Suddenly, it would seem that the sky is full of spy balloons and unidentified objects of uncertain but suspicious origin. Objects that must be knocked down first to find out later. This is what floats in the air after the detection and demolition, by United States Air Force fighters and under the orders of President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, of a Chinese balloon and three artifacts of nature and unknown origin in only eight days, the last three at the rate of one demolition per day. There is fear of heaven; to the unknown that may come from up there. Fear as not remembered since the times of the previous cold war; that one, with the Soviet Union, now, with China.
The Pentagon acknowledged in the early hours of yesterday that, after the demolition of the Chinese aerostat equipped with antennas "to spy" and knocked down with a missile 11 kilometers from the coast of South Carolina, the frantic sequence of findings-shots at unidentified objects in this last weekend it has to do with a greater care in the observation of the skies and, as suggested, with a policy of easy trigger or precautionary prevention.
Under Secretary for Defense and Hemispheric Affairs Melissa Dalton put it this way: “In light of the detection of the PRC balloon that we shot down last Saturday, we have been taking a closer look at our airspace at those altitudes and that may explain, at least in part, the increase in objects that we have located during the last week.
White House Homeland Security spokesman John Kirby reaffirmed this relationship between increased search and increased detection. He added that "it is not ruled out" that the three small devices shot down over Alaska (on Friday), the Canadian territory of Yukon (on Saturday) and Lake Huron in Michigan (on Sunday) were equipped with espionage systems. And he said that from what is known so far of China's "vast" aerial surveillance program, its deployment of spy balloons over more than 40 countries on five continents has brought them "limited" intelligence results, though they may improve with time. time.
On the other hand, the US government is aware, added Dalton and Kirby, that "a variety of states, companies, research organizations and other entities" operate devices at these altitudes "for purposes of no concern, including research legitimate”. And, as the Government had already repeated, the three artifacts located after the Chinese balloon incident were shot down "as a precaution" although "they did not pose a threat" over people or military installations on the ground, although they did pose risks to aviation.
The head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad), Glen VanHerck, delighted the conspiracy theorists when, when asked if he ruled out that there were aliens behind the objects to be identified, he said: "I'll let the intelligence community figure it out." find out. I'm not ruling anything out." Other senior officials did rule it out, but that was less publicized.
In the past two years, the Pentagon has recorded 366 incidents involving unidentified objects. And he concluded that 163 were balloons, among which only a few had advanced surveillance systems.
The proliferation of artifacts over the skies is due, according to experts, both to the growth of scientific study systems by means of airships and to the growth of military espionage devices, also mounted on balloons.
And there may be dual-use devices, civil and military. This was revealed with the launch in 2019, under the direction of the Chinese scientist Wu Zhe, of a huge airship, the Cloud Chaser, which traveled the world at 20,000 meters above sea level. The device, larger than the balloon shot down on February 4 despite measuring about 60 meters high, was part of a new generation of observation airships that, as The New York Times recalled yesterday, could also be used to prevent natural disasters. or control pollution than to do “aerial surveillance”.
The government of Xi Jinping, while insisting that the balloon shot down on February 4 was "meteorological", affirmed yesterday that different balloons launched by the US flew over China more than ten times in the last year without permission from Beijing. Washington denied it. "It's not true at all," spokesman Kirby said.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the objects shot down in recent days in North America are "part of a pattern" in which China and Russia "are increasing their acts of surveillance and intelligence" against NATO countries.
Despite the suspicions of Washington and its allies towards Beijing and amid the consequent public concern about the threats that can loom over us from on high, the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, would be considering sitting down with his Chinese counterpart at the Security Conference that Munich will host next weekend, from February 17 to 18. It goes without saying that the Chinese balloon or balloons launched over North America would be the big deal.
It is to be hoped that before that conference the Pentagon will have reported on the remains of the devices that it has shot down and is collecting and analyzing; the large globe and the three “much smaller objects”, of which it has hardly been indicated that they also resemble globes or have the shape of such, although they are perhaps cylindrical or octagonal and perhaps metallic. Celestial mystery, for now.
