After the downing of the Chinese balloon by an air-launched missile by the US Air Force, – at the end of an incident that has left Washington perplexed in a three-day odyssey over the continental United States – no one seems to understand what it actually happened.
When the balloon was spotted, Beijing claimed it was a weather observation blimp that happened to be in the area after accidentally veering off course. The explanation immediately drew the ironies of the Pentagon, which stated that the balloon had been maneuvered and made several deliberate turns, at one point arriving just above the state of Montana, where some of the silos of the US nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile arsenal are located.
Everyone keeps their own
Just minutes after the attack on the balloon, the Chinese insisted that the object was just an errant civilian airship, used mainly for meteorological research, that had drifted due to wind and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities. Beijing authorities also warned the Washington administration that the incident would result in “further action.”
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the US use of force was “an obvious overreaction as well as a serious violation of international practices.” “China will resolutely support the legitimate rights and interests of the company in question, and at the same time reserves the right to take further measures in response!” the same ministry warned.
On the other hand, the US claims that it was undoubtedly a Chinese spy balloon. Moreover, the incident prompted the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, to cancel his much-anticipated weekend official visit to China, which was aimed at reducing already high tensions between the two countries.
The Pentagon says the balloon, which carried sensors and surveillance and intelligence-gathering equipment, was maneuverable and demonstrated it could change course. The aircraft lingered over sensitive areas in Montana where nuclear warheads are located, prompting the US military to take steps to prevent it from gathering intelligence.
The US Department of Defense also stated that the balloon was the size of three school buses and moved eastward over the US at an altitude of approximately 18,600 meters.
A US Air Force fighter jet shot down the balloon Saturday afternoon off the Carolina coast. Television footage showed a small explosion, followed by the balloon slowly drifting towards the water. Immediately, an operation was launched to recover his remains.
Big trouble at the White House. The film of the events
U.S. defense officials said on condition of anonymity that the balloon entered the U.S. air defense zone north of the Aleutian Islands on Jan. 28 and moved over Alaska and into Canadian airspace over the Northwest Territories , on January 30. The next day, it crossed the American territory again, over the northern state of Idaho.
The White House said Biden was first informed of the balloon last Tuesday. For its part, the US State Department announced that Blinken and his deputy secretary, Wendy Sherman, discussed the matter with a senior Chinese official in Washington on Wednesday evening.
In the first US public statement on the matter, Brigadier General Pat Ryder, the Pentagon’s press secretary, said on Thursday evening that the balloon did not pose a “military or physical” threat, or in other words, admitted that it had no weapons on board . He also stated that “as soon as the balloon was detected, the US government acted to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”
Even if the balloon was unarmed, it posed a risk to the US, says retired Army General John Ferrari, now a specialist at the American Enterprise Institute. The flight itself, he claims to the AP, could have been used to test America’s ability to detect approaching threats and find gaps in the country’s air defense warning system.
The balloon may also have allowed the Chinese to detect electromagnetic emissions that satellites at higher altitudes cannot detect, such as low-power radio frequencies, which could help them understand how different systems communicate of American weapons.
On Wednesday, as the balloon came to rest over Montana, President Joe Biden authorized the military to shoot it down as soon as it was in a place where there would be no undue risk to civilians.
Because of its huge size, as well as the altitude at which it was located, experts estimated that debris from the sensors as well as pieces of the balloon would stretch for miles. So military leaders and defense experts have advised Biden not to shoot it down above the ground, even when flying over sparsely populated areas.
On Saturday, as the balloon moved into US airspace about 10 kilometers off the coast of South Carolina, an F-22 fighter jet from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fired an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile. in the aircraft.
Televisions showed live the moment of impact, when the balloon collapsed and began a long descent into the Atlantic. As the deflated balloon drifted slowly, US Navy ships were already moving into the area, waiting to collect the debris.
Total mystery, controversial reasons
If it is indeed a spy balloon, the incident raises a lot of questions about Beijing’s decision-making process. It was undoubtedly highly predictable that the balloon would be spotted and eventually shot down, all in the run-up to Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visit to Beijing.
The visit had been hailed from the outset by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had intended to meet with the top US diplomat to address a number of hot-button issues between the two superpowers, chief among them the future of Taiwan.
In this context, “the incident was either a case of ‘the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing’, or it may have been a deliberate attempt to sabotage any de-escalation it might have achieved Blinken’s journey”, comments the publication “The Guardian”, trying to find a plausible explanation for this incident.
“Another question is of a technical nature. Why send a balloon to spy in a satellite age? Balloons are cheaper and can get closer to surveillance targets. However, it is not clear what a balloon could have discovered in the missile silos in Montana that the Chinese did not already know,” the British publication asks.
The Pentagon didn’t seem overly concerned about what the drone might have seen, and claims it was able to block at least some of the intelligence gathering while turning the tide in its favor because it has a chance to study both the balloon, as well as its load.
Perhaps the Chinese intention was to monitor the US military response, to see how quickly the balloon would be spotted and how quickly the fighter jets would be launched.
The political response from Washington could also be interesting for Beijing. According to Pentagon officials, China has sent three balloons over the US during the Trump administration as well, without receiving a military response, although those previous flights do not appear to have crossed as much US territory. From that perspective, Beijing may have been testing Biden’s reaction.
Then, of course, balloons are visible and, by implication, much better than satellites at causing a political storm in the country flown over. In fact, Republicans in the US Congress have demanded since last week that the balloon be immediately brought down over land, despite the risk of death and property damage, criticizing the White House for the slowness with which it acted.
Balloons in history
Sending up balloons for espionage or combat purposes is not a new practice and began to be used more and more during World War II.
At the time, Japan launched thousands of hydrogen bomb-carrying balloons, and hundreds ended up in the US and Canada. Most were ineffective, but one was fatal. In May 1945, six civilians died when they discovered one of the balloons on the ground in Oregon and it exploded.
In the post-war period, America’s own balloon research fueled alien stories and legends about Roswell, New Mexico.
According to military research documents and studies, the US began using giant trains of balloons and sensors that were strung together and stretched more than 600 meters apart in an effort to detect Soviet missile launches in the period after the Second World War.
