The 9/11 Anatomy of the United States: The Case of a Known Chinese Spy Balloon Embedded in the South China Sea

CNN’s John King did an interview with former deputy director of national intelligence Beth Sanner, who is currently a senior fellow at Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

The balloon was spotted over Montana by the U.S. officials. While Chinese officials maintain that the balloon, which the U.S. shot down two days later, was intended for research, the Pentagon claims that China intended to use it for surveillance. A trip to Beijing was put off because of the incident.

In late 2016, the Chinese seized an underwater vehicle in international waters in the South China Sea just 50 nautical miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines, and hundreds of miles from China. (Subic Bay was home to the largest US naval base in Asia until disagreements over leasing costs led to a withdrawal in 1992; ironically, US sailors might soon return to the base following Manila’s recent decision to allow a greater, albeit rotational, US military presence in the Philippines as a counter to Chinese aggression.) The incident was believed to be a message to President-elect Donald Trump, who angered Beijing by taking a call from the president of Taiwan. Beijing agreed to return the craft three days later, but never apologized and accused the US of spying.

The most unforgettable example comes from the presidency of George W. Bush. Two Chinese fighter jets harassed a US Navy plane over the water in 2001. One collided with the EP-3 and crashed. The pilot of the plane made an unauthorized emergency landing in China after his plane was heavily damaged. Some of the crew members were repeatedly questioned before the US officials were able to negotiate their release.

Chinese authorities would have taken responsibility for any loss of life or damage to the US when it downed the U.S. craft. There would be protests at the US Embassy and the China’s Ambassador to the US.

Multiple people briefed on the intelligence say that the US is examining the possibility that the suspected Chinese spy balloon was diverted off its course by strong winds, instead of being deliberately maneuvered into the US.

A trade war, semiconductors, human rights: in recent years, the U.S.-China relationship has been rocked by successive geopolitical crises that have strained the dynamic between two of the world’s most powerful countries.

CNN’s View of the Soviet Union: A Brief History of the “Fast and Cold War” Mission of the People’s Liberation Army

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. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

My father worked on a program in the 1960’s to help 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 worked on a project called the “Grand Union” which deployed balloons over the Soviet Union. Turkey launched the spy balloons.

My dad was known to have worked on this part of his career, though he probably did not talk about it much since it was a secret.

The US believes the balloon was part of a fleet of balloons that were developed to conduct surveillance operations at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army. The official added that China has “overflown these surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries across five continents” – without providing more detail.

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

Satellite images are now so cheap 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.

Detection of a High-Altitude Balloon by China: An Explanation of the Pentagon’s Anomaly Resolution Office Report

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

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

But China has arguably done much worse. According to US officials, China benefited from the work of hackers who stole design data about the F-35 fighter aircraft and took up the personal information of more than 20 million Americans when they were members of the US government. China denied responsibility for the OPM hacking and said the F-35 theft report was a lie.

US officials also detailed what they’ve discovered about the broader spying operation they say the Chinese government has undertaken using a fleet of high-altitude surveillance balloons across the globe.

In the days after the furor over the Chinese balloon led officials to adjust how they monitor US airspace, fighter jets have intercepted and shot objects out of the sky over Alaska, northern Canada and Lake Huron.

There are balloons that are similar to the one found above Montana above Japan, India and Taiwan. China admitted a high-altitude balloon found above Latin America this month was its own, though it said the balloon was a civilian airship doing weather research.

The Washington Post reported that a link to the broader program had been uncovered before the balloon was spotted.

“When the balloon is in our hands, we can look at the technology, we can rebuild the supply chain, find out who helped build it, what components were important to it,” said Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. You can give an idea of its functions and specifications. There is a high intelligence value in having it.

Defense officials say that the US gleaned important clues to the answers of some of these questions while the balloon was transiting the United States.

Officials say the biggest unanswered question is China’s intent. China maintains that the vessel was an accident because it deviated off course and sailed over the United States. This type of balloon has only limited steering capabilities and is mostly used in the jet stream.

So far, China has offered slim information to fill out its own version of events – maintaining the balloon was a Chinese civilian research airship blown off course and flatly denying a broader surveillance program.

Reply to Biden’s State of the Union Address on a High-Altitude Naval Surveillance Balloon Over US Territories

This elite team consists of agents, analysts, engineers and scientists, who are responsible for both creating technical surveillance measures and analyzing those of the US’ adversaries.

OTD personnel have the authority to construct and use surveillance devices for the FBI but they also have the responsibility of managing court-authorized data collection and working to defeat foreign intelligence agencies.

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 off it, you want to see where it’s going and what it’s doing.

The US has procedures in place to protect sensitive areas from being watched by satellites, which is typically used for overflight.

Biden downplayed the effect of the intelligence gathering balloon’s placement over military installations in several US states despite the fact that there were signs it loitered.

“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” In a wide-ranging interview with PBS NewsHour, Biden told about his State of the Union address.

The meeting was not canceled but was delayed until a future date, according to Biden administration officials. That date has not yet been set.

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

Biden administration officials have maintained they were able to move quickly to mitigate any intelligence collection capacity of the balloon and have countered that they will end up benefiting from the ability to collect information about the balloon and Chinese intelligence capabilities, both during its flight and in the recovery of its wreckage from the Atlantic Ocean.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s office said the chamber will vote Thursday on a resolution “condemning the Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high-altitude surveillance balloon over United States territory as a brazen violation of United States sovereignty.”

The Republicans on Capitol Hill were not happy that the Biden did not approve the military to quickly down the first balloon. They had also called on him to speak on the matter.

The Korean spy balloon shooting down: a diplomatic resolution of the South Carolina incident, and its subsequent airborne capture off Alaska, Michigan, and Alaska

He said China’s position was boiled down to supporting talks for peace, and that Beijing would offer a proposal for a political settlement of the issue.

The US military has concluded its recovery operations for the Chinese spy balloon that was shot down in South Carolina earlier this month, as well as the search for the flying objects it later downed off the coast of Alaska and over Lake Michigan.

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.

“[F]rom a safety standpoint, picture yourself with large debris weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds falling out of the sky. That’s really what we’re kind of talking about,” VanHerck said on Monday. “So glass off of solar panels, potentially hazardous material, such as material that is required for a batteries to operate in such an environment as this and even the potential for explosives to detonate and destroy the balloon that could have been present.”

VanHerck said that the time frame given to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, and what kind of transmission capabilities existed, was well worth the time it took.

The balloon turned south and became strange, according to a senior US official. “We immediately started talking about shooting it down, then.”

“The Chinese side has repeatedly informed the US side after verification that the airship is for civilian use and entered the US due to force majeure – it was completely an accident,” another statement from the Foreign Ministry said.

The Secretary of State had been scheduled to visit Beijing before the balloon came down, but this was delayed by the situation.

She declined to comment on the equipment on board the balloon and the entities that own the balloon. Chinese statements have implied that the balloon was not operated by a government entity, but instead was linked to one or more companies. It has not named them.

“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.”

The Chinese Balloon and Associated Objects: A Briefing on the U.S. Approach to Embedded Space Systems

Feb. 14: The US military says it has recovered some of the parts from the Chinese balloon. Senators receive a classified briefing on the unidentified objects, with members of both parties leaving the briefing saying they are assured that the spate of unidentified floating objects shot down by U.S. jets in recent days do not pose an immediate threat to Americans. But some urge Biden administration officials to share more information with the public after a classified briefing.

The “tipper” sent by the DIA also goes out across government channels routinely, and although US officials have access to these reports, whether they read them or whether those reports are included in briefings to senior policymakers is a matter of discretion.

The US decided to look at the object rather than treat it as an immediate threat because it was an opportunity to observe and collect intelligence.

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 closed hearing by the Senate Intelligence Committee will be held at 2:30 pm.

On January 28, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, NORAD sent up fighter jets to make a positive identification according to defense officials.

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.

Military officials said it is not necessarily surprising that the president was not briefed until January 31, given the expectations for the balloon at the time.

Congress was interested in the process of decision making on the balloon as more information trickled out.

The biden administration didn’t decide to send a balloon to spy on the United States, according to a House Republican-aide told CNN

A Senate Republican aide told CNN there were still questions to be asked about Alaska. “Alaska is still part of the United States – why is that okay to transit Alaska without telling anyone, but [the continental US] is different?”

A photo of a pilot taking a selfies in the cockpit of a balloon has become a legend in NORAD and the Pentagon.

The Biden administration decided the Chinese balloon could be used to spy on US communications, according to an official.

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 materials collected include a balloon canopy, some wiring, and a 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 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 president, the administration and our military acted skillfully, and I believe that it was done with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? I can not imagine it would happen to almost anything we do. But I came away more confident,” Romney said Thursday.

Deputy Pentagon spokesman Jon Tester: “We know what happened with the balloon in Alaska, but what happened afterward”

Jon Tester told officials at the Appropriations Committee that he did not know how they could say it was not a military threat.

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

At the hearing the Pentagon officials said that they weren’t worried about the intelligence gathering by the balloon in Alaska being near sensitive sites.

The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered so far, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.

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. Officials said there was not a determination as to what the balloon was capable of doing and its specific intent because analysts have yet to look at the equipment on the balloon.

Analysts have not identified any kind of material that poses a danger to the American public in the small portion they have examined.

One source with knowledge of the congressional briefings said that part of the balloon was written in English, though they were not high-tech components. The source did not say what part of the balloon contained English writing.

“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 only continue to be exposed, making it harder for the PRC to use this program.”

A senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity gave reporters an update on some of the information that has been gathered so far, as the U.S. Navy crews continue to fish parts of the alleged balloon out of the Atlantic.

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 high-altitude object shot down by an F-22 fighter jet from Joint Base Elmendorf in Alaska, and then again by a US fighter jet

The Chinese foreign ministry said the U.S. is the largest snooper in the world. The U.S. National Security Council denies the allegations.

And the government is investing in improvements, too. China launched a research project that focused on making balloons that could float higher without losing their buoyancy.

Shortly after American national security officials said that the commander-in-chief approved the shoot down of the high-altitude object, President Biden told CNN that the shoot down was a success.

The Pentagon stated that the object was taken down by an F-22 fighter jet from Joint Base Elmendorf in Alaska. The general told reporters on Friday.

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.”

According to Kirby, Biden was first briefed on the object on Thursday evening, as “soon as the Pentagon had enough information.” Kirby said it didn’t appear to be self-maneuvering.

We were able to intercept the plane before the order to shoot it down because it wasn’t manned.

A US F-22 warplane flew over central Whitehorse, Canada, on Saturday and fired a missile which took down a flying object above Canada’s far north. The Canadian Defence Minister described the object as small as the Chinese balloon.

The Alaska National Guard and units under the US Northern Command are all involved in the effort to recover the object.

“We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

The object came to US government’s attention last night. As soon as the Pentagon had enough information, Biden was briefed.

A Chinese Mission to a Nuclear Deep Inelastic Scattering Experiment and the Failure of State-Owne Communications

Kirby said that the object was much less predictable because it did not appear to be self-maneuvering.

The military was able to take action against an object Friday which resulted in a temporary flight restriction issued by the FAA.

According to CNN report, the assessment was given to American lawmakers in briefings on Thursday, and if true it would show that there is a lack of coordination between the Chinese and US systems.

It could mean that they underestimated the consequences of the mission and the seriousness of the situation, which would have jeopardized the first visit by a senior US diplomat to Beijing in nearly three years, and also that it could have derailed Beijing’s plan to improve relations.

The device appeared to link it to companies in Beijing rather than the government, though in China the importance of state-owned enterprises makes it difficult to differentiate between the two.

“The problem with the centralization of power under Xi Jinping is the lack of delegation of authority to lower levels,” said Thompson, who is a senior research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS).

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.

There have been crises in China which have pointed to these tensions, such as the outbreak of the diseaseScars in 2002-2003 and the recent Covid-19, where delays in reporting 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.

The balloon launches could be in a situation where they weren’t managed or overseen the same way as space missions or other aircraft operations according to a political scientist at the University of Chicago.

The balloon launches may have received a little or no resistance from other countries, including the United States, even though they can be seen at modest costs.

The leaders of these programs have become more aggressive over time in testing new routes but it was likely that they did not receive top priority attention from the standpoint of political risk.

What Xi said when he heard about the Pentagon investigation of the Alaskan shooting down of a suspected surveillance balloon in February 2001, he tweeted

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 Wong, an associate professor at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, said that he wants 100% control because of his personality. I don’t think that is possible with the kind of freedom that comes with it.

The US domestic response to the incident, which led to the postponement of the talks, is believed to be the reason for the public not paying much attention to it.

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 object, which officials have not characterized as a balloon, was shot down at 1:45 p.m. EST, according to Pentagon spokesman Brig. Patrick Ryder was the general.

It is not known where the object came from or what it looks like. On Friday, Ryder said it was traveling north east across Alaska. He said that the balloon was not as large as the Chinese balloon which was downed off the coast of South Carolina, but it was different in shape and size.

The object did not appear to have any surveillance equipment, according to a US official, which would make it both smaller and likely less sophisticated than the Chinese balloon shot.

There is no indication at this point that the object is related to the Chinese balloon that fell last week on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

Recovery teams have mapped the debris field and are currently searching for debris on the ocean floor.

When asked Friday if lessons learned about China’s balloon assisted in detecting the object shot down over Alaska, Ryder said it was “a little bit of apples and oranges.”

The two-day shooting down of an unidentified jet by an airborne object on Lake Huron, Alaska, and over Alaskan airspace

US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both approved the shoot down on Saturday, according to a statement from 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.”

The intelligence says that some pilots said the object interfered with their sensors, but others said they didn’t.

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.

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.

An F-22 shot down another craft over Alaskan air space. The US pilots were able to see the object before it was shot down, and they reported that it didn’t seem to be carrying anything.

The US Northern Command had taken against an airborne object over the US airspace with the recent shooting down of objects.

NORAD is Picking Up More Hostile Objects After the Black-Tie Event: An Overview of Biden’s Response to the Chinese Balloon Crisis

It is possible that the government may not know as much as it is saying in a fast moving situation. The piecemeal emergence of details is making the confusion worse. 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? Do you think there has been a sudden increase in such flights or do they always fly with the same impunity in the past? Is this a new problem that the aviation industry should be worried about?

Biden’s White House speech to address the matter four days after the last known object was shot down comes after the president faced increasing pressure in Washington to be more transparent about the situation and his decision making as commander-in-chief.

Mike Turner of Ohio, the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told JakeTapper on CNN that he wanted them to be happy, but he said that they would have to see whether it was just the administration trying to change headlines.

Speculation may be premature. Biden has changed his tolerance in regards to unknown aerial objects because of the political debate over the balloon.

Biden did not speak to Americans about the intrusions at a black-tie event with state governors on Saturday.

Because we don’t yet know what these objects are, we have acted out of caution to protect our security and interests.

They are getting a lot of positives that they didn’t get before. Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, believes most of that will be airplanes.

We can not answer if it is part of a larger scheme to pick up stuff that has been forgiven, because it did not pose a threat, or if it is part of a larger plan to focus on something.

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.

If there is a link between the Chinese balloon and the objects that have been seen, it’s obvious that it’s a direct one.

Is there a sense of safety in knowing the U.S. is not an alien or an extraterrestrial activity with the recent take-downs?

He said that it doesn’t give him much sense of safety knowing that the devices are smaller. I’m concerned about the cumulative data being collected. I need answers from the American people.

“There is no – again, no — indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take-downs…. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that, and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.

There will be no calls on the part of the White House to bring back the agents of edurity, according to the press secretary.

This particular action, sending the surveillance balloon over the heart of the United States was an irresponsible act and, of course, a violation of our sovereignty and of international law. That’s critical. It doesn’t mean that we don’t want to find ways to manage it to engage.

One is that these have been going on before in the past, and we haven’t detected them. There have been detections where our radars have picked up various phenomenon. The equipment that they detected is not that refined, so we have not been able to define what it was. It is not capable of looking down to an intricate level of detail to see what is going on. And then the other thing is, occasionally we will pick up weather phenomena which will indicate, you know, that there’s a presence of something, maybe a balloon or an aircraft. And it turns out to be a weather anomaly just in the atmosphere. And again, some of this could be corrected with newer technologies.”

Apparently the lesson the military is learning is that if you look for unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs, you will find them floating in US skies.

Three objects downed since Friday are considered objects by the term “objects”. Nobody knows who these things are or what their purpose is.

I don’t think American people need to worry about aliens. There is nothing else to say. There is no more to say on that, says John Kirby, National Security Council coordination for strategic communications.

He suggested that the downed objects were not sending communications signals and were not manned, as well as showing no signs of maneuvering or having any propulsion capabilities.

An interagency team is being formed to review U.S. procedures after Biden said the U.S. shot down four objects, including a Chinese balloon.

A story of mesmerized aliens in the sky: a tale of two strange objects in a plane, and about a painted painter named Sanner

She claimed that those intercepting over Alaska and northern Canada had balloon-like features with small metal objects attached and they were flying 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.

About half of the total are “characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities.” Some act like drones. And a few appear to be nothing more than “airborne debris like plastic bags.”

There is a painter named Sanner. There was a lot of discussion about whether or not these were aliens when we first starting looking at them. Since then people have stopped and said, most of the things can be explained. But to me, these stories really come together, right?

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/us-mystery-objects-in-sky-what-matters/index.html

What do we really need to know about the Pentagon, and what do we need to do about it? The our history, the myths. What we have (not)learned from our experiences

There was a stigma about it, because the things that pilots had been seeing could very well be spy or other kinds of threats. These are things that need to reach out to the public.

SANNER: These things are easy to do. This technology is low-tech. And it brings up our vulnerabilities, really. … The defense of the continental United States has been neglected for decades, in terms of this kind of aerial threat, cruise missile threat.

We have invested in missile defense but not this. That is not a secret to the US military, but money was put into the budget this year by the Biden administration 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 we use 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

What the Chinese are going to tell us about all these objects, including the pants on fire moment: The FBI/Navy mission in Virginia has already begun

SANNER: We’re in a liar, liar, pants on fire moment here. You know, I think that the Chinese are going to make up things in order to cover their own 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.

The final pieces of debris will be sent to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia for counterintelligence exploitation. U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard vessels have departed the area. Air and maritime safety perimeters have been lifted,” the statement added.

The partners have to be assembled to participate in what we call the exploitation of that technology, of the equipment.

“All of that takes time. I am sure that we will understand the full scope of what these things are, but it might not be quick.

There is bipartisan support for shooting the objects down because of the criticism that the Biden administration has gotten for not communicating more effectively.

X-ray Decay of a Downed Airship Using a Long-Range Balloon, as Discovered by China, in the United States

The policy discussion is more important than what this shows, which is that we have to state that we are going to defend our airspace. And then we need to invest,” added Turner. “This shows some of the problems and gaps that we have. We need to fill those as quickly as possible, since we now know there is a threat.

“The crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces,” the Northern Command said.

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. 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 had grown less optimistic about recovering the debris from the downed objects, as the Biden administration had repeatedly pointed out.

Kirby said on Tuesday that the National Security Council will likely provide new guidance by the end of the week on how to deal with unidentified aerial objects.

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.

The U.S. briefs the diplomats about the shooting of the Chinese balloon. On Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress receive classified briefings on the incident. The House passes a unanimous resolution condemning China’s alleged surveillance of the U.S.

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

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, on Saturday. It is the highest level of contact between the two countries since the discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon over U.S. airspace earlier this month.

Pentagon press secretary bri asked whether the Chinese government is controlling the movement of the balloon or just floating on air streams. General Pat Ryder was reticent to comment in detail.

“I’m not going to go into any specific intelligence that we may have,” he said. We know that the Chinese balloon has the ability to maneuver, but I will just leave it at that.

Biden emphasized that there hasn’t been evidence to suggest “a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky.” And although the most recent three objects appear to have been benign, Biden warned, “If any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down.”

The administration will be looking at ways to improve the inventory of airborne objects above American airspace, as well as updating rules for encounters with these types of objects over US skies.

The initial Chinese spy balloon was briefed on Capitol Hill by administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community.

Officials were hesitant to have the president talk about the objects until more information was gathered about the three downed objects.

Because it is so large, the military advised against shooting it down over land. 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 analysed its capabilities, learned more about how it operates and tracked it closely. We were able to protect some sites from 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.”

Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says a Chinese weather balloon was found on an outlying island discovered by the satellite company Taiyuan Wireless First Factory Ltd

TAIPEI, Taiwan — Taiwan’s Defense Ministry says a Chinese weather balloon landed on one of its outlying islands, amid U.S. accusations that such craft have been dispatched worldwide 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.

China regularly sends military aircraft and warships into Taiwan air identification zone and across the middle line of the Taiwan Strait. That has prompted Taiwan to boost military purchases from the U.S., expand domestic production of local planes, submarines and fighting ships, and extend compulsory military service for all males.

Reached by phone, a publicity officer at the company, identified in the report as Taiyuan Wireless (Radio) First Factory Ltd., said it had provided electronics but had not built the balloon.

The spokesperson, who gave only his surname, Liu, said Taiyuan was among a number of companies that provided equipment to the China Meteorological Administration.

He said that the balloon would likely have been set off from the coastal city of Xiamen with no fixed course, and that it was 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. He said that there are balloons that fly over the Taiwan Strait, but they have recently begun to draw attention.

The equipment information was written on the mainland in simplified Chinese, according to Taiwan’s Defense Ministry.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157771528/taiwan-reports-that-a-chinese-weather-balloon-was-found-on-an-outlying-island

U.S. action on the airship incident: Beijing’s aggressive diplomacy fails to establish relations with the United States, as triggered by the discovery of an airship

Taiwan does not have formal relations with the United States, but Washington is its closest military and diplomatic ally. 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 discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon transiting much of the country triggered a three month high-stakes drama, leading President Joe Biden to say that the US is developing “sharper rules” to track and potentially shoot down aerial objects.

The US Northern Command said Friday that the recovery effort ended after Navy assets located and retrieved debris from the balloon.

The US military said in a statement later in the day it would end the search for two of the objects shot down over North America last weekend.

It is unlikely the public will get a thorough explanation of what objects were that US fighters had shot down over the course of three days.

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 Canadians decided not to look for the object that fell into Lake Ontario because the Royal Canadian Mounted Police couldn’t find 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 cannot say we will know one way or the other.

Price states in a summary of the meeting in Germany that there was a violation of U.S. sovereignty and international law by the People’s Republic of China.

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 of Blinken and Wang, according to a Chinese news agency. China Global TV Network (CGTN) said Wang made clear China’s “solemn position on the so-called airship incident in an informal conversation”, in a brief news report.

Wang urged the US side to change course and acknowledge the damage caused to China-U.S relations by excessive use of force.

When it was over the US, it was obvious that there was an intent to surveil sensitive military sites.

According to the US, there are signs that Beijing wants to “creep up to the line” of providing lethal military aid to Russia without getting caught, as evidenced by recent trendlines in China’s support for Russia’s military.

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.