Look, up in the sky!! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a UFO!! NOOOOOOO, it’s a Chinese Spy Balloon!!
NORAD
Perhaps they thought no one would notice. A giant helium balloon, the size of three Greyhound buses, carrying a solar-powered package of…something. After all, it’s between 60,000 and 100,000 feet in the air. American passenger jets travel under 45,000 feet, and the US military stays below 80,000.
Certainly the North American defense system, NORAD, tracked it from the beginning. If they can track eight reindeer and a fat guy in a sleigh, and incoming nuclear missiles, they can certainly find a balloon one hundred and twenty feet wide. It’s been around for a few days, crossing the Aleutian Islands over the weekend and headed into Canada. And it showed up in the clear blue sky over Billings, Montana on Wednesday. In fact, they paused flights out of Billings Airport, in part because the Air Force scrambled jets, F-22 Raptors. Perhaps with the intent to shoot it down. And folks on the ground got pictures of the balloon, with a clear view of the solar panels arrayed beneath.
The Air Force didn’t shoot, saying that the size of the object put those on the ground in too much danger. Maybe it’s still headed east, though it’s exact trajectory, like in the few days before Billings, is a US secret. The Pentagon knows. The public has to keep scanning the skies to see. But this balloon seems to be able to “hover” over territory, and right near Billings is Malmstrom Air Force Base. Malmstrom extends over 23,500 square miles of Montana territory, and is home to the 341st Missile Wing, part of America’s nuclear missile deterrent force.
1950’s Tech
So it’s still out there, somewhere over the northern half of the USA. Take it look, it might appear in the sky over your location. I hear it just passed St. Louis. Look for a tiny “moon” in the daylight.
The Chinese have satellites, just as the US does – so why a balloon? Satellites are acknowledged to be “above” so-called sovereign air space – not to be “messed with”. But balloons – they’re definitely within the defense zone of the United States, and it would be more than acceptable under international law to shoot down. This one isn’t a wayward weather balloon, either (and neither is the next one, rumored to be on the way). Which leads to three questions. Why did the Chinese send it, what are they looking for, and why hasn’t the US shot it down?
Thumb in the Eye
Why did the Chinese send it? The military tension between the US and China is continuing to escalate. Chinese aircraft violated the air boundary between China and Taiwan, causing Taiwan to go on full alert this week. The US Secretary of Defense reached an agreement with the President of the Philippines to re-open some US military bases in the nation, with the obvious intention of countering Chinese influence. And the criticism of Chinese influence over US social media, particularly with information gathered through Tik-Tok, is a continual irritant.
The Chinese are “peeing” on corners; intentionally provoking a US response by sending this balloon. There’s little that this balloon can see that Chinese satellites can’t. But this slow-motion “thumb-in-the-eye” goes on and on. It’s a big deal: Secretary of State Blinken just postponed his imminent trip to China. Congress demands Biden Administration action. No one in the US wants to sleep in the shadow of a “Communist Balloon”!! (They really should have painted it Red with Mao Zedong’s face on the side).
And meanwhile, the balloon meanders over the Montana missile fields, and who knows where else. Most certainly US secrets are secure. We already hide our ground activity from high-flying satellites, low-tech balloons are merely an inconvenience, not a threat. So the balloon doesn’t represent a strategic threat, just a diplomatic embarrassment.
Pop the Balloon
Which leaves us with the question – why has the Air Force allowed the balloon to remain up there? The excuse: the debris of a shootdown could hurt citizens down below really doesn’t hold water. The balloon traversed the Pacific Ocean between the Aleutians and Canada, and could easily have been dropped in the water. We didn’t do it then, and now that the balloon is outed to the US public, we haven’t done it… yet.
The US is in a “nickel/dime” escalation with the Chinese. Each provocation by Americans: Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan, re-opening Philippines bases, restricting Tik-Tok, has generated a Chinese response. A Four-Star US Air Force General warned his staff to expect war with China by 2025. The media got the memo, and put it on the second page. This balloon gambit is just the latest – but to take a war-like action, to fire a missile into the balloon and bring it down on US soil, while very satisfying, is definitely an escalation in hostilities. That “level-up” would likely generate and even greater Chinese response.
Civil War
And the US is happy to have China use 19th and 20th century spy tech in a 21st century world. To many Americans the Biden Administration is showing “weakness” by not “popping the bubble” and dumping the whole thing in the Mississippi River (by now). But perhaps Biden is taking a different tack: the Chinese balloon reminds the world of the ineffectual World War II attempts by Japan to set the US western mountains on fire. Or of the first balloonist in the Civil War, getting the “high ground” to spot the enemy. It didn’t work well then, and this won’t work either. The US, meanwhile, has the most advanced technology in the world – in space, invulnerable, and aimed at whatever we need to see.
“Red Alert – Red Alert: the balloon will be overhead to take intelligence in… oh, four hours. Take your time”. Meanwhile, Americans can look to the sky to see the green meteor (to the North) and the giant white balloon, somewhere out over I-64. There’s no basket with men waving with binoculars, but the old Civil War Balloon Corps veterans still sure are proud.
