BY JOHN FENG ON 2/14/23 AT 8:07 AM EST
Within of a week of
the United States shooting down a suspected spy balloon launched by China, the U.S. Commerce Department sanctioned
five Chinese companies and one research institute it said were linked to
Beijing's high-altitude surveillance program.
Over half of the new
entities now subject to U.S. export controls have links to one man, Wu Zhe, an
acclaimed Chinese scientist at Beihang University, who could be among the top
brains behind Beijing's seemingly under-appreciated dirigible strategy.
The six organizations were added to the U.S.
entity list on February 10, Wu's 66th birthday, over their provision of airships,
balloons and other related materials and components for Chinese military
"intelligence and reconnaissance," the Commerce Department said, with
no reference to the scientist himself.
Wu Zhe, acclaimed aeronautics professor of Beihang University in Beijing, China.BEIHANG UNIVERSITY
Born in 1957 in China's northern Shanxi
province, Wu has been involved in "near space" research—the vast
skies above commercial airline routes, but below orbiting satellite—for three
decades. Four years ago, the aeronautics professor publicized one of his team's
pioneering unmanned airship flights around the world, including over North
America.
He earned his structural mechanics Ph.D. in
1988 from what is now the Harbin Institute of Technology, which was sanctioned
by the U.S. in 2020 for supporting the modernization of the Chinese military,
the People's Liberation Army. In 1991, he began teaching at Beihang, which has
been subject to U.S. restrictions for the same reason since 2010.
On Beihang's website, Wu's biography describes
a distinguished professor, recognized by the state's top accolades, who gave up
his post as university vice president to pursue research and teaching. His
contributions to aerospace were noticed in his youth, and he sat on a technical
committee in the PLA's now reconstituted General Armaments Department.
The leading scholar at Beihang's School of
Aeronautical Science and Engineering focused on "aircraft configuration,
electromagnetic scattering and low-observable technology," the university
says. His achievements in the application of stealth technology were
particularly noteworthy, it adds.
Among his projects to
have resurfaced this month was a 2019 announcement that appeared to fly under
the radar at the time. On August 20 that year, he told state-run
newspaper Southern Daily that his team
had launched an unmanned airship intending to circumnavigate the Earth.
The presentation,
which was met with relatively little fanfare when it was published the
following day, said the craft Zhuiyunhao, literally
"cloud chaser," was launched on July 27, traveling at an altitude of
65,000 feet and moving at a horizontal velocity of 30 feet per second.
"Look, that
bouncing red dot on the map is our Zhuiyunhao," Wu
was quoted as saying, pointing to a computer monitor. "Look, that's
America."
A flight path on the map indicated the airship
was over the Western Pacific, having sailed west from southern China, over
Southeast Asia, India, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Peninsula, North Africa
and parts of the southern U.S. and northern Mexico—all in under one month.
The craft was said to have been developed in
Dongguan, in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong, on a Beihang campus in
the city. According to Wu, the craft measured roughly 300 feet long and weighed
"several tons."
"This is the
first time an aerodynamically controlled stratospheric airship has flown around the world at 20,000
meters," Wu said.
The world's major
economies were also developing stratospheric craft, said the Southern Daily, but due to "technical
challenges," few were capable of reaching 65,000 feet or remaining aloft
for more than 24 hours. Wu's team, however, achieved major breakthroughs in the
two years since mid-2017, it said.
Compared to
satellites, these high-altitude aircraft operate closer to the ground, carry larger payloads and can "obtain higher resolution," Yang
Yongqiang, one of the scientists on the team, told the newspaper. Compared to
planes, the airships operate in higher, more stable meteorological conditions
conducive to "long-term observation," he said.
Yang went on to list stratospheric airship
applications including for the creation of wireless internet infrastructure,
disaster early warning and monitoring, and aerial reconnaissance.
In March last year, Yang and Wu were among
four inventors named in an approved patent application for a
"high-altitude weight-reduction device" for stratospheric airships,
filed by Dongguan Lingkong Remote Sensing Technology, one of the six companies
sanctioned by the U.S. on Friday.
Sailors assigned to Assault Craft Unit 4 prepare material recovered in the Atlantic Ocean from a high-altitude balloon for transport to federal agents at Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek on February 10, 2023.MASS COMMUNICATION SPECIALIST 1ST CLASS RYAN SEELBACH/U.S. NAVY
According to The New York Times, Wu co-founded or was a stakeholder in at
least three other firms on the entity list: the Eagles Men Aviation Science and
Technology Group,Shanxi Eagles Men Aviation Science and Technology Group, and
Beijing Nanjiang Aerospace Technology.
Wu and a business
partner "have a complex network of companies involved in balloon and
aerospace technologies, some of which are closely affiliated with the Chinese
military, but are not sanctioned by the U.S. government," The Wire China said in a report about Wu's private
sector interests.
READ MORE
·
China turns tables with claims of U.S. balloons
·
Pentagon "100 percent" certain China balloon was
surveillance asset
·
Scientist on NASA's UAP panel shares thoughts on Lake Huron UFO
China's science and
technology community is predicted to produce nearly double the number of annual
Ph.D. graduates than in the U.S. by 2025, according to an August 2021 report by
Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. Beijing's
sizable STEM resources have helped it race ahead in emerging fields such as hypersonics.
While the craft developed by Wu and others was
said to have operated at a similar altitude as the Chinese surveillance balloon
that crossed Alaska, Canada and the continental U.S. this month, no publicly
available evidence currently links the two.
The professor couldn't be reached for comment
via his university.
Beijing continues to
insist the Chinese-claimed balloon shot down off the South Carolina coast on
February 4 was an unmanned weather-monitoring airship. This week, its officials
said American high-altitude balloons had overflown China's airspace "more than 10
times" since last May, a claim the White House strongly denies.
Separately, U.S. and
Canadian authorities have yet to determine the nature and origin of three unidentified objects shot down in North American airspace in the past week.
China has denied any involvement.
Do you have a tip on a world
news story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a
question about China? Let us know via worldnews@newsweek.com.
https://www.newsweek.com/wu-zhe-china-scientist-surveillance-balloon-program-1780961
China’s
Balloon Program Grew From a Humble Start
https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-balloon-program-grew-from-a-humble-start-11675974996
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