the balloon and Chinese intelligence during and after it crashes into the Atlantic Ocean.
The House will vote Thursday on a resolution condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the United States territory as a brazen violation of US sovereignty.
Republicans on Capitol Hill accused Biden of not approving the military to down the first balloon quickly enough. They had also called on him to speak on the matter.
The Discovery of a Suspected Chinese Spie Balloon and the Loss of its Payload off the North-East Coast of South Carolina
He said that China was in favor of peace talks in Ukraine and that Beijing would put forward a proposal for a political settlement.
The search and recovery of the suspected Chinese spy balloon which was shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month is over for the time being according to the US military.
The large amount of the payload has been categorized by Gen. Glen VanHerck as a jet airliner type of size, weighing more than 2,000 pounds.
“[F]rom a safety standpoint, picture yourself with large debris weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds falling out of the sky. VanHerck said that they were talking about that. Glass from solar panels, a material required for batteries to operate in a environment like this, and even the potential for bombs to explode and destroy the balloon that could have been present, are just some of the potentially hazardous material found near the balloon.
The time frame that was given us was worth its value in the future because it gave us an opportunity to assess what they were actually doing and what type of capabilities existed on the balloon.
Ultimately, the object was downed near the Canadian border and northeastern Alaska by a F-22 fighter jet out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, equipped with an AIM-9X – the same aircraft and missile used to take down the surveillance balloon. A US official said the military waited to shoot the object down during daylight hours to make it easier for the pilots to spot it. The mission was supported by assets from the Alaska Air National Guard.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it was an accident that the airship entered the US due to force majeure.
The alternative in this scenario – that Xi was aware that a balloon was being dispatched over the United States ahead of a visit from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing – would raise a separate set of concerns about China’s decision-making in relation to the US.
She didn’t comment on the equipment on the balloon or the entities that own it. Chinese statements have implied that the balloon was not operated by a government entity, but instead was linked to one or more companies. The people have not been named.
Mao said that China is a responsible country. We have always followed international law. The situation was handled appropriately and did not pose a threat to any countries.
Blame for the Alaskan and South Carolina Objects that Shot Down a CIA Ticker and a Blast by an F-22
On Friday, an unidentified object was shot down in Alaska airspace by a US F-22, and last weekend, a Chinese surveillance balloon was taken down by F-22s off the coast of South Carolina.
The “tipper” sent by the Defense Intelligence Agency also goes out across government channels, and US officials have access to these reports, whether they read them or not, but it is a matter of discretion.
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.
The blame game is heating up. Republican claims that Vice President Biden is failing to protect the southern border and that senior officials have not briefed Congress enough was linked to the incursions of US air space by a GOP congressman. He critiqued Biden, given that he claimed that the president didn’t act quickly enough before.
According to defense officials, on January 28 of this year, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, NORAD sent Fighter jets to make a positive identification.
Once it crossed the US, officials argued that gathering intelligence on the balloon was more important than the risk of shooting it down.
Military officials said it’s not surprising that the president wasn’t briefed until January 31, given the expectations at the time.
Congress is interested in what the administration has to say about the balloon.
The Secret Service had a Large Collection Hazard: Can Congress Reconstruct the U.S. from its Cold Ice?” Sen. Janet Romney told CNN
“There are still a lot of questions to be asked about Alaska,” a Senate Republican aide told CNN. “Alaska is still part of the United States – why is that okay to transit Alaska without telling anyone, but [the continental US] is different?”
An image that has gained legendary status in both NORAD and the Pentagon is a pilot taking a selfies in his cockpit that shows both the pilot and the balloon.
An official says the Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon is capable of monitoring US communications.
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.”
“We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.
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 told us in real-time they were able to mitigate as this was going on and I think that is correct.
I believe that the administration, the president and the intelligence agencies acted with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Did everything do everything correctly? I don’t think that is the case of almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.
Defense officials haven’t seen the spy balloon over Alaska in a decade ago, but they do know what they might have learned from it
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 should help me see why this baby wasn’t taken out long before. I am telling you that this 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.
Pentagon officials said at the hearing that they were not concerned about the balloon gathering intel over Alaska as it was not close to sensitive sites.
A Chinese balloon that was shot down off the South Carolina coast a decade ago has been retrieved thanks to crews using salvaged equipment.
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. Analysts have not yet looked at the bulk of equipment on the balloon, because they do not know whether the device was capable of doing what it was intended to do.
Analysts have not identified any sort of explosives or offensive material which would pose a threat to the American public.
There was English writing on the balloon parts, but they were not high tech, according to one source familiar with the congressional briefings. The source refused to give any information on what part of the balloon was written in English.
“As we saw with the second balloon over Central and South America that they just acknowledged, they also have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries,” the official said. The PRC’s program will make it harder to use it in the future, because it will continue to be exposed.
The senior State Department official who spoke to reporters on Thursday on condition of anonymity gave an update on what has been learned so far about the Chinese spy balloon.
The FBI official said that it was too early to assess how the device was operating and what intent was behind it.
A High-Altitude Object Shot Down Over Alaska and Its Implications for the United Nations, the Pentagon, and the Government of China
It’s likely that this narrative is part of the information and public opinion warfare the US has waged on China. “As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community.”
And the government is investing in improvements, too. 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 military shot down a high altitude object over Alaska in the last hour, said John Kirby, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
The object was shot down with a AIM-9X missile from a US F-22 – the same missile and aircraft that shot down an unidentified object on Friday, and the Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4.
The high-altitude object, Kirby said during a White House press briefing, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”
So far, the Federal Aviation Administration and intelligence agencies have reviewed visuals from the fighter pilots who flew past the objects before they were shot down – visuals that were limited because of the high speed of the planes and the relatively small size of the largely stationary objects, Kirby said.
“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 object was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet, had unlawfully entered Canadian airspace and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. She said that the object was shot down over Canadian territory.
The Alaska National Guard and units under US Northern Command, along with HC-130 Hercules, HH-60 Pave Hawk, and CH-47 Chinook are all participating in the effort to recover the object, Ryder said.
“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. Kirby said they don’t know who owns it, whether it is state owned or corporate owned.
The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Biden was first briefed Thursday night “as soon as the Pentagon had enough information,” Kirby said.
Implications of the FAA Dead Horse for China – a key player in the early stages of global human-to-human relations
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 FAA restricted flights in the area surrounding Dead Horse, Alaska, on Friday after the military took action against the object.
It was difficult for the pilots to glean a lot of information because it was smaller and they couldn’t really read the signals from the aircraft.
According to CNN, the assessment could show a lack of coordination between the Chinese and US systems at a time of bad relations between the two countries.
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.
The device was implied to be for companies rather than the government in China, despite the fact that state-owned enterprises and a robust military-industrial complex are hallmarks of the country.
Such a situation, according to Singapore-based analyst Drew Thompson, could have been exacerbated by the level of control wielded by Xi – who cemented his grip on power last fall as he entered a precedent-breaking third term atop the Communist Party.
That means that lower-level officials who may have the capacity to more closely monitor such missions may not be empowered to do so, or not be equipped to make political judgments about their impact, he said. Power struggles between lower and higher ranking officials could also complicate communication, he said.
“There is a tension throughout the Chinese system – it’s a feature of Chinese governance, where lower levels fight for their own autonomy, and upper levels fight for greater control,” he said.
The causes of tensions in China have been pointed to in the past by crises such as the outbreak of the Severe Acute Respiratory Infections (SIRS), where reporting delays slowed the response, and Covid-19, where delays made the response worse. Some blamed local officials, who were used to a system where information flowed from top to bottom.
The same can be said about balloon launches, in that they could fall into a gap in which operations are not managed the same way as space or other aircraft missions.
In this example, entities launching balloons may have received little or no resistance from other countries and may even be routinely launched based on weather conditions and at modest costs.
“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.
How the Chinese President Xi Met the Pentagon: Report of the Shot-down of a Chinese Surveillance Balloon over Alaska
China’s Foreign Ministry appeared caught off-guard by the situation as it publicly unfolded over the past week – releasing its first explanation of the incident more than 12 hours after the Pentagon announced it was tracking a suspected surveillance balloon.
Alfred told us that he wants full control because of his personality. I don’t think the Chinese president allows that kind of independence.
The US domestic response to the postponed talks may have been underestimated, but it may have diverted the attention of a public frustrated by the economy after years of the zero-covid policy.
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.
The unidentified object that was shot down in Canadian airspace had been tracked since Friday evening, according to a statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.
Canadian CF-18 andCP-140 aircraft joined the formation to assess the object after it crossed into Canadian airspace.
The reason the Chinese balloon was allowed to fly in the US last week was due to the fact that damage to people or property won’t be an issue if the object is shot down.
Officials have given no indication so far that the object is at all related to the Chinese surveillance balloon downed last weekend, debris of which is still being recovered on the Atlantic Ocean floor.
The recovery teams mapped the debris field and are in the process of finding and identifying debris on the ocean floor.
The Chinese balloon helped to detect the object that was shot down over Alaska and it was a little bit of apples and oranges.
The story of the last two weeks of airspace shooting: a national security challenge for NORAD, the Pentagon, and the U.S.
The US President and Canadian Prime Minister both approved the shoot down, according to the White House.
Ryder’s statement said that while Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations, the FBI will be “working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”
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.
Now that the Pentagon is pushing service men and women to report any alien activity seen in the sky, there is less stigma associated with them reporting the phenomena, according to the report.
Congress should convene hearings to get to the bottom of this. The public has a right to know what is happening in American airspace because it can’t be explained by the Pentagon or the US intelligence community.
Three days in a row, US fighter jets shot down a trio of unknown aerial objects over the North American continents, threatening a political storm and provoking a deeper national security mystery.
The US leading the West in an effective proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is one of the reasons that the intrigue is unfolding against a tense global situation.
A Democratic senator from Montana said on Sunday that the last two weeks or so had been nothing short of crazy.
The F-22 shot down another craft over Alaskan airspace. US pilots were able to get up around the object before it was shot down and reported that it did not appear to have equipment that would be used for videotaping.
The recent shots down of an airborne object were likely the first of a number of actions NORAD or the US Northern Command would take against airborne objects over US airspace.
The events of the last few days do cause national security and political questions far beyond the narrow political fight in Washington, which 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. CNN’s Natasha Bertrand reported on Sunday that NORAD had recently readjusted the filters it uses to sift data, which had previously concentrated on spotting fast-moving objects below a certain altitude. 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.
Finally, what is the political impact of this string of incidents. Republicans were not happy with Biden for saying the risk of injury to civilians or damage to buildings on the ground was due to waiting so long to shoot down the Chinese balloon. His State of the Union address threatened to defend US sovereignty. Since then, his aides have styled his response to subsequent incidents as those of a decisive commander in chief. This shows that the White House understands the political peril in wait if Americans were to perceive he was not doing everything to defend the homeland.
“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.
Such speculation may be premature. But fierce political debate over the balloon has clearly changed Biden’s tolerance threshold for unknown aerial objects.
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.
A White House on the Recent Take-down of the Three Black Holes Over Alaska and the Yukon, and What Do They Tell Us About Their Objects?
“Because we have not yet been able to definitively assess what these recent objects are, we have acted out of an abundance of caution to protect our security and interests,” said Melissa Dalton, assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs.
They are getting a lot of positives, which they never got 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.
What we can’t answer at this time is, are the things that have been forgiven around in the skies, because they weren’t a threat, or if they’re part of something that is organized for some type of monitoring?
There was more confusion on Sunday. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week” that the two objects shot down over Alaska and the Yukon were balloons but smaller than the original Chinese intruder, after saying he had earlier been briefed by Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser.
Even if there is no confirmation that the Chinese balloon and the new objects are connected, there is still a link between the two.
He said that he doesn’t feel safe knowing that the devices are smaller. “I am very concerned with the cumulative data that is being collected. … I need some answers, and the American people need answers.”
The term “objects” is purposely vague with regard to the three downed objects. Nobody currently knows what these things are or who they belong to.
“There is no – again, no indication – of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take-downs,” she said. All of you know that, so I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that. It was important for us to say it because we had been hearing a lot about it.
He said the objects posed no immediate threat and were not sending communications signals, had no maneuvering capabilities and were not manned.
UAPs and Mysteries – What Happens When a Chinese Spy Balloon Goes High-Altitude
Under scrutiny for President Joe Biden’s lack of public comment, the government is now working to appear engaged. Jake Sullivan is a national security adviser and is going to lead an interagency team to assess the UAPs.
The people were flying around 40,000 feet with balloon-like features, attached to small metal objects.
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.
About half of the total are “characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities.” Others act more like drones. Some seem to be airborne debris like plastic bags.
SANNER: There was a lot of discussion when we first started looking at this in 2021, that these were aliens. And I think that since then, people have kind of pulled back and said, you know, most of these things probably can be explained. I believe the stories come together, right?
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/us-mystery-objects-in-sky-what-matters/index.html
Mysteries in Sky What Matters: Armed Forces, Detectors, and Airborne Symmetries in the United States
There was a stigma with the things pilots were seeing because they could be spy or other kinds of threats. It’s important to get them out there.
Sanner: These are things that are easy to do. This is low-tech technology. And it brings up our vulnerabilities, really. … The continental United States’ defense has been neglected for a while due to this kind of aerial threat.
We’ve invested in ballistic missile defense, but not in this. And so, that might be a secret to all of us, but it’s not to the US military, and the Biden administration actually put money into the budget this year to start looking at this.
But we have a big gap. We are only focused on anything coming over the North Pole. But if something comes in south of Alaska, we might not see it.
Most of the radars that we own are from the 1980s. And so, that’s when the filtering – it’s because our processors, literally the ones that are attached to the radars – don’t have the capability to look through that much material. 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
How many of these black holes are going down? A critical look at the case of the Sanner, liar, pants on fire moment
There is Sanner. We’re in a liar, liar, pants on fire moment here. I believe that the Chinese are going to make things up in order to cover their tracks.
It could take some time to figure out what these objects were, according to Andrew McCabe, a CNN senior law enforcement analyst and former FBI deputy director.
“Some of them are coming down in harder to reach places than others,” McCabe told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Monday. The materials have to be flown to Virginia, where they’ll be housed in the FBI laboratory.
International partners or researchers here from the United States need to be joined with the right partners in the exploitation of that technology.
“All of that takes time. I am certain that we will comprehend the full scope of what these things are but it might take some time.
While there has been plenty of criticism of the Biden administration for not communicating about these incidents more effectively, there is bipartisan support for shooting the objects down.
Airborne Devices Aren’t Homogeneous: Recovering the Difficulties in Defending the U.S.
I think this shows that we have to declare that we will defend our airspace when we have a policy discussion. And then we need to invest,” added Turner. This illustrates some of the problems and gaps that we have. We need to get those filled as soon as possible because we now know there is a threat.
The White House wants to temper fears that the objects could have come from a hostile state or outer space. There was a top White House official suggesting that they are probably harmless.
“The intelligence community’s considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” John Kirby, the strategic communication coordinator at the National Security Council, said Tuesday.
After hearing from administration officials, senators were reassured that the objects were not a threat to the American people.
“There are a lot of things that are up in the air from time to time, some commercial, some government, and perhaps there is some thing that we don’t know about,” said Romney.
The process of recovering the fallen debris has added to the importance of that consideration because officials acknowledge it could take some time.
So far, those efforts have been hampered by what he described as “pretty tough conditions,” exacerbated by the geographic challenges on Lake Huron, in the Yukon wilderness and on sea ice north of Alaska.
The time of year means that weather conditions are hard and that high seas in the Atlantic Ocean hampered the Chinese spy balloon debris recovery off the coast of South Carolina.
Kirby said the government was relying on the information and expertise from the FAA to find out what the mysterious airborne devices were.
On the High-Altitude Objects Shot Down Over Canada and the US, and What We Can Learn from Their Debris Retrieval
Trudeau said Monday the search area in Whitehorse was a large area in the dense wilderness. Other Canadian officials were candid Monday about the difficult task of recovering debris from high-altitude objects shot down over Canada and the US.
“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.
The White House press secretary stated that the US military didn’t shoot down aliens from outer space.
Echoing other officials, Biden doubled down that there is nothing right now that suggests that the other three objects are related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from any other country. He said the three aerial objects shot down by U.S. military were most likely tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions.
Officials have been particularly sensitive to the inherently mysterious nature of the airborne objects, and how ripe the recent series of events was for conspiracy theories.
The officials conceded that there is a risk with the lack of answers, and that it was something everyone wanted to know.
Until more information was available about the three objects downed last weekend officials were reluctant to have the president speak publicly about them.
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.
According to some officials, Biden wants to be transparent about the devices but the president concedes that he can’t communicate on them without a full picture of what the objects are.
One lawmaker who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee had told CNN on Monday that it would be prudent for Biden to directly address the public, particularly given that the situation was ripe for conspiracy theories.
Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena in the U.S. after the February 4, 2021, Balloon-Balloon Shootdown
Researchers say it’s the latter, and they note that even before the balloon mania began, the US government tracked many UFOs in its airspace, including a number of balloons. The US Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) released a January report, for example, tracking incidents involving UFOs, which the US government calls Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena or UAPs. Between March 5, 2021, and August 30, 2022, the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office had 247 reports of UAPs. ODNI said that 163 were balloons or balloon-like entities and 26 were drones, while six were attributed to clutter. So, not all UFOs are balloons, and not all unidentified balloons are spy balloons.
A senior technical analyst with the RAND Corporation and a former naval pilot, Tannehill says that they hadn’t been detecting them in the past. “I suspect that filters on US systems had previously been ignoring things that were too slow, high, or small to be considered threats. Now that the parameters on the filters have been adjusted, we’re seeing more of what was already there for the past few years.”
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 U.S. blew the balloon out of the sky on Feb 4 after it had flown over much of the continental U.S.
Even before the shootdown, analysts urged the Biden administration not to allow the craft to return to China because it could convey too much data and give the US too much information.
Kirby said on Tuesday that the National Security Council will make new guidance on how the US will handle cases of unidentified aerial objects objects in the future.
Both the U.S. and China have traded fiery allegations of extensive aerial surveillance programs and injecting a new source of distrust and animosity between the two countries.
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 passed a unanimous resolution condemning the Chinese government.
Emily Feng reported from Taipei. Lexie Schapitl reported from Washington, D.C. This report is from Washington, D.C.
Ned Price, a spokesman for the State Department, said that the meeting took place in Germany while both attended the security conference. Tension between the two countries has risen over national security concerns, leading to the meeting.
Measuring Control of the Chinese Spy Balloon and Implications for the Recovery of Unidentified Airborne Objects
Pentagon press secretary bri asked if the Chinese government was controlling the movement of the balloon or if it was floating with air streams. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to comment in detail.
He said that he wasn’t going into any specific intelligence that he might have. We know that this is a Chinese balloon, it has the ability to maneuver, but I will not say much more.
The US will be crafting parameters moving forward on how to handle unidentified objects in US airspace that could pose a risk to civilian aircraft, Biden said.
A number of administration officials have briefed lawmakers on the initial Chinese spy balloon in recent days.
The military advised against shooting it down because it was so large. It was the size of multiple school buses and it posed a risk to people on the ground if it was shot down where people lived,” he said. We looked at its capabilities and 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 under water, which would allow us to recover significant components for further analysis.
“We don’t have any evidence that there have been a sudden increase of objects in the sky,” Biden said. “We have to keep adapting our approach to dealing with these challenges because they are getting more of them partly because of the steps we have taken to narrow our radars.”
Taiyuan Islands, the First Line of Defense During World War II: U.S. Embedding of Taiwan in 1949–1949
The president said that on Friday, the U.S. put restrictions on six firms that directly support the Chinese army and aerospace program, denying them access to U.S. technology.
“Our intelligence community is still assessing all three incidences. They’re reporting to me daily and will continue the urgent efforts to do so and I will communicate that to the Congress,” Biden said.
Susan Collins said in an interview that she didn’t think the Biden administration’s classified briefings were very informative.
I don’t think the administration has been as open as it could be. To make sure the administration is taken care of, they are still gathering information. Collins encouraged the administration to be more forthcoming when they have recovered and analyzed the debris after they had shot down the objects.
China has been accused by the U.S. of sending weather balloon craft to spy on Washington and its allies.
The ministry’s statement on Thursday said the balloon carried equipment registered to a state-owned electronics company in the northern city of Taiyuan.
Taiwan has kept control of the islands since 1949, when the sides split following a civil war, and they are considered a first line of defense in the event that China tries to bring Taiwan under its control.
The Taiyuan Wireless First Factory: A Deflation Balloon over the Taiwan Strait and its Connection to the U.S.
An officer at the company identified in the report as Taiyuan Wireless (Radio) First Factory ltd., said it had provided electronics but hadn’t built the balloon.
The China Meteorological Administration was one of the companies that provided equipment to, according to a spokesman.
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.
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.
Biden did not express regrets for downing the three objects, but said he hoped the new rules would help distinguish between those that need to be taken care of and those that don’t.
The real enemy is the enemy: How a general’s bobbing head drifted over the enemy’s line and into the high epoch of war
Generals have been put at risk, diplomatic relations strained, and millions of dollars of sensitive equipment ruined. Despite everything, nations just can’t let go of their balloons.
Before airplanes took flight, the love affair with balloons began. The French army used balloons in combat against the Austrians as far back as 1794. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln created the U.S. Army Balloon Corps to surveil the enemy.
Tom D.Crouch is an former curator at the National Air and Space Museum. He says that it’s good to get up high to see as much as possible behind enemy lines.
The wind has had an opinion about where balloons fly for a long time. On April 11, 1862, during the siege of Yorktown, Virginia, a balloon carrying a Union general named Fitz John Porter came untethered and began drifting towards the Confederate position. Marksmen did not like the general’s bobbing head as he floated over the enemy. “The wind shifted and they were blown over the Union lines.”
New, lightweight materials, such as mylar, allowed researchers to build balloons that could travel high into the stratosphere, near the edge of space. When it came to viewing enemy territory, uncrewed balloons could potentially drift across enemy territory, thanks to technology that included electronics and remote cameras.
Stephen Schwartz, who is a non-resident senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, says you can set high-altitude balloons adrift in Western Europe and let them drift over the Soviet Union.
He says they were worried about the U-2 program being compromised by the Soviets’ ability to shoot things down.
Project Genetrix was a top-secret program that was the culmination of these efforts. The high altitude balloons came from air bases in Germany and Turkey.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157589985/militaries-have-sought-to-use-spy-balloons-for-centuries-the-real-enemy-is-the-w
The Genetrix Disaster and the Search for Three Boundary Debris Objects in the Mid-Atlantic North America
“It was essentially a disaster,” Schwartz says. And once again, the wind was to blame: “You had no idea where the balloons were going, so it was just hit or miss as to what you would see.”
In addition to being haphazard, the Genetrix balloons weren’t very stealthy either, says Tom Crouch. U.S. intelligence “hoped that they could get by without the Soviets noticing,” he says. That didn’t happen.
The Air Force briefly tried to solve the problems with still more balloons. “They launched them in very large numbers, hoping that a significant number would get through,” Crouch says.
The recovery effort ended after Navy assets were assigned to US Northern Command, according to a statement from the command.
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 failed search efforts make it more and more likely that the public won’t get a complete explanation of what the objects were.
John Kirby, the National Security Council liaison for strategic communications made a point at a White House press briefing on Friday that he could not assure reporters that they would get that level of detail.
The airship incident in the United States caused by the China-Russia high-altitude surveillance balloon, as seen by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Kirby said, couldn’t find the object that fell in the territory of Canada, and the Canadians decided not to look for it.
“So pretty tough conditions, going to be very difficult to find them, let alone once you find that debris be able to do the forensics to identify it. I can not tell you which way we will know one way or the other.
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.”
In an interview with CBS news, Blinken said China was “considering providing lethal support to Russia” – a red line for Washington. It would have serious consequences for our relationship if that were to happen.
The U.S. side requested the meeting of the Blinken-Wang team, a Chinese news agency reported. In a brief news report, China Global TV Network said that Wang made clear China’s solemn position on the so-called airship incident in an informal conversation.
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.”
“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.
The US Embassy in Ukraine and the Air Force: Why is China concerned about its nuclear support? A remark on the case of Russian invasion of Ukraine
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 officials would not describe in detail what intelligence the US has seen suggesting a recent shift in China’s posture but said US officials have been concerned enough that they shared the intelligence with allies and partners at the Munich Security Conference in Germany over the past several days.
“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.
The U-2 is a single-seat, high-altitude reconnaissance and surveillance aircraft with “glider-like characteristics,” according to the Air Force. Because the planes are regularly “flown at altitudes over 70,000 feet,” pilots “must wear a full pressure suit similar to those worn by astronauts.”