FIRST PERSON Ballooning
Over the past few days, US fighter jets shot down four strange flying objects that have crossed over American and Canadian airspaces. This is a ballooning phenomenon.
On Feb. 4, after days of tracking its movements, a US jet fighter fired a single missile to bring down a 200-foot balloon closely observed as it crossed the country. The Americans waited for the object to float out to sea off South Carolina before shooting it down to avoid any collateral damage on the ground.
China protested the action, claiming the balloon was owned by a civilian company and used for purely meteorological research. Beijing is asking for the debris of the balloon to be returned to it. Washington is not obliging. The Americans want to know more about the technology being used by China over US airspace.
Recovered remnants of that balloon have been sent to an FBI laboratory for examination. Washington has not released technical details to date.
On Feb. 10, US jets downed another “cylindrical” flying object off the coast of Alaska. Here, too, we are not told how much of the downed object was recovered from the frozen sea. All that has been shared is the observation that the downed object did not seem to have any system of propulsion or control. The flying object has not been attributed to China.
A day later, Feb. 11, another US jet shot down a “high-altitude airborne object” over Canada’s Yukon province, close to the border with Alaska. Apart from describing it as a hexagonal object, little has been made publicly known.
On Feb. 12, yet another strange flying object was tracked from over Montana and shot down over Lake Huron. Still, we are not told about the nature of the object nor its origin. Washington says the object was shot down because it posed a threat to commercial aircraft.
With very little detail disclosed, it is assumed that the three later objects were also balloons or something akin to it. Inasmuch as Washington had not officially attributed the three latter objects to China, Beijing has not issued any statement about them. The mystery deepens.
A debate has erupted in Washington over whether the flying objects shot down while wafting over North America were actually engaged in surveillance. We know next to nothing about the larger framework within which these strange flying objects was launched.
These balloons and whatever equipment they carry are rather costly things. They are not being sent up for the pleasure of watching a balloon waft in the air, carried by atmospheric currents with apparently very little ground control over their precise flight paths.
In addition to the very real hazard these balloons pose to commercial aircraft, they have been flown over another country’s airspace without prior notice. That is a clear national security concern. We are now told that unidentified balloons have been detected flying across US airspace the past years, although nothing was done about these previous flying objects.
One analyst surmised that China could be testing high-altitude or “near space” craft as part of its futuristic weapons development program. When enough has been known about wind currents and weather corridors, these devices could be fitted with warheads.
Defense officials have enough reasons to be worried. Over the past months, North Korea has been testing missiles like mad. A few weeks ago, Pyongyang paraded intercontinental ballistics missiles that could theoretically reach the US heartland.
It is not just North American airspace that have been violated by these strange flying objects. A large balloon similar to that one shot down off the coast of South Carolina was reported in the vicinity of Colombia. These devices apparently have the ability to circumnavigate the globe and stay aloft for long periods.
The downing of the first balloon was, no doubt, a huge embarrassment for the Chinese leadership. It marked the first strong response to whatever “near space” strategy China might be brewing. Beijing is probably scrambling for a viable explanation for the other objects shot down the past few days.
The balloon-related incidents reinstates Beijing as the true strategic rival to the US.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine merely exposed its much-ballyhooed army as obsolete, badly trained and ill-equipped. It is an army that belongs to the past century, now forced to recruit convicts to man the frontlines or die in large numbers trying to achieve badly thought-out military objectives.
The Russian army is now hobbled by the fact that its most sophisticated weaponry has been shown to rely on parts made in other countries. Russian technicians are now reported to be cannibalizing refrigerators for chips to be used in assembling missiles.
By contrast, China now appears to be gearing up its military for highly technological warfare. It appears to be devising strategies only poorly understood by the US and its allies.
After the first balloon was downed by a missile, China might have gotten away with the explanation that this was a meteorological instrument that somehow flew off course. After the three subsequent shoot-downs, the original Chinese explanation can no longer hold. Beijing better come up with a more viable explanation for why these “lost” flying devices seem to be crossing into the North American airspace in a wave.
Beijing does not have to explain anything until the remnants of downed flying objects reveal them to be of Chinese origin. Depending on the quality of the debris recovered, this could happen in a few days.