The recovery operation for a Chinese spy balloon over Alaska was called off by the military
The China Response to an Unmanned US Navy Submarine Jet and a United States Air Force Explosion: A Memorino from George W. Bush
The Intelligence Community has elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight under the direct supervision of Beth Sanner. She was also an intelligence briefer for the president. She is an analyst for CNN and a professor of intelligence at the University of Maryland. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.
China has accused U.S. with its own accusations. At a regular press briefing on Monday in Beijing, Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, claimed that it is “common for U.S. balloons to illegally enter other countries’ airspace.”
In late 2016, the Chinese seized an unmanned US Navy 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 navy base in Asia until disagreements over lease costs led to a withdrawal by the US in 1992. The incident was widely believed to have been a message to President-elect Donald Trump, just two weeks before his inauguration and several weeks after he angered Beijing by taking a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s president. Beijing agreed to return the craft three days later, but never apologized and accused the US of spying.
The most memorable and instructive example dates back to the presidency of George W. Bush. Chinese fighter jets harassed the US Navy in international waters on April 1, 2001. One collided with a vehicle. 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 US crew members were held for a week before they were allowed to leave.
Had any damage or loss of life resulted when China downed the unmanned US craft, Chinese authorities would have quickly placed both blame and liability on the US. Protests would have erupted in front of the US Embassy and China’s Ambassador to the US swiftly withdrawn.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. Senior administration officials said that after the balloon was shot down, they communicated with Chinese officials.
If you listen closely, you can already hear the war drums beating, and I’m waiting for the hyperbole to reach new heights as we move closer to the 2024 election: who will be the toughest on China of them all? When considering the rise of anti-Asian rhetoric and violence reported in the US in the past year, it is clear that China-bashing is not a new brand of McCarthyism.
Peter Bergen is a teacher at Arizona State University and vice president of New America, CNN’s national security analyst. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.
It reminded me of when my father worked on a program to send balloons into Soviet airspace, as a lieutenant in the US Air Force.
At Wright-Patterson Air Force Base he was placed into the Air Material Command. He worked on the “Grand Union” project, where balloons were deployed that carried cameras over the Soviet Union. The balloons were flown from Turkey.
The program that my father worked on was a secret, but it has been declassified since the 70s.
Chinese Spy Satellites: Where are the strange objects flying over North America, and how does China break the OPM hacking law in the United States?
According to CNN, the US has developed a way to track the Chinese fleet of balloons that were discovered in the last year.
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 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 a profitable business that was just bought by a private Equity firm for $6 billion.
It might help explain an element of a report published last month by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence.
If they are not related to China, are the latest strange objects flying over North America linked to some other hostile power or group, corporate or private entity? Are they connected to one another or are they simply the result of coincidences at a time of heightened awareness and tensions?
But China has arguably done much worse. US officials accused it of benefiting from the work of the hackers who stole design data for the F-35 fighter aircraft as it builds its own new generation of fighters and of sucking up a lot of personal information of more than 20 million Americans when they were in the US government. China denied any responsibility for the OPM hacking and called the F-35 theft report “baseless”.
The Downing of a Flying Balloon and Its Communication with the U.S., the Pentagon, and the Department of State
A senior State Department official said Thursday that the balloon “was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations” and was part of a fleet that had flown over “more than 40 countries across five continents.”
One official who is familiar with the intelligence says that roughly half a dozen of those flights have been within US airspace.
An official and another person familiar with the intelligence say that not every balloon is the same model as the one that went down on Saturday. These people said that there are different variations.
The link to the broader surveillance program, which was uncovered before the latest balloon was spotted last week, was first reported by the Washington Post.
The photos from Sunday show sailors from a Navy explosive disposal team pulling debris from the deflated balloon onto a boat. The US is looking to understand how the balloon works, so the debris is being taken to an FBI laboratory for analysis.
“The domain awareness was there as it approached Alaska,” NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters on Monday. The balloon didn’t have a military threat to North America. I couldn’t immediately take action because it wasn’t demonstrating hostile act or hostile intent.
China offered an expression of “regret” over the downed vessel in a statement Friday, but maintained that it was a weather balloon thrown off course.
Some observers think that lower-level officials wouldn’t have been aware of a balloon being dispatched to US airspace or that they would have done it anyways, so their actions wouldn’t have had an impact on US-China relations.
The team is composed of agents, analysts, engineers, and scientists who are responsible for creating and analyzing technical measures to collect data on US adversaries.
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.
A member of the House Intelligence Committee says that there are a number of reasons why they wouldn’t do that. You want to see what it is doing and where it is going.
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.
Biden’s response marks the second time this week that he’s sought to downplay the effect of what US officials deemed a “brazen” act by Beijing to send an intelligence gathering balloon across several US states – with signs it loitered over key military installations.
The idea shooting down a balloon that gathers information about America makes relations worse. Biden told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff in a wide-ranging interview a day after his second State of the Union address.
Biden administration officials have stressed that the meeting was not canceled, but instead delayed until a later date. That date has not yet been set.
When CNN asked if US officials had any information about why China would commit the overt acts, Biden laughed off the question. He said that they were the Chinese government.
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.”
While the president has stood by the way his administration handled the balloon, he has faced criticism from Republicans that he allowed the balloon to go over the country before shooting it down.
Nuclear Security and Defense: After a Long-Lived Debris Balloon Falling Out Of A Regional Jet, China Rejoins
He said that China’s position boiled down to supporting talks for peace in Ukraine, and that Beijing would propose a political settlement of the issue.
The US military has concluded its recovery operations for the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina earlier this month, as well as the search for flying objects it later downed off the coast of Alaska and over Lake Huron after days of ultimately fruitless searches.
A jet airliner type of size, perhaps a regional jet, weighing more than 2000 pounds, is what was categorized by Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command or NORAD.
“[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 kind of talking about that. There are potentially hazardous materials on solar panels, such as material required for batteries to operate in such an environment, as well as the potential for explosives to destroy the balloon that could have been present.
The time frame gave us an opportunity to assess what they were doing and I think you will see in the future that it was worth it.
The balloon was shot down by a missile fired from a F-22 jet out of Langley Air Force Base, Virginia. The operation was carried out by active duty, Reserve, National Guard, and civilian personnel, according to the Navy’s photo captions.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Chinese side told the US side after verification that the balloon is for civilian use, and it was an accident.
It was supposed to happen within days of the balloon’s appearance, but it had to be put off because of the situation.
China admitted that the balloon was used for flight tests, deviated from its flight course and was owned by it.
Mao Ning said that China is a responsible country. “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.”
State of the Matter: The Case for a “Spy Balloon” Entering the U.S. Armed Forces
A day before the suspected Chinese spy balloon entered US airspace over Alaska, the Defense Intelligence Agency quietly sent an internal report that a foreign object was headed towards US territory, military and intelligence officials familiar with the matter told CNN.
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 moved to look at the object instead of treating it as an immediate threat.
Administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill Thursday on the balloon, which was shot down off the Atlantic coast, after it angered Republicans who said it should not have been allowed to walk across the US.
On January 28, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, sent up fighter jets to make a positive identification, according to defense officials, reflecting a subtle shift in urgency.
There wasn’t much reason to be alarmed by the balloon. The balloon was expected to sail over Alaska and travel north, with intelligence and military officials able to keep an eye on it.
Military officials said it is not surprising that the president was not warned until January 31, due to expectations for the balloon.
As more information about the decision-making process on the balloon trickles out, Congress is interested.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene questioned the failure of the Pentagon to act properly in the legislative session of the House Select Committee on Electronics
A Senate Republican aide told CNN there were still questions to be posed 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?”
One pilot took a selfie in the cockpit that shows both the pilot and the surveillance balloon itself, these officials said – an image that has already gained legendary status in both NORAD and the Pentagon.
The Biden administration has determined that the Chinese balloon was operating with electronic surveillance technology capable of monitoring US communications, according to the official.
The lawmakers were told that the order to send the balloon was dispatched without the knowledge of the Chinese president.
Only evidence that was on the surface of the ocean has been delivered to FBI analysts so far, one official said, which includes the “canopy itself, the wiring, and then a very small amount of electronics.” The official said analysts have not yet seen the “payload,” which is where you would expect to see the “lion’s share” of electronics.
The commander of NORAD and US Northern Command said that there was no evidence that it presented a significant collection hazard.
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 that they were able to mitigate, but I think that was accurate, due to the safety concerns they expressed in real time.
“I believe that the administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies, acted skillfully and with care. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done 100% correctly? It would not be the case of almost any of the things we do. Romney said Thursday that he came away more confident.
What Happened When the Baby Was Shot Down Off The South Carolina Coast: Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee Hearing on Thursday
At the hearing on Thursday, Tester told officials 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 have seen brief incursions and now we have a long incursion, what is the next? asked Senator Tester, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.
The officials at the hearing said that the Pentagon wasn’t worried about the intelligence gathered in Alaska because it was not near sensitive sites.
The elements of the Chinese balloon that was shot down off the South Carolina coast 10 days ago have been recovered, the military says.
The officials said they were not sure where the balloon’s parts came from or whether any of them were made in America. Because analysts have yet to look at the bulk of the equipment on the balloon, the officials said that there has not been a determination as to everything the device was capable of doing and its specific intent.
The analysts have looked at a small portion of the materials and found nothing that would endanger the American public.
There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source didn’t provide any information about what parts of the balloon had English writing.
The official said, “They have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries.” The PRC program will only be exposed, making it harder for them to use it.
A senior State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity gave reporters some information on Thursday about some of the intel that has been learned so far.
One FBI official said that it was early to assess the intent of the device and how it was being used, though the main electronics payload had not been recovered yet.
The Shootdown of a High-Altitude Object Over US Airspace: The U.S. is a Global Surveillance Empire
Wang Wenbin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, says this shows the U.S. is “without a doubt the world’s largest surveillance habitual offender and surveillance empire.” The U.S. National Security Council denies the allegations.
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.
President Joe Biden told CNN that the shoot down a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska on Friday “was a success,” shortly after American national security officials disclosed that the commander-in-chief gave the US military approval to take the action.
The incident marked the second time American fighter jets have taken down an object flying over US airspace in a little less than a week after a suspected Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday.
Ryder also emphasized that officials do not know the origin of the object, which did not appear to be manned, and that it was shot down because it posed a “reasonable threat to civilian air traffic” as it was flying at 40,000 feet.
There were two efforts to get closer to the object and evaluate it as it flew. Fighter aircraft conducted the first and second engagement on Thursday and Friday. Both engagements yielded “limited” information, Kirby told reporters.
“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 White House said that President Biden authorized the use of fighter aircraft assigned to NORAD to conduct the operation and a US F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory. The leaders talked about the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details about the object’s purpose.
US Northern Command’s Alaska Command coordinated the operation with assistance from the Alaska Air National Guard, Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Ryder said.
The Object that Is Trying to Tell You: A Congressional Analysis of the Washington Post-Biden Visit to Deadhorse, Alaska,
We call it an object because it is 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 first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Kirby said Biden was briefed as soon as the Pentagon had enough information.
Kirby said the object appeared to be at the mercy of prevailing winds, making it much less predictable.
The Federal Aviation Administration issued a temporary flight restriction Friday in the area around Deadhorse, Alaska, as the military took action against the object.
According to CNN reports, the assessment was given to the American lawmakers in briefings on Thursday, which could suggest that there is a lack of coordination within the Chinese system.
It could mean that the potential ramifications of the mission were underestimated, which could have jeopardized a visit from the most senior US diplomat in a year and a half, which Beijing welcomed as a way to ease strained ties.
In a statement last Saturday Beijing appeared to link the device to companies rather than the government or military, even though China’s state-owned enterprises and robust military-industrial complex blur the line between the two.
Thompson is a research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and he said that the lack of delegation of authority to lower levels is the problem with centralizing power.
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. The power struggles between higher ranking officials and lower ranking officials could affect communication.
There is a lot of tension within the Chinese system, with lower levels fighting for their own independence and higher levels fighting for control, he said.
In the past, tensions have emerged in China when it has had crises, including the 2002-2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome and the more recent Covid-19 where reporting delays 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.
There could be a gap in the management of balloon launches that is different from the way aircraft missions are managed, according to a political scientist.
In this case, entities launching balloons may have received “little or no push back from other countries, including the United States” and “increasingly seen such launches as routine based on weather conditions and at modest costs,” Yang said.
“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.
The State of the Art in the Landfall of a Suspected Balloon: Xi Jinping’s Personality, his Influence, and his Understanding of the G20 Summit in Indonesia
China’s Foreign Ministry appeared caught off guard by the situation as it publicly unfolded over the last week and released an explanation less than 24 hours after the Pentagon announced it was tracking a suspected balloon.
“Because of his personality, he wants 100% (control),” said Alfred Wu, an associate professor, also at the NUS Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. “I don’t think Xi Jinping allows for that kind of autonomy.”
Instead, Xi may have been comfortable with an incident that diverted the attention of a public frustrated amid a faltering economy after years under the recently dismantled zero-Covid policy – but underestimated the US domestic response that resulted in the postponed talks, Wu said.
Washington may be trying to communicate that Xi did not know about the situation when he had a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden at the G20 summit in Indonesia.
An unidentified object was shot down over northern Canada on Saturday, marking the third time in a week that US fighter jets have taken down objects in North American airspace.
“Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object,” Ryder’s statement said.
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.
The objects that were described as smaller than the spy balloon caused an uproar. Speaking to reporters on Monday, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said that while recovery operations for those objects were ongoing, but no debris had been recovered yet.
The recovery teams are in the process of finding and identifying the 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.”
A high-altitude object shot down by an F-16 over Lake Huron was not a military threat: NORAD and the US Northern Command had no kinetic action over US 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.
The FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police will work together while Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations.
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.
The political storm is threatening after the US scrambled fighter jets to shoot down three unknown 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.
In the latest event, a high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday afternoon by an F-16 over Lake Huron, which lies between Michigan and Ontario. The Pentagon thought the object was a flight hazard and not a military threat. But it did connect the craft to a radar signal picked up earlier over Montana, the home to US intercontinental missile silos and other sensitive sites.
In fact, NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said recent objects shot down were likely the first “kinetic action” that NORAD or the US Northern Command had taken against an airborne object over US airspace.
Occurrences in White House: The Bounds on the Biden Administration’s Response to the Sunday Black-tie Events
In a fast moving situation it is possible that the government may not know as much as it is saying. But the piecemeal emergence of details is adding to the confusion. The administration has sometimes had difficulty in controlling a media narrative to its own political detriment on issues including the Chinese balloon and the discovery of classified vice presidential documents.
New speculation and criticism could be premature as officials work to fully understand the sequence of events and more about the objects. The new filters used by NORAD focus on seeing fast- moving objects below a certain altitude, which was previously used to sift the data. A source briefed on the matter said that earlier in the day, early warning filters were set to not pick up other objects, including birds and weather balloons.
The lack of specificity is unlikely to quell speculation or partisan maneuvering in Washington. At the start of a new presidential election cycle and in a polarized political age when social media magnifies conspiracy theories, this odd series of incidents is heaping fresh pressure on Biden following recriminations after his decision to wait until the Chinese balloon had crossed the country before shooting it down over water.
“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.
The argument of the Biden administration was that the Chinese balloon’s height caused them to have no concern as long as they knew what would come down.
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.
As a result of not being able to determine what the objects are, the assistant secretary of defense has acted out of an abundance of caution.
They are getting many positives that they didn’t get before. Kayyem was an assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security.
We can’t tell you if it’s part of a bigger operation or if it’s just stuff that has been forgiven by the government since it didn’t pose a threat.
There was more confusion on Sunday. Schumer, a democrat from New York, said on ABC that he was briefed by Jake Sullivan, a Biden’s national security adviser, and that the objects shot down over Alaska and the Yukon were balloons rather than Chinese invaders.
Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale of Montana appeared to make a direct link Sunday on “CNN Newsroom” between the Chinese balloon and the latest objects, even if there is no confirmation so far that they are connected.
The Unidentified Aerial Phenomena in the United States, and What Have They Been Saying About Their Disappearances?
“It doesn’t give me much safe feelings knowing that these devices are smaller,” he said. “I am very concerned with the cumulative data that is being collected. I need some answers, and the American people need answers as well.
There is no indication of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent take- downs. It was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it, and I wanted to make sure the American people knew that.
The White House will not be calling for the return of Agent Mulder andAgent Scully, according to Karine Jean-Pierre.
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 what’s important. It doesn’t take away from the fact we are committed to finding ways to manage it and engage with it.
One is that these have been going on before in the past, and we haven’t detected them. There have been detections where the radars picked up some phenomena. The equipment they detected isn’t that refined, so we can’t tell you what it was. It cannot discern down to an exquisite level of detail what an anomaly in the air might be. 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 were downed since Friday and that’s why the term is vague. Nobody currently knows what these things are or who they belong to.
“I don’t think the American people need to worry about aliens with respect to these craft. Period. John Kirby, National Security Council coordination for strategic communications, said at the White House’s Monday briefing that there was nothing new to say on that.
He said the downed objects were not sending signals, that there were no signs of maneuvering or propulsion capabilities, and that they were not manned.
The story of us-mystery objects in sky what matters: What are the balloons, drones, and plastic bags that come into our airspace?
Under scrutiny for President Joe Biden’s lack of public comment, the government is now working to appear engaged. National security adviser Jake Sullivan is set to lead a new “interagency team” to assess the UAPs.
There were balloon-like features with small metal objects attached to the planes as they flew over Alaska and northern Canada.
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.
Half of the total is described as balloon or balloon-like entities. Others act like drones. And a few appear to be nothing more than “airborne debris like plastic bags.”
It is Sanner. When we first started thinking about this in 2021, there was a lot of discussion about whether or not these were aliens. I think that since then people have pulled back and said that many of these 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
The U.S. Mysteries in the Sky What Matters: A Study of the Priors for Launches of F-22s
There was a stigma surrounding the things that pilots have been seeing because it could be a spy issue, and many times they were discouraged from discussing it. So it’s important to get these things out there.
SANNER: We don’t have the interest or the capacity to keep scrambling F-22s every time we see an object in the sky. So now we’ve got to really focus and say, “How do we identify things that are actual threats?”
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 focused only on anything coming over the North Pole. But if something comes in south of Alaska, we might not see it.
And then we have this technology gap, in terms of most of our radars 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. We had to look at the threats to see if they looked like threats.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/us-mystery-objects-in-sky-what-matters/index.html
Discrimination and cooperation in the late-time events at the U.S. Army and Marine Base. The man is a lie, pants on fire moment
The man is Sanner. We are in a lie, liar, pants on fire moment here. I think the Chinese are going to make up some things in order to make themselves look better.
Andrew said that it could take some time to figure out what the objects were.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation Laboratory in Virginia is handling the last pieces of debris that have been recovered for counterintelligence exploitation. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard have left the area. The statement said that the safety perimeters had been lifted.
“Then the right partners, whether they are international partners or researchers here from the United States, have to be assembled to participate in what we call the exploitation of that technology, of the equipment.
“All of that takes time. I have no doubt that we will understand the full scope of what these things are, and what they are capable of, but it might not be quickly.”
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.
A Joint U.S.-China Security Conference on Airborne Unidentified Aerial Objects and the “Scenario of the China-US Shootdown”
The policy discussion should be about declaring we are going to defend our airspace, and what this shows is that we have to do that. 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 soon as possible because we certainly now ascertain there is a threat.”
“Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including most of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large portions of the structure,” U.S. 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 US blew the balloon out of the sky after it had flown over most of the continental US.
The Biden administration had repeatedly pointed to the need to locate and recover the downed objects to be able to identify what they were and who launched them, but US officials had grown less optimistic about recovering debris from them.
As for how the U.S. will handle cases of unidentified aerial objects objects in the future, Kirby said on Tuesday that the National Security Council likely will present new guidance by the end of the week.
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. briefed 40 countries about the shoot down of the Chinese balloon. On Capitol Hill, both chambers of Congress receive classified briefings on the incident. The House passed a unanimous resolution condemning China for its alleged snooping on the US.
Emily reported from Taiwan. Lexie reported from Washington D.C. They contributed a report from Washington, D.C.
The Security Conference this weekend will be attended by Blinken and Wang. US officials said a meeting between the two is not currently planned but have not fully ruled out the possibility.
The Detection of Unidentified Airborne Objects by the Chinese Spy Balloon: The Case of Robertson-Jacobi
Asked earlier this month whether the Chinese government is “controlling the movement of the balloon, or is it just floating with air streams,” Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder declined to comment in detail.
“The balloon went over many of them. In some cases, it loitered. “We took measures to protect that information. We attempted to get information about the balloon. And I think we’ll know more when we … actually get the remains.”
Biden emphasized that there hasn’t been evidence to suggest “a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky.” “If any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people, I will take it down,” Biden warned, adding that the most recent three objects seem to have been benign.
To begin with, the administration plans to establish a better inventory of airborne objects above American airspace, as well as additional measures to detect these objects, update rules and regulations for encounters with these types of objects above US skies, and establish common global norms for similar encounters.
The initial Chinese spy balloon has been briefed on by administration officials from the Pentagon, State Department and intelligence community.
And officials had been wary of having the president speak publicly about the objects until more information was gathered about the three unidentified objects that were downed last weekend.
“The military advised against shooting it down over land because of the sheer size of it. 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. “Instead, we tracked it closely, we analyzed its capabilities and we learned more about how it operates. We were able to protect sensitive sites because we knew its path. It would protect civilians but also allow us to recover significant components for further analysis, and we waited until it was safe over water.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry confirms that a Chinese weather balloon was found on an outlying island accompanied by simplified characters on the mainland
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 balloon carried equipment for a company in the north of the country, according to a statement from the ministry.
Taiwan maintained control of the islands after the sides split in 1949 amid civil war and they are considered a first line of defense should China make good on its threats to bring Taiwan under its control by force if necessary.
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.
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 the result of its maximum altitude being around 30,000 meters, which is almost 100,000 feet. He said the balloons regularly fly over the Taiwan Strait but have only just begun to draw attention.
Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said that the equipment information was written in simplified Chinese characters on the mainland.
Source: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/17/1157771528/taiwan-reports-that-a-chinese-weather-balloon-was-found-on-an-outlying-island
U.S. Repentance to the Taiwanese ‘Great Wall’, the “Great Wall” and the “Unacceptable Violation” of Chinese Laws
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.
While not expressing regret for downing the three still-unidentified objects, Biden said he hoped the new rules would help “distinguish between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not.”
The US Northern Command said Friday that the recovery effort had ended after Navy assets located and retrieved debris from the balloon.
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 public will most likely not receive a full explanation of what the objects were that the US shot down over the course of three days.
At the White House press briefing on Friday, Kirby said that he couldn’t guarantee that the White House would get to that level of detail, but he did say that they would like nothing better.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Kirby said, have been unable to find the object downed in the Yukon territory and the Canadians have decided not to look for the object that fell into Lake Huron.
“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 promise that we will know definitively one way or the other.
Price said that Blinken spoke of the “unacceptable violation” of U.S. sovereignty by the People’s Republic of China in a summary of the meeting.
According to Price, Wang and Blinken discussed the ongoing war with Russia and North Korea, as well as discouraging China from supporting them.
The U.S. requested the meeting between Blinken and Wang, as was reported by Xinhua News Agency. In its brief news report, the China Global TV Network said that Wang made sure that China’s solemn position on the incident was clear 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.”
What we saw when it crossed the United States was clearly an attempt to surveil very sensitive military sites.
The Top US Diplomat on the Invasion of Ukraine and Beijing’s Concern about the “Lethal Support” of the Kremlin
The top US diplomat said on the subject of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine that he has a concern about Beijing providing Moscow with “lethal support.”
The US is concerned about a shift in China’s posture and has shared its intelligence with allies and partners in recent days, according to officials.
Information we have that they might provide lethal support could cause a problem for us and we have made clear to them that that would cause a serious problem.
