WASHINGTON: A suspected Chinese spy balloon has been flying over the United States for days, US officials said Thursday, days before a planned visit to Beijing by US Secretary of State Anthony Blanken. .
Fighter jets were mobilized, but military leaders advised President Joe Biden not to shoot the balloons out of the sky for fear of debris that could pose a safety hazard, a suggestion Biden accepted, US officials said. told.
The U.S. took the balloon “to safety” as it entered U.S. airspace and was observed by a piloted U.S. military aircraft, an official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
The incident recalls the lengths to which Beijing and Washington were willing to spy on each other amid rising tensions between the superpowers.
“The US government has located and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is currently over the continental United States,” Pentagon spokesman Brigadier General Patrick Ryder told reporters.
NEWS: U.S. Tracking High-Altitude Surveillance Balloon https://t.co/91vmqncyGX
— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) February 3, 2023
“The balloon is currently traveling well above commercial air traffic and does not pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”
Blinken will visit China next week for a planned November visit by Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It was unclear how the discovery of the spy balloon might affect those plans.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a JEE News request for comment.
US officials have raised the issue with their Chinese counterparts through diplomatic channels in Beijing and Washington. “We have taken this issue seriously with them,” a US official said.
US Senator Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the spy balloon was worrisome but not surprising.
A Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. is alarming but not surprising
— Marco Rubio (@marcorubio) February 2, 2023
The level of espionage aimed at our country by Beijing has grown dramatically more intense & brazen over the last 5 years
“The level of spying on our country by Beijing has grown dramatically more intense [and] brazen over the past 5 years,” Rubio said on Twitter.
His fellow Republican Senator Tom Cotton called on Blankenship to cancel his visit.
Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would request a “Gang of Eight” briefing, referring to secret national security briefings for congressional leaders and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the intelligence committees. A US official said the Biden administration briefed the Gang of Eight staff early Thursday and has offered additional briefings.
The news broke as CIA Director William Burns spoke at an event at Georgetown University in Washington, where he called China “the greatest geopolitical challenge” the United States is currently facing. .
Relations between China and the US have soured in recent years, particularly after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August, which sparked dramatic Chinese military exercises near the self-ruled island. .
Since then, Washington and Beijing have sought to communicate more frequently and prevent the relationship from deteriorating.
The Billings, Montana, airport issued a ground stop as the military mobilized assets, including F-22 fighter jets, in case Biden ordered the balloon down.
Potential security risk
U.S. military leaders considered dropping the balloon over Montana on Wednesday but ultimately advised Biden against it because of the safety risk from the debris, the official told reporters.
“We wanted to make sure that we are coordinating with the civil authorities to clear the airspace around this potential area,” the official said.
“But despite these safeguards, it was the judgment of our military commanders that we did not reduce the threat sufficiently. So we did not fire.”
The official said the current flight path would take the balloon to several sensitive locations, but did not give details. Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana is home to 150 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos.
A separate US official said the spy balloon was tracked near the Aleutian Islands and Canada before entering the US.
Officials declined to say how high the balloon was flying but acknowledged it was operating above civilian air traffic and below “outer space.”
Limited intelligence value?
Such balloons typically operate at 80,000–120,000 feet (24,000–37,000 m), where commercial air traffic flies. Most high-performance fighter jets typically do not fly above 65,000 feet, although spy planes such as the U-2 have a service range of 80,000 feet or more.
Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said such balloons were widely used by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and were a cost-effective way to gather intelligence.
Spy balloons have flown over the United States several times in recent years, but this one seemed to stay down longer than in previous incidents, an official said.
“Currently, we estimate that the additional value of this balloon from an intelligence gathering perspective is limited, but we are nevertheless taking steps to protect it from foreign intelligence gathering of sensitive information,” the official said. said
Alexander Neal, a Singapore-based security analyst, said that while the balloon was likely to create a new strain in Sino-US relations, it was likely of limited intelligence compared to other elements of China’s advanced military. There is a pass.
“China has its own constellation of spy and military satellites that are much more important and effective in terms of watching the US, so I think it’s a fair assumption that the intelligence gain is not very high,” Neal said. , which is an associated partner. at the Pacific Forum think tank in Hawaii.
