The US says the Chinese balloon is part of a spy plan on 40 countries on five continents

The Pentagon has concluded that the balloon shot down on Saturday by a US Air Force F-22 after crossing North America from northwest to southeast was part of a vast military espionage program by the Chinese military that has been operating over more from 40 countries on five continents.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
14 February 2023 Tuesday 03:40
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The US says the Chinese balloon is part of a spy plan on 40 countries on five continents

The Pentagon has concluded that the balloon shot down on Saturday by a US Air Force F-22 after crossing North America from northwest to southeast was part of a vast military espionage program by the Chinese military that has been operating over more from 40 countries on five continents.

The aerostat had signal capture equipment made up of "numerous antennas capable of collecting and geolocating communications," the US Department of Defense said Thursday. The airship also had solar panels "big enough to provide the energy needed to operate multiple sensors that collect intelligence," said a senior Pentagon official.

The information comes from high-resolution photographs that Pentagon specialists took of the globe from U2 Dragon Lady spy planes. The Chinese device "was clearly created for spy observation purposes and does not fit well with the equipment of weather balloons," the spokesman added.

The same source pointed out the Pentagon's conviction that the contraption was directly controlled by the Chinese army as part of a fleet of airships deployed around the world for the same purposes: spying on military installations, capturing communications and, in short, obtaining information about the different defense systems of the countries designated as surveillance targets. “We are convinced that the balloon manufacturer has a direct link to the Chinese military,” the official said.

Washington is sharing and cross-checking its information on the Chinese apparatus with "dozens" of allied countries that have also been or may be in the crosshairs of China's aerial espionage.

The Government of Joe Biden is studying, according to Defense, possible "actions" against those responsible for the program that included the balloon shot down on Saturday six nautical miles off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. The notice points to possible sanctions against military or political commanders of the Xi Jinping Executive.

"By shooting down the balloon, the United States sent a clear message to China that the violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable," the defense representative emphasized. President Biden himself had said it in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night: "If China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country."

The Pentagon spokesman stressed that the authorities of the oriental giant "have not yet given a plausible explanation" for the prolonged presence of the huge aerostat - 60 meters high and with a load close to a ton in weight - in the airspace of USA and Canada.

Beijing insists that the device was a meteorological observation device that accidentally deviated from its route due to "strong winds", the same thing that would have happened with a second balloon sighted in Colombia and Costa Rica.

The Government of Xi considered this Thursday, in addition, that Biden made "a mistake" when giving the order to demolish the one that crossed North America and that the device is his and therefore the US should return his remains.

For all these reasons, the Chinese Ministry of Defense rejected a US proposal to, despite everything, hold high-level bilateral talks. "We do not accept the proposal" for talks, the department said in a statement. "This irresponsible and seriously erroneous act means that we are not in the right atmosphere for dialogue and exchange between the two armies," the note added.

The US House of Representatives unanimously endorsed a resolution Thursday condemning the Chinese spy balloon incursion into the country's airspace as a "blatant violation of our sovereignty."

The motion, of a symbolic nature and approved by 419 votes in favor and 0 against, rejects "the attempts of the Chinese Communist Party to deceive the international community through false statements about its intelligence gathering campaigns"; notes that “it should be US policy to act quickly and decisively to prevent foreign air surveillance platforms from violating its airspace,” and calls on the Biden Administration to keep the House informed with full reports on the incident.

In the Upper House, however, senators from both the Republican and Democratic parties criticized the delay in shooting down the airship, and asked why the president was not informed about the detection of the device, in theory, until days after it entered the air. Aleutian Islands. The Pentagon officials who appeared left part of the questions unanswered.

The Chinese balloon has been punctured, but it continues to inflame bilateral relations, and even the internal political debate.