The US government detected at least three other Chinese spy balloons apart from the one that flew over the United States at the end of January and was shot down over Atlantic waters on February 4, indicate leaked Pentagon documents and echoed by The Washington newspaper Post.
That information points to one of those three additional balloons flying over an aircraft carrier group and another crashing in the South China Sea.
One of the documents in which he supports his exclusivity was prepared by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) ten days after the shooting down of the first publicly known Chinese balloon on February 4, baptized by government experts as Killeen-23.
That paper mentions two other balloons - Bulger-21 and Accardo-21 - but does not make it clear if they are the same as the one that flew over the carriers and the one that crashed in the South China Sea. Bulger-21 does specify that it flew over the planet from December 2021 to May 2022 with sophisticated surveillance equipment, while Accardo-21 points out that it was carrying similar material.
Apparently, according to the aforementioned newspaper, the balloons take the name of well-known criminals, such as mobster Tony Accardo or fellow gangsters James "Whitey" Bulger and Donald Killeen.
The downed Chinese balloon is believed to have been able to generate enough power to operate "any" surveillance and reconnaissance technology, including a type of radar with night vision that can pierce clouds and thin material.
The Washington Post obtained this material from images of documents published on the Discord platform. The young man suspected of having disseminated that information there, Jack Teixeira, was charged this Friday for crimes of transmission and extraction of classified information.
The impact that this leak will have is still unknown, but some analysts have compared it to what the country experienced in 2013, when former analyst Edward Snowden exposed the scope of the massive espionage programs that the United States launched after the 9/11 attacks. September 2001.
The first Chinese balloon that came to public knowledge triggered a bilateral crisis between the two countries in its day. Beijing admitted that the balloon belonged to it, but said in its defense that it had been lost and was used for meteorological purposes, not espionage.
