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Post by Admin on Feb 3, 2023 3:13:04 GMT
Pentagon officials said the U.S. is tracking an alleged spy balloon that was floating over the continental U.S. Officials decided not to shoot it down.
The US is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted flying over sensitive sites in recent days.
Defence officials said they were confident the "high-altitude surveillance balloon" belonged to China. It was most recently seen above the western state of Montana.
The military decided against shooting it down in case debris falls.
China warned against speculation and "hype" until the facts are verified.
The object flew over Alaska's Aleutian Islands and through Canada before appearing over the city of Billings in Montana on Wednesday, US officials said.
A senior defence official said the government prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, in case the White House ordered the object to be shot down.
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Post by Admin on Feb 3, 2023 4:44:17 GMT
Montana, a sparsely populated state, is home to one of only three nuclear missile silo fields in the country, at Malmstrom Air Force Base, and the official said the apparent spy craft was flying over sensitive sites to collect information.
But the military leaders advised against taking "kinetic action" against the balloon because of the danger that falling debris might pose to people on the ground.
Officials refrained from giving information about the exact size of the balloon, but described it as "sizeable", with reports of pilots being able to see it, even from a distance. US media have reported another US official comparing it to the size of three buses.
The defence department, however, said there was no "significantly enhanced threat" of US intelligence being compromised, because American officials "know exactly where this balloon is and exactly where it's passing over".
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Post by Admin on Feb 3, 2023 17:46:11 GMT
LIVE: China spy balloon updates and analysis 1pm ET | LiveNOW from FOX The US had raised the matter with Chinese officials in their embassy in Washington DC and in Beijing, officials added. China's foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Beijing is currently attempting to verify the reports of the surveillance balloon, adding that "until the facts are clear, making conjectures and hyping up the issue will not help to properly resolve it". "China is a responsible country and always abides strictly by international law. We have no intention of violating the territory or airspace of any sovereign country," she said. During Thursday's briefing at the Pentagon, officials declined to disclose the aircraft's current location and did not give information on where it was launched from. They added that such surveillance balloons had been tracked in the past several years, but this one was "appearing to hang out for a longer period of time this time around".
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Post by Admin on Feb 3, 2023 18:11:46 GMT
Seoul, South Korea CNN — News that the Pentagon is monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in the skies over the continental United States raises a series of questions – not least among them, what exactly it might be doing.
US officials have said the flight path of the balloon, first spotted over Montana on Thursday, could potentially take it over a “number of sensitive sites” and say they are taking steps to “protect against foreign intelligence collection.”
But what’s less clear is why Chinese spies would want to use a balloon, rather than a satellite to gather information.
This is not the first time a Chinese balloon has been spotted over the US, but this seems to be acting differently to previous ones, a US defense official said.
“It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances. That would be one distinguishing factor,” the official said.
On Friday, Beijing claimed the balloon was a “civilian airship” used mainly for weather research that deviated from its planned course. The statement, by a spokeperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, is the first admission that the airship originated in China since the Pentagon revealed it was tracking the balloon on Thursday.
Don’t spies use satellites now? Using balloons as spy platforms goes back to the early days of the Cold War. Since then the US has used hundreds of them to monitor its adversaries, said Peter Layton, a fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute in Australia and former Royal Australian Air Force officer.
But with the advent of modern satellite technology enabling the gathering of overflight intelligence data from space, the use of surveillance balloons had been going out of fashion.
Or at least until now.
Recent advances in the miniaturization of electronics mean the floating intelligence platforms may be making a comeback in the modern spying toolkit.
“Balloon payloads can now weigh less and so the balloons can be smaller, cheaper and easier to launch” than satellites, Layton said.
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Post by Admin on Feb 3, 2023 18:15:45 GMT
Blake Herzinger, an expert in Indo-Pacific defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, said despite their slow speeds, balloons aren’t always easy to spot.
“They’re very low signature and low-to-zero emission, so hard to pick up with traditional situational awareness or surveillance technology,” Herzinger said.
And balloons can do some things that satellites can’t.
“Space-based systems are just as good but they are more predictable in their orbital dynamics,” Layton said.
“An advantage of balloons is that they can be steered using onboard computers to take advantage of winds and they can go up and down to a limited degree. This means they can loiter to a limited extent.
“A satellite can’t loiter and so many are needed to criss-cross an area of interest to maintain surveillance,” he said.
What might it be spying on? According to Layton, the suspected Chinese balloon is likely collecting information on US communication systems and radars.
“Some of these systems use extremely high frequencies that are short range, can be absorbed by the atmosphere and being line-of-sight are very directional. It’s possible a balloon might be a better collection platform for such specific technical collection than a satellite,” he said.
Retired US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a CNN military analyst, echoed those thoughts.
“They could be scooping up signals intelligence, in other words, they’re looking at our cell phone traffic, our radio traffic,” Leighton told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
Intelligence data collected by the balloon could be relayed in real time via a satellite link back to China, Layton said.
Analysts also noted that Montana and nearby states are home to US intercontinental ballistic missile silos and strategic bomber bases.
US officials say they have taken actions to ensure the balloon cannot collect any sensitive data. They decided against shooting it down because of the risk to lives and property by falling debris.
And if the US could bring down the balloon within its territory without destroying it then the balloon might reveal some secrets of its own, Layton added.
But maybe there are no secrets or spying involved. This could be just an accident, with the balloon blown off course or Chinese operators losing control of it somehow.
“There’s at least some possibility that this was a mistake and the balloon ended up somewhere Beijing didn’t expect,” Herzinger said.
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