The Chinese surveillance balloon that appeared over Montana may provide insight into China’s operations and technology as the Pentagon continues to monitor its progress and refrain from shooting it down, experts tell Fox News Digital.
“There is a certain…let’s say political and informational value in letting the Chinese know that we’ve seen this or are seeing this, and I also think it will make them think that we’re also trying to potentially exploit the situation and understand how to improve their techniques and surveillance capabilities,” Matt McInnis, a senior fellow with 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 seen by the public over Montana, where it was flying over Malmstrom Air Force Base. The United States uses the base to store nuclear weapons.
Senior State and Defense Department officials have called the balloon’s presence in US airspace an “unacceptable” violation of US sovereignty, but have continued to warn against shooting it down. The balloon is about the size of three Greyhound buses and carries heavy surveillance equipment.
Republicans criticized the Biden administration for its inaction, with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy tweeting Saturday: “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 was a civilian weather balloon that veered off course. A senior US official told Fox News that the government remains certain “this was intentional.”
A senior defense official said the United States had deployed aircraft after spotting the balloon on Wednesday as it approached US airspace, and even considered shooting it down, but decided against it. US defense officials said Friday that the US stopped the balloon from transmitting back to China, ending any current national security threat it might pose.
A balloon flies in the sky over Billings, Montana, on February 1, 2023.
(Chase Doak/via Reuters.)
McInnis compared the balloon to Cold War U-2 spy plane flights, saying this “goes both ways” but Americans understandably feel the government should do something, like shoot down the balloon.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if part of our goals here is to use this operation, because this has already done the damage, and [the U.S. can] take 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 official, argued that any information or knowledge the US can gain from the balloon is not worth the damage caused by allowing a Chinese device to invade US airspace.
“I guess it’s worth not shooting it down, but I think the risk of the Chinese thinking they could violate our airspace without consequence, in my opinion, far outweighs any information we can get from that particular balloon that we don’t know.” I already know that from other sources,” Koffler, who specializes in foreign aerospace threats, doctrines and operations, told Fox News Digital.
The map shows the approximate path of a Chinese surveillance balloon over Montana, on Friday, February 3, 2023.
(FoxNews)
Koffler explained that the balloon does indeed bring a couple of different advantages to China that more conventional and expected spy methods might not, primarily the ability to hover and collect data, plus seeing what range of capabilities China can bring against the United States. when it starts. “preparing the battlefield”.
“Satellites move, they don’t hover over a target,” Koffler said. “We don’t know what kind of sensors are on this particular globe, but there are various kinds of sensors” for what she called “measurement intelligence.”
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“It looks like this particular spy balloon could be working, and again, we don’t have that confirmed, but it could be collecting our intelligence signals… and it could be collecting our communications coming out of [military] targets and those facilities,” he added, clarifying that he might be looking at the volume of communications to understand the US military’s operating procedures.
“With the Chinese increasing tensions and their stance of force on Taiwan, what they’re concerned about is our response, so tracking any kind of spike in communications could tell them we’re getting ready to do something.”
American views on China
(FoxNews)
The United States finds itself in a delicate position with its missile and munitions reserves weakened after a year-long effort to supply Ukraine while fending off an invasion by Russia. Still, that effort may have left the US tense: the perfect opportunity for China to test the capabilities of the most important deterrent to its plans to recapture Taiwan.
“The battlefield right now… is not just land, air, and sea: it also includes cyberspace and aerospace domains, so [China] is 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 US airspace is important to them.”
The fact that the balloon has wandered across the entire continental United States, after being spotted over North Carolina on Saturday, may encourage China to see “what else they can send.”
Partially, the Chinese may be looking to see what other capabilities they can bring to a Taiwan situation, since they know the US is a “tech-dependent” nation, which means they need to look at what other methods they can “bring to 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 “bridge the gap” in other surveillance capabilities.
“It’s kind of gradually building a composite picture of what the battle environment would be like if things went wrong,” Koffler concluded.
Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo contributed to this report.
