China sends balloons over military sites worldwide, intel agencies say

U. S. intelligence agencies have assessed that China’s spy balloon program is part of a global surveillance effort that is designed to collect information on the military capabilities of countries around the world, according to three American officials.

The balloon flights, some officials believe, are part of an effort by China to hone its ability to gather data about U.S. military bases — in which it is most interested — as well as those of other nations in the event of a conflict or rising tensions. U. S. officials said this week that the balloon programhas operated out ofmultiple locations in China.

At a news conference Wednesday, Brig Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesperson, said that over the past several years Chinese balloons have been spotted operating over Latin America, South America, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Europe.

“This is what we assess as part of a larger Chinese surveillance balloon program,” Ryder said.

Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said at another news conference in Washington that the State Department has shared information on the spy balloon program with dozens of countries, both in meetings in Washington and throughu.s. embassies abroad.

“We’re doing so because the United States was not the only target of this broader program, which has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents,” he said.

Biden administration officials said during the weekend that the balloon that crossed the United States last week was part of a larger Chinese surveillance effort. The Washington Post reported Tuesday newdetails about China’s balloon surveillance program, including that the program had operated partly out of the islands ofhainan province off China’s south coast.

The balloons have some advantages over the satellites that orbit the Earth in regular patterns, U.S. officials say. They fly closer to Earth and drift with wind patterns, which are not as predictable to militaries and intelligence agencies as the fixed orbits of satellites, and they can evade radar. They can also hover over areas while satellites are generally in constant motion. Simple cameras on balloons can produce clearer images than those on orbital satellites, and other surveillance equipment can pick up signals that do not reach the altitude of satellites.

American officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitivematters, said that intelligence agencies during the Biden administration had developed a far deeper understanding of the scope and size of the Chinese effort, discovering earlier incursions that had been classified as unknown events and tracking new operations by the Chinese spy balloons.

However, U.S. officials said most of the previous observations of the surveillance balloons had been short. The latest spy balloon’s transit across the United States gave the U.S. military and intelligence agencies a long period of time to study the capabilities of the surveillance equipment attached to it. Officials said their knowledge of what China was capable of collecting from their balloon programhas increased dramatically.

“This last week provided the United States with a unique opportunity to learn a lot more about the Chinese surveillance balloon program, all information that will help us to continue to strengthen our ability to track these kinds of objects,” Ryder said.

Before last week, the United States had tracked Chinese surveillance balloons collecting information from more than a dozen countries around the world, officials said. Some of the Chinese efforts appeared to be focused on the Pacific region, and a number of the balloons and other Chinese surveillance efforts have been detected over U.S. allies and partners in that region.

The New York Times reported Saturday that a classified intelligence report given to Congress last month highlighted at least two instances of a foreign power using advanced technology for aerial surveillance over U. S. military bases: one inside the continental United States and the other overseas. The research suggested China was the foreign power, U.S. officials said. The report also discussed surveillance balloons.

In the United States, at least five spy balloons have been observed — three during the Trump administration and two during the Biden administration. The spy balloons observed during the Trump administration initially were classified as unidentified aerial phenomena, U.S. officials said. It was not until after 2020 that officials closely examined the balloon incidents under a broader review of aerial phenomena and determined that the incidents were part of the Chinese global balloon surveillance effort.

While assessments differ on what the Chinese surveillance balloons can collect, many officials believe Chinese satellites are generally as capable of image collection as a balloon. But the balloons can linger longer over a site and potentially collect multiple forms of intelligence, although officials have not described what they know about the balloons’ collection ability.