By Zachary Stieber
February 9, 2023Updated: February 10, 2023
A high altitude balloon
floats over Billings, Mont., on Feb. 1, 2023. (Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette
via AP)
The Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United
States for days before being shot down could monitor communications signals, a
U.S. official says.
“High resolution imagery
from U-2 flybys revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of
conducting signals intelligence collection operations,” an official with the
State Department, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Epoch Times.
“The high altitude
balloon’s equipment was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent
with the equipment onboard weather balloons. It had multiple antennas to
include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications.
It was equipped with solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power
to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors,” the official
added.
Frank Gaffney, executive
chairman at the Center for Security Policy, told NTD that China would likely have an interest in
monitoring communications between intercontinental ballistic missile silos.
Officials said the
balloon entered U.S. airspace over Alaska on Jan. 28. It flew over Canada
before re-entering the United States on Jan. 31. President Joe Biden
ordered the balloon taken down and it was shot from the sky on Feb.
4. The North American Aerospace Defense Command was tracking the
balloon the entire time.
“The United States sent a
clear message to the PRC that its violation of our sovereignty was unacceptable
by shooting down the balloon, protecting our own sensitive intelligence, and
maximizing our ability to track the balloon and recover the payload to get more
information on the PRC’s program,” the State Department official said, adding
that the United States would explore taking action against Chinese entities
that supported the incursion of U.S. airspace. PRC stands for People’s
Republic of China.
The balloon is believed
to be part of communist China’s fleet of balloons developed to conduct
surveillance operations, which are typically undertaken at the direction of the
People’s Liberation Army. The program has been in operation “for several
years,” a Pentagon spokesman said Wednesday. U.S. officials have since learned
that China has flown the surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries
across 5 continents, the State Department official said.
The United States is
contacting other countries to learn about the scope of the program and other
details.
Mao Ning, with China’s
Foreign Ministry, told reporters in Beijing that the accusations “may be
part of the U.S. side’s information warfare against China” and claimed that the
United States was “overreacting” when it shot the balloon down.
Some U.S. lawmakers have
been critical of the decision to wait to bring the craft down until it had
flown across multiple states.
An assessment of the risk
of intelligence collection was deemed to be low to moderate while the risk to
U.S. personnel on the ground if the balloon was shot down was determined to be
moderate to significant, prompting officials to advise Biden to wait to bring
down the balloon until it was over water, Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims, director
of operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a hearing on Capitol
Hill on Thursday.
Melissa Dalton, assistant
secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs, assured
members of Congress that the United States was able to “protect against PRC
intelligence collection,” saying it was “straightforward because we knew where
the balloon was.”
The balloon entering the
United States “is part of the broader suite of operations that China is
undertaking to try and get better understanding of U.S.,” Jedidiah Royal,
principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security
affairs, told members before being interrupted by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.),
who asked whether U.S. officials know what intelligence the Chinese were trying
to collect.
“We have some very good
guesses about that, and we are learning more as we exploit the contents of the
balloon and the payload itself,” Royal said.
Ivan Pentchoukov contributed to this report.
No comments:
Post a Comment