A jet flies by a suspected Chinese spy balloon at Surfside Beach in South Carolina, US, on February 4, 2023.
Randall Hill | reuters
scale of China’s balloon surveillance A handful of flights over the US may be more widespread than ever, as intelligence agencies investigate hundreds of sightings of unidentified balloons and aerial objects in recent years, a lawmaker, a US official and experts told NBC News.
The Biden administration is still trying to determine the full extent of China’s spy balloon incursions into US airspace, and it is possible that the number of confirmed Chinese surveillance flights over the US will rise.
The revelation this month that the Chinese were able to fly surveillance balloons over US airspace without US forces raising questions about an intelligence failure over the years and prompted calls for investment in the country’s air defense and radar systems.
According to public statements from the Biden administration, there are currently five known Chinese balloon flights over US territory, including two during the Biden administration and three during the presidency of Donald Trump. By reviewing data on past sightings of unidentified aerial objects, military and intelligence agencies detected three balloon flights during Trump’s presidency after Trump left office, according to Biden officials. The four known flights prior to the February shootings spent little time in US airspace.
US military and intelligence agencies are investigating previous sightings of unidentified objects over the US using new information tracking a Chinese balloon that flew over the country earlier this month, a US official and lawmaker said. . That balloon, which stood 200 feet tall and was carrying a payload of more than 2,000 pounds, was shot down by a missile fired from an F-22 fighter jet off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
“I think now that we really understand a lot about these things, we’ll be in a better position to understand what they’ve done in the past,” said Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat. Home Intelligence Committee.
The Congressman said he expected more Chinese balloons to be identified.
“It’s a possibility,” he told NBC News. “I think now, after watching one of these balloons for more than a week, we know a lot more about how they behave and what they’re capable of. So yeah, I believe is that we’ll be able to kind of backfill.”
The White House National Security Council did not respond to a request for comment. The Pentagon declined to comment.
Other countries are also probing whether Chinese balloon flights were operating over their territory.
Japan’s Ministry of Defense Said On Tuesday it conducted further analysis and determined that three unidentified flying objects were “strongly believed” to be Chinese reconnaissance balloons that had violated the country’s airspace.
The flights took place in November 2019, June 2020 and September 2021, Japan said in a statement.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said his government would review the country’s security in light of the Chinese balloon flight over the US.
An Australian official said Australia was not aware of any Chinese surveillance balloons flying over its territory. But China has launched a “relentless espionage campaign” against Australia on several fronts and “Australia is watching this very closely,” the official said.
US Department of Defense received 366 new reports ufo or “unidentified aerial phenomena” from March 2021, and about half of those appear to be balloons or drones, according to one reports From the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, released last month.
a beginner assessment The report stated that there were 163 sightings of balloons or “balloon-like entities”.
It is unclear whether the new information may indicate that those balloons seen were in fact Chinese surveillance airships.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters, “Things are blowing up that haven’t been in America for a very long time.”
He said that was why lawmakers insisted on setting up an effort to study sightings of unidentified aerial objects.
The full scale of China’s incursions into US airspace is unclear, and it is not possible to arrive at an exact number of how many balloon flights took place, according to Brian Tannehill, a technical analyst at the think tank Rand Corp.
“The answer is we don’t know. And I think we’re going to try very hard to find out and I think we’re going to go back and look at a lot of the data and try to find some kind of Coming with.” Estimation,” said Tannehill, a former US Navy pilot who flew the P-3 surveillance aircraft. “Because when we go back and review the data, we can still assume there is something we didn’t see. “
Pentagon and White House officials have rejected the idea that flights of unidentified Chinese balloons in recent years over US territory represent a potential intelligence failure.
Pentagon Press Secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told a news conference last week that “in terms of monitoring these and collecting on them, we’ve been able to build up a body of knowledge that enables us to detect and act on them.”
“This was not an intelligence failure,” Ryder said.
But lawmakers are demanding more information from the White House about the Chinese surveillance balloon program to see how the US has responded.
Republican Sen. Todd Young of Indiana said on Fox News on Wednesday the president “needs to clarify what the heck is going on” and “what intelligence gaps” need to be addressed.
In his most comprehensive public remarks about a Chinese balloon and three unidentified objects shot down by US warplanes this month, President Joe Biden said Thursday he hoped to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping and later told NBC News that he didn’t. Looks like the Chinese leader wanted to spoil relations with the US
Intelligence Officer on Wednesday Former Trump administration national security officials briefed about China’s surveillance balloon program, NBC News previously reported. The briefing touched on China’s overall program as well as previous incidents of surveillance balloons entering US airspace during the Trump and Biden administrations.
The government apparently “missed the threat of Chinese high-altitude balloons for a long time,” said a congressional staffer. US officials “were not looking for him and when they finally found him they were surprised,” the employee said.
The staffer said, “Prior intrusions warrant further investigation. Additionally, those incidents should have prepared the US government for more recent and more serious intrusions.”
Air Force General Glenn VanHerk, head of the US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said earlier this month that the Chinese balloon flight had exposed a “domain awareness gap”.
Michael Dumont, a retired Navy admiral who was deputy commander of the US Northern Command from October 2018 to February 2021, said it was too early to tell how damaging the Chinese balloon surveillance program had been, and that officials would be able to track the balloon’s recovered sensors and Will get to know. analyzed.
But if nothing else, “the balloon program allows them to test things, see how we react.”
Former senior military officers and experts say the balloon incident also exposed long-standing weaknesses in the Cold War-era system of radars that detect threats to the North American continent.
The US and Canadian military rely on a series of radar sites in northern Canada to track the northern approaches to North American airspace. The North Warning System (NWS) uses short- and long-range radar sites built in the late 1980s and, according to Canada, radars are “increasingly challenged” by modern weapons technology. Government,
In 2021, VanHerc Said That the NWS needed a more advanced system that could detect not only bombers or cruise missiles but also small drones.
“The system itself, the guts of the system, was developed in the 1980s,” Dumont, former deputy commander of the Northern Command, said in a recent interview.
Outdated technology means analysts at the Northern Command must rely on different systems to detect different types of threats, he said.
“When you think about the ability to integrate all kinds of sensors into a warning system, we’re not there,” Dumont said. “We don’t have a central consolidating point to integrate these systems into one … The guts of the system need to be upgraded.”
A more modern system, he said, could give the US “a much greater standoff range and a much greater early warning.”
In the current system, when analysts adjust the “gain” of a radar to detect slow-moving objects such as surveillance balloons, their screens are filled with various objects, most of which are irrelevant.
“There have been times while I was on duty that I was alerted to a certain activity and it turned out to be a flock of birds or debris from a weather balloon,” he said.