Inspiralling the American Navy: A Closer Look at the US Embassy in the Hainan Island of the Philippines, during the April 1, 2001, Aircraft Collision

Editor’s Note: Beth Sanner is a former deputy director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration, a position where she oversaw the elements that coordinate and lead collection, analysis, and program oversight throughout the Intelligence Community. In this role she also served as the president’s intelligence briefer. She is a professor-of-practice at the Applied Research Lab for Intelligence and Security at the University of Maryland and a CNN national security analyst. The opinions expressed in this commentary are her own. CNN has more opinion on it.

The official suggested that the US is eyeing sanctions for the presence of the balloon in US airspace – which US officials have repeatedly called a violation of US sovereignty and international law – noting the US “will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into US airspace.”

The Chinese seized an underwater US Navy vehicle just 50 nautical miles from Subic Bay in the Philippines, and hundreds of miles away from China. (Subic Bay was home to the largest US naval base in Asia until disagreements over leasing costs led to a withdrawal in 1992; ironically, US sailors might soon return to the base following Manila’s recent decision to allow a greater, albeit rotational, US military presence in the Philippines as a counter to Chinese aggression.) It was believed to have been a message to Donald Trump just two weeks before he took the oath of office, and several weeks after he received a call from Taiwan’s president. Beijing agreed to return the craft three days later, but never apologized and accused the US of spying.

The most memorable and instructive example dates back to the presidency of George W. Bush. On April 1, 2001, two Chinese fighter jets harassed a US Navy EP-3 surveillance plane over international waters near China. One collided with the EP-3 and crashed. The EP-3’s pilot managed to regain control of his heavily-damaged plane and made an unauthorized emergency landing on China’s Hainan Island. The 24 US crew members were held for 11 days, and some were repeatedly interrogated before US officials negotiated their release.

The Chinese President blamed the US for the accident. The two sides agreed on the return of the aircraft almost two months later. Having removed and refused to return the plane’s hardware, software and communications equipment, the Chinese insisted the EP-3 be dismantled and transported by a third party at the US’s expense. The Bush Administration was trying to charge $1 million for the costs associated with the incident. Washington countered with an offer of some $34,000 it said was a “fair figure” — money China refused — and never apologized.

The time of events help explain why defense officials didn’t act before the balloon sailed over US territory. That lack of urgency has become a sharp political flashpoint on Capitol Hill, where some Republicans have criticized the administration for not sounding the alarm sooner.

As the Brookings Institution’s China expert, Ryan Hass, recently put it during an interview on the German Marshall Fund’s “China Global” podcast,”‘establishing guardrails’ is neither strategy nor policy… and is lacking in ambition.” If we want to advance our global interests, we must set clear boundaries with China and explain the threat to a skeptical global South. Another Chinese balloon traversing Costa Rica and Colombia in recent days provides a strong optic.

Peter Bergen is the national security analyst for CNN and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. Bergen is the author of “The Cost of Chaos: The Trump Administration and the World.” The views he expresses in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

And it reminded me that when my father, Tom Bergen, was a lieutenant in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s, he worked on a program to help send balloons into Soviet airspace.

He was assigned to the Headquarters Air Material Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio in 1954. He worked on the balloon project that brought cameras to the then-Soviet Union. Those spy balloons were launched from Turkey.

The program my father worked on was a secret until around seven decades ago, when it was declassified.

Spy Balloon History Bergen: How Maxar Technologies Acquired the US Army for $6 Billion in Indirect Detection

Beijing said the assessment was a part of the US information and public opinion warfare against China. Despite maintaining that the device identified over the US is civilian and linked to companies, it wouldn’t say which company manufactured the balloons.

Now the United States and its rivals have these new-fangled gizmos called “spy satellites,” which can take photos! They are able to do full-motion video. They can take thermal imagery and see people at night. When the skies are clear, they can spy on pretty much anything, with a resolution of centimeters.

Satellite imagery is cheap now so you can buy yourself close-up images of a Russian battle group in Ukranian. Two months ago Maxar Technologies was acquired for $6 billion by a private equity firm, and they built up a profitable business on this model.

But it may help explain, at least in part, an element of a little-noticed report published by the US Office of Director of National Intelligence last month.

The report looked at more than 500 reports of unidentified objects in the sky, many of them reported by US Navy and US Air Force personnel and pilots. These reports were assessed by the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, a fancy name for the office that tries to examine UFO sightings.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/07/opinions/spy-balloon-history-bergen/index.html

What China wants in the U.S. response to the F-35 theft and other wrongdoing: intelligence officials are concerned that the Chinese explanation for the recent flight was an accident

But China has arguably done much worse. The US has accused it of benefiting from the work of hackers who stole design data about the F-35 fighter aircraft as it builds its own new generation of fighters, and of taking up much of the personal information of 20 million Americans who were members of the US government. The F-35 theft report was rubbished by China, and they didn’t blame the OPM hacking.

The second balloon found in Latin America was being tracked by the Pentagon. The General said that was assessed to be another Chinese balloon.

Roughly half a dozen of those flights have been within US airspace – although not necessarily over US territory, according to one official familiar with the intelligence.

And not all of the balloons sighted around the globe have been exactly the same model as the one shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, that official and another source familiar with the intelligence said. Rather, there are multiple “variations,” these people said.

The link to the broader surveillance program, which was uncovered before the latest balloon was spotted last week, was first reported by the Washington Post.

The source familiar with the FBI operation also noted the intelligence community will be interested in learning whether the equipment on the Chinese balloon bears any technical resemblance to technology constructed by the US intelligence community and military, as the Chinese government has long been aggressive in stealing American defense secrets.

“The domain awareness was there as it approached Alaska,” NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters on Monday. “It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America… It was not demonstrating hostile intent, so I could not take immediate action.

Officials say the biggest unanswered question is what China wants. China continues to argue that the vessel was a weather balloon that drifted off-course, and that its path over the United States was an accident. The type of balloon that was acknowledged was limited in steering capabilities and mostly rode the jet stream.

Several defence officials and other sources briefed on the intelligence have concluded that the Chinese explanation for the balloon’s path is not credible.

This elite team consists of agents, analysts, engineers and scientists, who are responsible for both creating technical surveillance measures and analyzing those of the US’ adversaries.

OTD personnel are responsible for managing the court-authorized data collection and fighting efforts by foreign intelligence agencies to penetrate the US, even though they are also responsible for construction of the surveillance devices used by the FBI.

But, according to one member of the House Intelligence Committee, “there’s number of reasons why we wouldn’t do that. We want to collect off it, you want to see where it’s going and what it’s doing.

A defense official said the US has procedures – akin to a kind of digital blackout – to protect sensitive locations from overhead surveillance, typically used for satellite overflight.

Biden had no contact with China during the state of the union, but he had asked for an explanation of the shoot down of the high altitude surveillance balloon

The Chinese leader has not spoken to Biden since the balloon was shot down, the vice president said. But he pointed to continued contacts between officials in his administration and their Chinese counterparts.

“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” The interview was conducted a day after Biden gave his second State of the Union address.

Biden administration officials have stressed that the meeting was not canceled, but instead delayed until a later date. The date isn’t yet set.

The official said that based on China’s “messaging and public comments, it’s clear that they have been scrambling to explain why they violated US sovereignty and still have no plausible explanation – and have found themselves on their heels.”

Biden Administration officials have said that they are able to mitigate any intelligence collection capacity of the balloon because they were quick to do so, and will be benefited from the ability to collect information about the balloon and Chinese intelligence capabilities during and after its flight.

The Chinese Communist Party’s use of a high altitude surveillance balloon over the US is a ” brazen violation of United States sovereignty”, Steve Scalise’s office said in a statement.

Senior administration officials say that Biden was not briefed until three days later when the balloon crossed into the US from Canada. Biden asked the military to immediately shoot the balloon down, officials said.

Observation of the recovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. from its invasion of Ukraine and preparation for a visit to Beijing

And he detailed a telling observation he shared with Xi last year as US officials warned China not to provide military support to Russia in its invasion of Ukraine.

The photos of the recovery effort of a suspected Chinese spy balloon were released Tuesday by the US Navy.

On Monday, Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told reporters that the balloon was roughly 200 feet tall and carried a payload weighing more than a couple of thousand pounds.

“[F]rom a safety standpoint, picture yourself with large debris weighing hundreds if not thousands of pounds falling out of the sky. That is really what Van Herck is talking about. Glass from solar panels, potentially hazardous material such as material that’s required for a batteries to operate in such an environment, and potential explosives to destroy the balloon that could have been present, are just some of the potential dangers that could have arisen from this situation.

“[T]his gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed, and I think you’ll see in the future that that time frame was well worth its value to collect over,” VanHerck said.

It was only when the balloon turned south that it “got strange,” a senior US official told CNN. “We immediately started talking about shooting it down, then.”

A Foreign Ministry statement said that the Chinese side had repeatedly informed the US side that the balloon was for civilian use and that it entered the US due to force majeure.

The situation resulted in a postponed visit for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, which had been expected to happen within days of the balloon’s sighting.

China admitted Monday that the balloon had deviated from its flight course while being used for flight tests.

Mao Ning, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, was quoted as saying that China is a responsible country. We have always followed international law. All relevant parties have been informed and handled the situation in a way that did not involve any threats to any countries.

China is also reviving a decades-old technology to use lighter-than-air vehicles and is developing high tech vessels such as solar-powered drones. They include high-altitude balloons like the one over the United States that was shot down on Saturday.

Lying between the flightpaths of most commercial and military jets and below satellites, near space is an area where space travel can occur, but also a place where weapons of mass destruction can cross.

China has made “breakthroughs” in developing its stratospheric airships, high-altitude balloons and the cloud chaser

The US, Russia and Israel have made progress in developing these vehicles and China has made its own “breakthroughs” according to Cheng Wanmin, an expert at the National University of Defense Technology.

The space for information confrontation can be found not only in land, sea, and the low altitude, but also in modern technology. A new battlefield in modern warfare is near space, according to an article in the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army.

Unlike rotating satellites or traveling aircraft, stratospheric airships and high-altitude balloons “can hover over a fixed location for a long period of time” and are not easily detected by radar, wrote Shi Hong, the executive editor of Shipborne Weapons, a prominent military magazine published by a PLA-linked institute, in an article published in state media in 2022.

“They are cheap, provide long-term persistent stare for collection of imagery, communications and other information – including weather,” said Mulvaney, who authored a 2020 paper that detailed China’s interest in using lighter-than-air vehicles for “near-space reconnaissance.”

An example of the advances China has made is the reported flight of the cloud chaser, a very long dirigidible-like airplane. The vehicle had travelled across Asia, Africa and North America in a circle around the world of 20,000 meters above the Earth in an interview with the Southern Daily newspaper.

The US has also been bolstering its capacity to use lighter-than-air vehicles. In 2021, the US Department of Defense contracted an American aerospace firm to work on using their stratospheric balloons as a means “to develop a more complete operating picture and apply effects to the battlefield,” according to a statement from the firm, Raven Aerostar, at the time.

The documentary did not provide any further information about the incident, but a paper published last April by researchers of thePLA institute said airdrift balloons were seen over China in 1997.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/china/china-balloon-near-space-development-intl-hnk/index.html

Why the Air Balloon Not Was Shot Down When It Enters US Airspace: The Case of the Taiwan-Japan Hyper-Air Shower

Carl Schuster, who used to work at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center, said that understanding the atmospheric conditions is critical to programming the guidance software for missiles.

Both the self-governing island of Taiwan and Japan have acknowledged past, similar sightings, though it is not clear if they are related to the US incident.

Data collected from the balloon itself would have gone back to China, if it is classified as “dual use” or “state-owned”.

“At the end of the day responses and (tactics, techniques, and procedures) from the US and other countries on how they react, or fail to – all of that has value to China and the PLA.”

The officials that were aware of the original report on the balloon conceded that they didn’t see it as an urgent threat until it was already over US territory.

The reports the DIA sends out, whether they read them or not, is a matter of discretion, but US officials have access to these reports, regardless of whether they read them or not.

The US moved to investigate the object, instead of treating it as an immediate threat.

As Congress demanded more information regarding why the balloon wasn’t shot down sooner, senior Biden officials faced questions from lawmakers in public hearings and classified briefings.

On January 28, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, sent up fighter jets to make a positive identification, according to defense officials, reflecting a subtle shift in urgency.

The officials told lawmakers one of the reasons the balloon was not first shot down when it entered Alaskan airspace is that the waters there are cold and deep, making it less likely they could have recovered the balloon, according to the sources.

Military officials said that it was not surprising that the president was not briefed until January 31 because of the expectations for the balloon.

As more information about the administration’s decision-making process on the balloon has continued to trickle out, Congress has taken a keen interest.

How Well Did President Mitigate a War on the Ocean? A Democrat Sen. Mitt Romney Tells CNN: “The U.S. was never going to tell anybody”

“There are still a lot of questions to be asked about Alaska,” a Senate Republican aide told CNN. Why isn’t it possible to transit Alaska without telling anyone, but the continental US is different?

The image of a pilot taking selfies in his cockpit in front of NORAD and the Pentagon has already gained legendary status, these officials said.

An official said the Chinese balloon was capable of surveilling US communications and was determined by the Biden administration.

Lawmakers were told the order to send the balloon was dispatched without the knowledge of the Chinese president, according to sources.

The officials, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. has only collected materials that were on the ocean’s surface so far, including the balloon canopy, some wiring and a “very small amount of electronics.”

“We did not assess that it presented a significant collection hazard beyond what already exists in actionable technical means from the Chinese,” said Gen. Glenn VanHerck, the commander of US Northern Command and NORAD, on Monday.

Sources said the House briefed Thursday morning on the situation in Afghanistan, with several Republicans railing against the administration, including one who said the military made the president look weak.

“The Pentagon was telling us they were able to mitigate in real-time as this was taking place and I believe that’s accurate,” Rep. Mike Quigley, an Illinois Democrat, told CNN.”I believe the preeminent concern they had, as they expressed in real time, was the safety of US citizens.”

The administration, the president, our military and intelligence agencies acted skillfully and with care, I believe. At the same time, their capabilities are extraordinarily impressive. Was everything done correctly? It wouldn’t be the case of almost anything we do. Romney said Thursday that he came away more confident.

What have we learnt from the suspected Chinese spy balloon in the ocean? Senator Jon Tester’s briefing on Thursday at the Senate Appropriations Committee

The military assessment of the Chinese intelligence was questioned on Thursday at an Appropriations Committee hearing by Senator Jon Tester, who said that he was not certain how they could say it was not a military threat.

There is a reason this baby was not taken out long before and I want you to help me understand that. Now that we have seen a long incursion, what will happen next? said Tester, the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Defense Subcommittee.

Pentagon officials said at the hearing that the Defense Department was not concerned about the balloon gathering intelligence over Alaska as it was not near sensitive sites.

The parts of the balloon recovered on the surface of the ocean have been delivered so far, while recovering additional pieces of the balloon that sunk has been complicated by bad weather, officials said.

It’s not yet clear where the balloon’s parts were manufactured, the officials said, including whether any of the pieces were made in America. In order to make a determination as to the device’s intent, analysts need to look at the equipment on the balloon.

Analysts haven’t found any material that would cause a danger to the American public from the small portion they have examined.

There was English writing on parts of the balloon that were found, one of the sources familiar with the congressional briefings said, though they were not high-tech components. The source wouldn’t reveal anything about the English writing in the balloon.

“As we saw with the second balloon over Central and South America that they just acknowledged, they also have no explanation for why they violated the airspace of Central and South American countries,” the official said. “The PRC’s program will only continue to be exposed, making it harder for the PRC to use this program.”

A State Department official gave an update on Thursday on what was learned from the suspected Chinese spy balloon in the ocean, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

One of the FBI officials said that it was “very early” to know what the intent was but that the main electronics payload had not yet been recovered.

Mao: “It’s a part of the information war that China has waged” and “innovated” in reducing the number of U.S. spying and spying on China

“That narrative is probably a part of the information and public opinion warfare the U.S. has waged on China,” Mao added. “As to who is the world’s number one country of spying, eavesdropping and surveillance, that is plainly visible to the international community.”

And the government is investing in improvements, too. In 2018, for example, China launched a project to research materials that can be used to make balloons that can float higher without losing buoyancy.