THE DOWNING OF a huge Chinese balloon off the US coast, followed by the shootdowns of three smaller objects over Alaska, Canada and Lake Huron on the US-Canada border has caused much speculation across the world.
While the first object has been attributed to Beijing, the Pentagon does not know yet what the other three objects are or who they belong to.
So what were these four downed objects, why are there so many of them now, and what impact could it have on US-China relations?
The drama began in late January, when a giant Chinese balloon – dubbed a spy craft by American officials – drifted for days through US skies before being shot down 4 February by an F-22 jet off the South Carolina coast.
China insisted the balloon, which was flying at around 60,000 feet (18,000 metres) was conducting weather research and had gone astray.
The Pentagon said it had a gondola the size of three buses and was equipped with multiple antennas and had solar panels large enough to power several intelligence-gathering sensors.
It also appeared to be able to steer itself, using winds and possibly a propulsion mechanism, officials said.
Then last Friday, US fighter jets downed another object off northern Alaska.
It was much smaller than the Chinese balloon, and lacked any system of propulsion or control, and was flying at a much lower altitude of around 40,000 feet (12,000 m), officials said.
On Saturday, a US F-22 jet, acting on US and Canadian orders, downed a “high-altitude airborne object” over Canada’s far northwest Yukon territory, saying it posed a threat to civilian flight.
Canada described it as cylindrical like and about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle.
On Sunday, US president Joe Biden then ordered US warplanes to down yet another unidentified object over Lake Huron, on the US-Canada border.
The object was described as an octagonal structure with strings hanging off it.
It too posed a hazard to civil aviation as it flew at about 20,000 feet (6,000 meters), officials said.
Mystery objects.#AFPGraphics map of North America showing places were mystery objects have been shot down from the sky since the downing of a Chinese balloon on February 4 pic.twitter.com/BWBeN5StsO
— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 13, 2023
The Pentagon said none of the four objects appeared armed or posed any threat of attack.
Officials would not comment on the origin or function of the three objects that came after the Chinese balloon. Only this balloon has been attributed to Beijing so far.
On Sunday, US Assistant Secretary of Defence Melissa Dalton said that after the Chinese balloon was detected, US air defence made adjustments to radar systems to be able to detect smaller and slower-moving objects in the atmosphere.
Analysts said normally US and Canadian intelligence constantly receive huge amounts of raw data, and generally screened some out to focus on the threat of incoming missiles, not slow-moving objects like balloons.
Speaking to The Journal, retired Army Officer and security analyst Tom Clonan said the “most frightening part of all of this is that one of the objects was found at 20,000 feet, an altitude within which civilian airliners operate”.
He added: “There’ll be a danger to aviation. So if you were in an aircraft and it hit one of these things, everybody would be killed and there will be no survivors. So that’s why the thing is extremely concerning and dangerous.”
It seems archaic but Clonan told The Journal that this might have been an attempt to hide in plain sight.
“A lot of countries spy on each other; they carry out electronic surveillance and eavesdropping, they monitor the airspace of their competitors or enemies as they see fit.
“It seems strange [to use a balloon] but there may be reasons why they did that. Maybe they wanted to disguise it in some way to look like something that was gathering data on metrological information and configured in that way to make it look more innocent than it was.”
China has claimed the balloon was a weather research object that went off course.
But Defence analyst Declan Power insisted that “there is always a purpose to what the Chinese do”.
“This wasn’t an accident,” Power told The Journal.
“They’re using a very simplistic piece of technology, but it has allowed them access and has maybe given them an understanding of reaction times and the readiness of the US.”
While Power noted that the use of a balloon may seem “counterintuitive”, he added: “It is much more difficult to detect something when your sensors are all calibrated in a certain direction, or at a certain technological level.”
Power said it is reminiscent of how some terrorist groups have reverted to basic means of communication in recent years because “it is harder to detect”.
“For example, Al Qaeda stopped using email and electronic communication and used couriers to pass information, because that was harder to detect.
“And I think in a sense, the Chinese are doing a little bit of that. The US early warning systems didn’t pick up on some of these things floating around in their jurisdiction in the previous administration.
“This is because there were calibrated towards what would have seemed like a more likely treat, such as aircraft flying at subsonic levels or satellites.”
US officials say the Chinese balloon, which flew over sensitive US nuclear missile sites, had surveillance equipment that could intercept telecommunications.
Power said that the information gathered will be limited and “nothing too significant”, but added that it could be a piece of a “mosaic”.
He told The Journal: “These balloons are used for detecting prevailing weather conditions, which will be useful to an extent, but a lot of this will be known in the trade as open source intelligence.”
Open source intelligence is derived from data and information that is available to the general public.
“It’s not terribly secret, but a lot of people don’t understand when they hear the term “intelligence”. But it’s about being able to interpret and analyse it, and that’s where the skill set comes in.”
Power said this “not terribly secret data” could be a “useful piece in the mosaic of the intelligence picture China is building up about aspects of the US readiness to respond to perceived threats or perceived incursions.”
But he added: “This wouldn’t be of a very high threat nature and in many respects, I would argue this has been largely blown out of proportion.”
Power told The Journal that it is “slightly unusual” that China has claimed accountability for the first balloon.
“They could have quite easily decided to completely deny this and then spin things out but they pretty much owned it from the get go.”
However, information on the other three objects is limited and speculation is growing about who they belonged to.
The White House acknowledged: “Countries, companies, research and academic organizations operate objects at these altitudes for purposes that are not nefarious at all, including scientific research.”
These three objects were much smaller and flying considerably lower, thus posing a threat to civilian aviation.
However, Clonan said it is highly likely they belong to China.
“If a university or a research organisation had a probe in the airspace, they would have to have a flight plan, a transponder, and civilian aircraft would have to be informed of the presence of drones, or any other object in the airspace.
“There would have to be a notice to airmen, so that civil aviation would know that there was something in that airspace.”
Clonan adds: “Last week, we had Dublin Airport closed for a period of time because someone was operating a drone in and around the runways.
“They closed their airport because that’s a risk to aircraft coming in to land or take off, it’s a serious hazard.
“So if you have something up at 20,000 feet, it’s the same hazard. So why would a university or a research institution put one of those things out there without having a flight path, without having a license to do so, or without having a transponder so it can be detected by aircraft and air traffic controllers?”
However, the US said the truth will not be clear until debris is collected and added that this is not a simple act.
In the case of the large Chinese balloon, sea conditions yesterday made diving impossible, said National Security Council spokesman John Kirby.
He added that the three subsequent craft were brought down in “pretty remote, difficult areas to reach.”
Meanwhile, Canadian Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino called the location of the debris of the unidentified object shot down over the Yukon on Saturday “extremely challenging and difficult to access.”
China today urged the United States to conduct a “thorough investigation” into what Beijing claims was a string of incursions into its airspace by US balloons.
Beijing has also doubled down on unsubstantiated allegations that the US has sent over 10 balloons since last year.
Washington has denied Beijing’s claims that it sent observation devices into Chinese airspace.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters yesterday that the US is “not flying surveillance balloons over China”.
“I’m not aware of any other craft that we’re flying over into Chinese airspace,” he said.
Power told The Journal that he doesn’t believe China’s claims that the US is flying balloons over the country.
“Of course the US is spying on China as much as it can,” said Power, “but I doubt they’re using those balloons.
“The Chinese would have produced something, even if it was something they made up themselves, but they would have produced something to back up their claim.
“I don’t think there was anything that they would get from flying balloons that they would particularly need, and if they were doing it and the Chinese had evidence they would be producing it.”
The diplomatic fallout has already been quite substantial, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken abruptly cancelling a rare visit to Beijing.
However, Power told The Journal that relations weren’t “particularly great anyway” and added that this is unlikely to cause further lasting damage.
Clonan agreed that US-China ties are deteriorating but didn’t feel that this will be a turning point.
“I don’t think this is a turning point. It’s definitely more evidence of the deterioration, but I don’t think it’s all that significant in and of itself.”
After decades of investigating some strange sightings by US military pilots that were categorized as “UFOs”, officials were not ready to completely dismiss the idea that aliens or extra-terrestrials were the source.
“I haven’t ruled out anything at this point,” said General Glen VanHerck on Sunday when asked about that possibility.
However, after mounting pressure on Biden’s administration to explain the unprecedented situation, officials told reporters that aliens are not behind it.
“I just wanted to make sure we address this from the White House,” Biden’s press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre said yesterday at the top of the first full-blown briefing since the latest shoot-down of an unidentified object.
“There have been questions and concerns about this but there is no – again, no – indication of aliens or extra-terrestrial activity,” she said.
Power is also dismissive of an extra-terrestrial link and said: “I don’t think there’s any validity to the extra-terrestrial angle.
“The pandemic has reminded us of the huge number of tinfoil hat wearing cranks that exist in the Western world, and particularly in the United States, but not just the United States, who are willing to believe any and every kind of spurious nonsense that they read on the internet.”
Clonan also ruled out alien involvement and said: “Given the circumstances of all this, it’s extremely unlikely.
“If you have a technology that’s capable of reaching in that way, it’s not going to consist of balloons and it wouldn’t be something that could be very easily shut down either.
“If something like that were ever to happen, I think it would look completely different to this and we would know all about it.”
-With additional reporting from © AFP 2022
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