WASHINGTON: US officials said on Thursday that a suspected Chinese spy balloon has been flying over the country for a few days. This would be a brazen act, coming just days before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was scheduled to travel to Beijing.
According to US officials, fighter jets were activated, but military leaders advised President Joe Biden against shooting the balloon out of the sky because they were concerned that debris could pose a safety risk. Biden accepted their advice.
One of the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told reporters that the US took “custody” of the balloon when it entered US airspace and had observed it with piloted US military aircraft.
The incident brings to mind the lengths Beijing and Washington have gone to to spy on each other as tensions between the superpowers have grown.
Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, stated to reporters, “The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is currently over the continental United States.”
https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/1621305822570479616
“The balloon does not pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground and is currently traveling at a high altitude well above commercial air traffic.”
Blinken is expected to travel to China next week for a visit that Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to in November. It was unclear how the spy balloon’s discovery might affect those plans.
A request for comment from Reuters was not immediately answered by the Chinese foreign ministry.
Through diplomatic channels in Beijing and Washington, US officials discussed the issue with Chinese counterparts. A US official stated, “We have communicated to them the seriousness with which we take this issue.”
A Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. is alarming but not surprising
The level of espionage aimed at our country by Beijing has grown dramatically more intense & brazen over the last 5 years
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 2, 2023
The spy balloon was alarming but not surprising, according to the top Republican on the Senate intelligence committee, US Senator Marco Rubio.
Rubio made the following statement via Twitter: “The level of espionage aimed at our country by Beijing has grown dramatically more intense and brazen over the last five years.”
Senator Tom Cotton, a fellow Republican, demanded that Blinken postpone his trip.
Kevin McCarthy, the Republican Speaker of the House, stated that he would request a “Gang of Eight” briefing, a classified national security briefing for congressional leaders as well as Republican and Democratic intelligence committee leaders. A US official stated that the Biden administration briefed Gang of Eight staff earlier on Thursday and has provided additional briefings.
The information became public while CIA Director William Burns was giving a speech at Georgetown University in Washington, where he referred to China as the “biggest geopolitical challenge” facing the United States at the moment.
Relations between China and the United States have deteriorated over the past few years, particularly since Nancy Pelosi, the US House Speaker at the time, paid a visit to Taiwan in August, which sparked massive Chinese military exercises near the island’s self-governing government.
Since then, Washington and Beijing have tried to keep their ties from getting worse by communicating more frequently.
Potential safety risk
The official told reporters that US military leaders considered shooting down the balloon over Montana on Wednesday but ultimately advised Biden against it due to the safety risk posed by debris.
The military mobilized assets, including F-22 fighter jets, in the event that Biden ordered the balloon to be shot down, and the airport in Billings, Montana, issued a ground stop.
According to the official, “We wanted to make sure we were coordinating with civil authorities to empty out the airspace around that potential area.”
“However, even with those safeguards in place, our military commanders determined that we did not reduce the risk sufficiently. Therefore, we did not shoot.”
Without providing any specifics, the official stated that the balloon would pass over a number of sensitive locations using the current flight path. 150 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos are located at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
Before it entered the United States, the spy balloon was said to have been tracked near the Aleutian Islands and Canada, according to a separate US official.
Although they acknowledged that the balloon was operating below “outer space” and above civilian air traffic, officials refused to specify the balloon’s altitude.
Limited intelligence value?
These balloons typically operate at altitudes of 80,000 to 120,000 feet (24,000 to 37,000 meters), which is a significant distance above where commercial aircraft fly. Although spy planes like the U-2 have a service ceiling of at least 80,000 feet, the highest-performing fighter aircraft rarely operate above 65,000 feet.
According to Craig Singleton, a China expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, these balloons are a low-cost method for gathering intelligence and were widely used by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
An official stated that while spy balloons have flown over the United States numerous times in recent years, this one appeared to be hovering for a longer period of time than in previous instances.
The official stated, “At this time, we assess that this balloon has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective,” but they continued, “We are taking steps to protect against foreign intelligence collection of sensitive information.”
Alexander Neill, a security analyst based in Singapore, stated that the balloon was likely of limited intelligence value in comparison to other tools that China’s modernizing military has at its disposal, despite the fact that it was likely to add another source of friction between the US and China.
“I think it is a fair assumption that the intelligence gain is not huge,” Neill, an adjunct fellow at Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think-tank, stated. “China has its own constellation of spy and military satellites that are far more important and effective in terms of watching the US.”
