How the Spy Balloon Has Hurt China and the US

U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a virtual summit from the Roosevelt Room of the White House, in Washington, on Nov. 15, 2021. Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images

Commentary

Beijing’s “balloon warfare operations” against North American targets—believed to be launched from a number of sites in Inner Mongolia—may have proven strategically counterproductive at a critical moment for China.

The long-standing capability, evolving technologically and operationally over many years, came to a head with the public disclosure and shooting down by the U.S. Air Force of four lighter-than-air craft over North America in the first two weeks of February.

The revelation of the presence of the first of the February untethered aerostats caused sufficient public outcry in the United States—particularly as a result of the seeming White House indecision over handling the issue and the difficulty in shooting it down—that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was forced to “indefinitely postpone” his planned visit (he had been due to depart Washington on Feb. 3) to Beijing to meet with Foreign Affairs Minister Qin Gang and possibly Communist Party leader Xi Jinping.

This was a strategic setback for Xi, who had been relying on the prospect of a rapprochement between Washington and Beijing, carefully tailored in both capitals to start easing the mounting bilateral tensions and trade war. Subsequently, if anything, the “forced” cancellation of the talks has seen an escalation of bilateral tensions. This raises at least two fundamental points.

Deliberate Disclosure?

Given that balloon operations (by all major powers) have been underway for many years, albeit with considerable secrecy surrounding their growing sophistication of them, it must be asked whether the Feb. 3 “revelation” of the major Chinese balloon was a deliberate, unauthorized attempt by a U.S. administration official to subvert the White House’s planned diplomatic softening with China.

Claims that the U.S. military was unaware of Chinese balloon operations over North America are disingenuous, especially given the extent of the United States’ own balloon operations historically over the USSR and communist China throughout the Cold War. All major powers have used balloons for reconnaissance and other purposes for more than a century, and the Chinese—like the Japanese in World War II—had prevailing winds favoring their operations against North America.

So did the leak of this particular incursion occur as the result of an official’s private concern that the administration was proceeding along the path of compromise with China?

It is important to note that Blinken’s trip cancellation only came about because of public disclosure of the initial balloon penetration of U.S. airspace. It is probable that had the media disclosure not occurred, then the visit would have gone ahead. So it is almost certain that an investigation was immediately initiated, at White House insistence, to determine who leaked the existence of the incursion. There was, too, a clear window of opportunity for the United States to have shot down the first balloon immediately upon its ingress into U.S. airspace rather than waiting for days—and the overflight of sensitive U.S. ballistic missile facilities, etc.—before eventually shooting it down over the Atlantic Ocean, along the South Carolina coastline on Feb. 4.

The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, S.C., on Feb. 4, 2023. Randall Hill/Reuters

What was significant about the first of the February balloons was its large size: the balloon had a diameter (or longest side measurement) of some 200 feet and carried a payload weighing some 2,000 pounds. Japan and Taiwan have reported overflights of very large Chinese balloons in the past three years. Middle Eastern and South American governments have also reported overflights by presumed Chinese balloons, although the difficulties in balloon detection for most regions outside the NATO, Chinese, or Russian areas means that most flights—whether by China or others—go undetected and usually above the commercial airways.

Very large tethered reconnaissance aerostats in World War I, operating at lower altitudes over the Western Front battlefields, proved difficult to shoot down. But during the Cold War, the Soviets identified an estimated 4,112 NATO-origin balloons that had penetrated Soviet or Warsaw Pact airspace between 1956 and 1977. Of these, 793 were shot down by fighter aircraft. Most of these were high-altitude balloons, and the Soviet Air Defense Troops began to use specially-modified aircraft, such as the Yakovlev Yak-25RV (NATO codename: Mandrake) high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, with high aspect ratio (long, thin) wings designed for high-altitude operations.

Even so, the downing of high-altitude balloons in the Cold War took considerable coordination and multiple aircraft, partly due to the difficulty in acquiring targeting information because of the balloons’ low radar cross-section.

Significantly, modern combat aircraft are not as well tailored for very high-altitude interception operations as they were during the Cold War.

The Chinese Balloon Missions

The four balloons intercepted by the United States were of different sizes, implying different payloads and missions. It was assumed in the U.S. media that all the missions were “surveillance,” although clearly a number of offensive operations were feasible, especially from the initial, largest balloon.

The payload capability implied the possibility of a balloon delivering a kinetic payload, similar to the Japanese balloons launched against the U.S. West Coast during World War II.

Today’s Chinese balloons (and presumably those of other powers), although launched from areas designed to allow capture of prevailing high-altitude winds, have some degree of course and altitude control. Just as with manned civilian sports balloons, the ability exists for sufficient course correction to occur to move the aerostats into certain known (or suspected) currents of air to optimize courses.

But a kinetic payload, for the most part, would be wasteful and not cost-effective, nor possibly even manageable in terms of intended target and timing. One possible exception would be the delivery of EMP (electromagnetic pulse) missions, but even with this the imprecision of timing and location make balloon operations less than first choice.

So electronic missions of other types—apart from reconnaissance, which can usually today be conducted more efficiently from space—would be logical. These missions almost certainly and routinely involve a broad-area collection of electronic transmissions from a variety of land-based targets, including systems using Chinese-origin technology reporting autonomously back to China’s receivers. These include cellphones and portable computing devices using Chinese-origin technology, as well as civilian “drone” (unmanned aerial vehicle) imagery. These atmospheric collection capabilities are then retransmitted via satellite or (in extreme circumstances) troposcatter networks to China.

Offensively, transmissions instigated from China could utilize the balloons’ reach to terrestrial electronic infrastructure to create system disruptions on a wide scale. The increasingly open architecture of smart systems—often controlled by cellphones—enables limitless avenues for penetrating the key civilian grid and other infrastructural architecture. U.S. and Western cyber-defense agencies are well aware of these vulnerabilities, and are constantly devising countermeasures to harden against remote penetration. But this is an endless task, and one involving constant measure/countermeasure evolution.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The balloon strategy clearly aims to give China—and others practicing such collection and offensive operations—an attempted failsafe redundancy over conventional infrastructure penetration that may well be difficult after the initial phases of a conflict. The system, however, lacks the natural capacity for precision—or, for that matter, predictability—and can probably be assumed to be less than a primary strategic weapon. Nonetheless, the use of balloon-delivered system paralysis against terrestrial infrastructure, including military or political command and control networks, must be considered strategically potent.

The presence of the first of the February balloons over key U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) launch silos in Montana, and the headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command (Offutt Air Force Base), Nebraska, or Whiteman AFB, in Missouri (home of the U.S. Northrop—Grumman B-2 strategic bombers), cannot be considered accidental.

The gathering of electronic transmissions from these regions—and the potential to be able to interfere with electronic infrastructure when needed—are critical objectives for the Chinese military in planning its own offensive and defense nuclear/strategic strike operations, and come at a time when the United States is itself introducing a new ICBM and modernized nuclear missile capability, plus its new B-21 strategic bomber. Details of how the United States is transitioning its bases for these new systems can be assessed to some degree from electronic surveillance of the sites.

Presumably, China uses differently-located launch sites for balloon operations targeting other regions of the world. The prospect that China is launching from its controlled territories in Argentina, or from disguised merchant ships, cannot be discounted. Similarly, command and control operations must be assumed to be dispersed globally, as well, with Chinese electronic ships as a key part of the process.

None of that is surprising.

The United States itself has spent well more than a half-century of manned and unmanned overflights and satellite surveillance of the USSR, Russia, and China with the same objectives. Beijing noted the hypocrisy of U.S. concerns over intrusions by China into U.S. sovereignty, particularly at a time when the current U.S. administration—like its predecessor Obama administration—has decried any attempts to emphasize the importance of U.S. sovereignty.

But all that denies the optics and timing of the current situation, which has served to curtail attempted conciliation by the United States for communist China’s strategic rise, and instigate a U.S. program of broader funding and research and development for improved balloon detection and destruction capabilities.

The public release of news of the first Chinese balloon mission of February was, therefore, of great strategic importance, creating equal anger in the White House and the Forbidden City.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.