Here We Go Again - Another Balloon Headed Our Way

Last week an unidentified balloon passed at high altitude in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands, home to a number of critical U.S. defense facilities including Pearl Harbor. Three Air Force F-22 fighters were scrambled. The balloon was not shot down. It is continuing its course heading east toward the continental United States.

"U.S. Indo-Pacific Command responded to an unidentified radar signature Friday in the vicinity of the island of Hawaii. Pacific Air Forces launched three F-22s to assess the situation and visually identified a spherical object," a spokesperson for INDOPACOM told The War Zone in a statement. "We monitored the transit of the object and assessed that it posed no threat. As a part of our normal daily operations, we closely track all vessels and aircraft in the Indo-Pacific area of operations through a combination of joint capabilities to protect the U.S. homeland, support our Allies and partners and secure a free and open Indo-Pacific."

In response to an inquiry from the War Zone, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) provided this additional information.

"The Department of Defense and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) detected and observed April 28th an unmanned, balloon off the coast of Hawaii, floating at approximately 36,000 feet. Ownership of the balloon is unknown, but there is no indication that it was maneuvering or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor."

"The balloon did not transit directly over defense critical infrastructure or other U.S. Government sensitive sites, nor did it pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground. Although it was flying at an altitude used by civil aviation, it posed no threat to civil aviation over Hawaii. Based on these observations, the Secretary of Defense concurred with the recommendation of his military commanders that no action need be taken against the balloon. The balloon is now out of Hawaii’s airspace and territorial waters. We will continue to track the balloon with the FAA."

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Not so fast.

Three F-22s were scrambled when the balloon was detected in close proximity to the Hawaiian island moving from west to east. Are we to understand that this means that the entire Department of Defense was unaware of the existence of this balloon until it almost drifted over Honolulu? Is that supposed to make us feel better?

Press reporting indicates that of the three F-22s scrambled two had to declare emergencies and return to base. That is not suggestive of a military ready to defend the nation. What exactly is our readiness posture in the Pacific?

DOD says this thing is not a threat because it did not pass directly over any of our bases. Didn’t we just admit that the balloon ultimately shot down over the Atlantic Ocean was carrying some very significant sensor arrays and beaming all data collected back to Beijing? Doesn’t that suggest that this latest balloon, assuming it was also Chinese, could also have collected data without having to fly directly over a military facility?

This might all be a little bit amusing were it not so serious. The Chinese have a very robust program dedicated to the use of airships and balloons to collect intelligence. They just flew one such vehicle over our most sensitive nuclear sites and this President made sure that balloon completed its mission and sent all intel collected back to Xi Jinping before he allowed it to be shot down.

Now months later we are following the same playbook. We appear to have learned nothing and made no significant changes to our strategy. Here we go again.