The Chinese surveillance balloon that has appeared over Montana may provide some insight into China’s operations and technology as the Pentagon continues to monitor its progress and refrains from shooting it down, experts tell Fox News Digital.
“There is a certain… shall we say political and informational value in letting the Chinese know that we have seen it or are watching it, and which I also think will make them think that we are also trying to potentially exploit the situation and figure out how to improve their surveillance techniques and capabilities,” Matt McInnis, Senior Fellow for the China program at the Institute for the Study of War, told Fox News Digital.
The Pentagon announced Thursday that the US government had detected a high-altitude surveillance balloon, first spotted by the public over Montana, where it hovered over Malmstrom Air Force Base. The United States uses the base to store nuclear weapons.
Senior State and Defense Department officials labeled the balloon’s presence in US airspace an “unacceptable” violation of US sovereignty, but continued to warn against the downing. The balloon is roughly the size of three Greyhound buses and carries heavy surveillance equipment.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for its lack of action, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeting Saturday, “The first Biden refused to defend our borders. Now he won’t defend our skies.”
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China’s foreign ministry admitted ownership of the balloon but insisted it is a civilian weather balloon that has gone drifting. A senior US official told Fox News the government remained confident “this was intentional.”
A senior defense official said the US scrambled jets after detecting the balloon Wednesday as it approached US airspace, and even considered shooting it down, but decided against it. US defense officials said on Friday that the United States had prevented the balloon from relaying to China, ending any current national security threat it could pose.
A balloon flies in the sky above Billings, Montana on February 1, 2023.
(Chase Doak/via Reuters.)
McInnis compared the balloon to Cold War flights of U-2 spy planes, saying that this “goes both ways,” but that it’s understandable that Americans feel the government needs to do something, like shoot down the balloon.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if part of our goals here were to use this operation, because that’s already done the damage, e [the U.S. can] use this opportunity to understand what these balloons can do,” McInnis said.
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Rebekah Koffler, president of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and a former DIA intelligence officer, said any intelligence or insight the US can glean from the balloon does not outweigh the damage caused by allowing a Chinese device to violate US airspace. .
“I suppose there is value in not shooting it down, but I think the risk of the Chinese thinking they can simply violate our airspace without consequence, in my view, far outweighs any insight we can glean from that particular balloon that it doesn’t We already know this from other sources,” Koffler, a specialist in foreign threats, doctrines and aerospace operations, told Fox News Digital.
The map shows the approximate path of a Chinese surveillance balloon over Montana on Friday, Feb. 3, 2023.
(Fox News)
Koffler explained that the balloon actually provides a couple of different advantages to China over more conventional and expected methods of espionage, mainly the ability to hover and gather data as well as seeing what range of capabilities China can bring against the United States at the moment. start. “prepare the battlefield”.
“Satellites move, they don’t hover over a target,” Koffler said. “We don’t know what kind of sensors are in this particular balloon, but there are various kinds of sensors” for what she calls “measurement intelligence.”
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“It appears that this particular spy balloon may work – and again, we have no confirmation – but it may be picking up our intelligence signals… and it may be picking up our communications from [military] targets and those facilities,” he added, clarifying that it may be necessary to examine the volume of communications to understand the operating procedures of the US military.
“With Chinese tensions rising and their position of strength vis-à-vis Taiwan, what they’re concerned about is our response, so monitoring any kind of spike in communications could tell them we’re getting ready to do something about it.”
American views on China
(Fox News)
The United States is in a delicate position with its stockpiles of missiles and munitions weakened following a year-long effort to resupply Ukraine as it repels Russia’s invasion. Still, that effort may have taken its toll on the United States — the perfect opportunity for China to test the capabilities of the single most significant deterrent to its plans to retake Taiwan.
“The battlefield right now… is not just land, air and sea: it also includes the cyberspace and aerospace domains, so [China] he’s looking at our response times, not just the response times, but the overall response,” Koffler said. “The fact that we didn’t stop that balloon from entering U.S. airspace is significant to them.”
The fact that the balloon has wandered throughout the continental United States, having been spotted over North Carolina on Saturday, may in fact encourage China to see “what else they can send.”
In part, the Chinese may be looking to see what other capabilities they can bring to a Taiwanese situation, since they know the US is a “tech-addicted” nation, which means they need to look at what other methods can “bring at the table,” according to Koffler.
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Such methods could include what many consider “low-tech,” such as the surveillance balloon, despite the potentially sophisticated detection technology it carries. These additional capabilities could help “fill the gaps” in other surveillance capabilities.
“It’s a gradual kind of building a composite picture of what the battle environment would look like if things go wrong,” concluded Koffler.
Chris Pandolfo of Fox News Digital contributed to this report.
