Maybe The Balloon Was Watching Our Reaction
Years ago, I was serving in a CIA station in a Middle Eastern country. The Iranians paid assets to bring bags of trash and leave them against the wall around the U.S. Embassy. Every time a bag was detected, Embassy security personnel would respond, make sure the bag did not contain explosives, and then dispose of it.
It may seem a pointless exercise. It was not. Unbeknownst to us across the street from the Embassy with line of sight to the wall where the bags of trash were left, the Iranians had an apartment. An asset of theirs would watch and take notes, carefully establishing how long it took us to notice a bag had been dropped, who responded, and what our response was.
The contents of the bag were of no value. The information the Iranians gathered on our procedures was invaluable in planning for a possible attack.
Maybe that is what the Chinese spy balloons are all about. Maybe they are not collecting on anything of significance on the ground in the way of a static target. Maybe they are allowing the Chinese to collect on our ability to detect aerial intrusions and what our response is to such provocations.
Consider the available evidence. The balloon that was just shot down drifted across the continental United States at a low enough altitude that it was easily seen from the ground. It carried an array of solar panels and sensors as big as several school buses. That doesn’t sound like anybody was trying to hide this mission from anyone.
It also appears that this most recent incursion was only the latest in a long string of such operations. Apparently, multiple balloons entered U.S. airspace on prior occasions going back at least as far as the Trump administration. There is some continuing controversy regarding whether or not all such previous balloons were detected.
According to NORAD, we suffered in the past from a “domain awareness gap”. In layman’s terms, that means that a big balloon the size of multiple school buses and moving at a veritable crawl passed right through our vaunted air defenses and no one noticed. No big deal, unless you took that North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) moniker seriously.
An Air Force assessment obtained by CNN states that a spy balloon was “launched and controlled” by China in 2019. China has “deployed multiple HABs [high altitude balloons] that can operate at 65,000ft – 328,000 ft and for months at a time,” the assessment adds.
We should also keep in mind that shooting down the balloon after it crossed the United States is a largely irrelevant move. What we recover from the wreckage will be unlikely to constitute any great intelligence coup. The sensors on the balloon were certainly capable of communicating via satellite with China as the balloon moved. Whatever data those sensors picked up was sent home long ago.
However many balloon incursions have occurred in recent years, they are not isolated incidents. Chinese interest in high-altitude balloons and airships has existed for many years. The Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing has an entire Lighter Than Air Vehicle Center founded in 2005. This Center is working on high-altitude balloon systems and “Modern airships including stratospheric airships.”
The few papers released publicly by the Center show studies on solar power panels for high altitude balloons, control systems, preventing icing, and strengthening the balloon’s plastic envelope. Insanely enough a 2011 study, on how stratospheric balloons could keep station over a point on the ground, was a collaboration between Beihang University and MIT.
Recent papers show the Chinese have even done work on attaching propellors to high-altitude balloons to allow them to be steered. Such propellors were noted on the balloon that was just shot down.
The Chinese have also done work on launching drones from high-altitude balloons. In 2017 researchers from the Beijing Lighter Than Air Vehicle Center apparently successfully launched two drones from a stratospheric balloon. An electromagnetic launcher fired the "bat-sized" drones at over 60 mph, the first at over 80,000 feet, the other from 30,000 feet. The drones were intended to allow a closer look at objects on the ground.
“The goal of our research is to launch hundreds of these drones in one shot, like letting loose a bee or ant colony,” the lead researcher, Professor Yang, told the South China Morning Post.
Chinese work on high-altitude balloons and airships has led it to construct a massive facility in the Xinjiang Autonomous Region. That facility includes a hangar big enough to hold a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier. Multiple other hangars for lighter than air craft are located in the surrounding area.
In short, the Chinese have been working on high-altitude balloons and airships for a variety of applications for a very long time. Their programs are highly advanced, well-funded, and massive in scope. The Chinese do not send balloons into U.S. airspace without a clear purpose and without knowing precisely where the balloons will go.
It may make us feel better to revel in shooting down this most recent balloon. We may chuckle at the idea that a balloon could collect anything of value in this age of spy satellites. Perhaps we should check our hubris at the door.
Maybe the whole point of sending these balloons our way is not to observe anything on the ground. Maybe the whole point is to see how we react and to file that information away for use in an operation yet to come.
Now that FTX is out of action, the CCP could incorporate the Iranian method, and use balloons to deliver bags of cash to the Biden beach house and White House ... and Capitol Hill. That way the cash transfers are untraceable through the usual banking system(s).
Very plausible. China has been studying us for decades. When they attack our sleepyheads (those who refuse to wake up) will wonder how it could happen.