SEOUL, South Korea (Trends Wide) — News that the Pentagon is monitoring what is believed to be a Chinese surveillance balloon in the skies over the continental United States raises a number of questions, including what exactly the device might be doing.
US officials have said the flight path of the balloon, first seen over Montana on Thursday, could take it over a “number of sensitive sites” and say they are taking steps to “protect against foreign intelligence gathering.”
A suspected Chinese high-altitude balloon floats over Billings, Montana, on Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2023. (Larry Mayer/The Billings Gazette via AP)
But what isn’t so clear is why Chinese spies would want to use a balloon instead of a satellite to gather information.
This is not the first time a Chinese balloon has been seen over the US, but this one appears to be acting differently than before, a US defense official said.
“It seems that more time passes, this time, [y es] more persistent than in previous instances. That would be a distinguishing factor,” the official said.
Don’t spies use satellites anymore?
The use of balloons as spy platforms dates 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 a former officer in the Royal Australian Air Force.
But with the advent of modern satellite technology that allows for the collection of flyby intelligence data from space, the use of surveillance balloons had gone out of style.
Or at least until now.
Recent advances in the miniaturization of electronics mean that floating intelligence platforms may be making their way back into the modern spy toolkit.
“The payload of the balloons can now weigh less, and therefore the balloons can be smaller, cheaper and easier to launch” than satellites, Layton said.
Blake Herzinger, an expert on Indo-Pacific defense policy at the American Enterprise Institute, said that despite their slow speed, the balloons are not always easy to spot.
“They have a very low signature and low to zero emission, so it’s hard to detect them 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 are more predictable in their orbital dynamics,” Layton said.
“One advantage of the balloons is that they can be steered with on-board computers to take advantage of the winds and they can go up and down in a limited way. This means that they can roam to a certain extent.
“One satellite cannot roam and it takes many to cross over an area of interest to maintain surveillance,” he said.
What could be spying on?
According to Layton, the suspected Chinese balloon is likely collecting information on US radar and communication systems.
“Some of these systems use extremely high frequencies that are short range, can be absorbed by the atmosphere, and are line of sight and very directional. It is possible that a balloon would be a better collection platform for such a specific technical collection than a satellite,” he said.
Retired US Air Force Col. Cedric Leighton, a Trends Wide military analyst, echoed those thoughts.
“They could be collecting intelligence signals, in other words, they’re watching our cell phone traffic, our radio traffic,” Leighton told Trends Wide’s Erin Burnett.
Intelligence data collected by the balloon could be transmitted in real time via a satellite link to China, Layton said.
Analysts also noted that Montana and nearby states are home to US ICBM silos and strategic bomber bases.
US officials say they have taken steps to ensure the balloon cannot collect sensitive data. They decided not to tear it down due to the risk to life and property from falling debris.
And if the US could shoot down the balloon inside its territory without destroying it, then the balloon might reveal some secrets of its own, Layton added.
But maybe there are no secrets or espionage involved. It could simply be an accident, that the balloon was off course, or that the Chinese operators had somehow lost control.
“There is at least some chance that this was a mistake and that the balloon ended up somewhere Beijing didn’t expect,” Herzinger said.
For its part, China says it is investigating.
“We are aware of the reports [sobre el globo] and we are trying to understand the circumstances and verify the details of the situation,” a foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday. “I would like to emphasize that before what happened is clarified, any deliberate speculation or exaggeration would not help to handle the matter.”
