local media in USA announced this Saturday that the Army shot down Chinese ‘spy balloon’ that entered its continental territory from this Thursday.
(Read here: The spy balloon raid that further strained relations between the US and China)
The announcement is also known after the Pentagon spokesman, Pat Ryder, warned this Friday that about Latin America it also flies over a Chinese “spy balloon”.
(See also: Surveillance balloons: what they are like and why some countries use them to spy)
The incursion of the aircraft led the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, to suspend a tour that was scheduled for this Sunday in Beijing.
Amid the controversy, three airports in United Statess were closed on Saturday for “national security reasons”amid the controversy caused by an alleged Chinese spy balloon in the skies, the authorities reported.
Arrivals and departures were stopped at three airports in the states of South Carolina and North Carolina “to support the Department of Defense in a national security effort,” the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) told AFP in a statement.
The discovery of these two devices that Washington assures are surveillance, strained the already difficult relations between the two main world powers that were trying to bring positions closer again.
The visit of Blinken to China It would have been the first by a US secretary of state since October 2018, signaling a thaw following friction under former Republican President Donald Trump.
And while Blinken said they were going to continue to keep communication channels open, he also added that “the priority now is to ensure that this spy device leaves our airspace.”
For its part, Beijing denied that it is a device designed for espionage. The Chinese Foreign Ministry assured that it is a balloon for meteorological monitoring that deviated from its trajectory and expressed “regret” for an “involuntary” intrusion.
However, the head of the Chinese diplomatic portfolio, Wang Yi, said that “some politicians and media in the United States used the incident as a pretext to attack and smear China.”
But the Pentagon maintains that it has no doubts about the Chinese origin of the aircraft and its use for espionage purposes.
According to US media, the balloon flew over the Aleutian Islands in the north Pacific Ocean and Canada before entering US airspace about two days ago. Specifically, it flew over the state of Montana, which is home to nuclear missile facilities, where fighter jets approached it, according to a Pentagon official who requested anonymity.
The same source added that it was decided not to shoot it down due to the risks posed by possible debris to people on the ground, and considered the device’s ability to collect information “limited”.
The truth is that there is no more information about the balloon that flies over Latin America. He Pentagon it only warned of its presence and, as of the closing of this note, China had neither denied nor confirmed this. However, the newspaper La Nación of Costa Rica had just published an article on Friday about a white flying object, which looked like a hot air balloon, and which had been sighted over the Latin American country.
In any case, security experts have warned that these two balloons flying over America may be guided by advanced artificial intelligence technology, expert William Kim told the AFP agency.
Kim, a surveillance balloon specialist with the Marathon Initiative group in Washington, explained that balloons are powerful surveillance tools that are hard to shoot down. In dialogue with that agency, the expert noted that with the progress of artificial intelligence (AI) it is now possible for a balloon to steer simply by changing the altitude to reach a suitable point and find a wind that pushes it towards the desired destination.
Before, you had to direct it from the ground with a cable or “launch it and it would go where the wind took it,” Kim said. “What has happened very recently with the advancement of AI is that now we can have a balloon (…) that doesn’t even need its own means of propulsion. Just by controlling the altitude, you can control its direction,” he said.
According to the analyst, these balloons have numerous advantages, such as their ability to escape radar. “They are made of materials that do not reflect light, they are not metal. So, although they can be quite large (…), detecting them is difficult ”. If they are small enough, spying devices and payload may even go undetected.
Balloons also have the advantage of being able to maintain a stationary position over a target to be monitored, unlike spy satellites, which must remain in orbit. “They can fly over the same position for months,” said the expert.
On whether the balloon did indeed reach US territory by accident, Kim noted that it is a “real possibility.” In fact, the Chinese balloon could have been sent early to collect data outside US borders or much higher, before it failed.
“These balloons don’t always work perfectly,” he said, noting that the Chinese device flew at about 46,000 feet above the ground (about 14 kilometers), versus the usual 65,000 to 100,000 (20 to 30.5 km) for this type. of tool.
But why doesn’t the United States shoot down the balloon? Taking down these types of devices is not as easy as it seems, Kim warned.
“These balloons run on helium (…), you can’t just shoot them to catch fire” like an airship, explained the specialist. “These are not things that explode or burst,” he added. The expert recalled that in 1998 the Canadian Air Force sent an F-18 fighter plane to try to shoot down a meteorological balloon considered hostile.
“They peppered it with about a thousand 20mm rounds, and it still took about six days to come down.” To Kim, it’s not at all obvious that surface-to-air missiles will work against these types of balloons. In fact, his guidance systems are designed to track fast targets.
But the fact that the balloon passed over Montana, which is home to nuclear missile facilities, highly valuable information for the United States, was a wake-up call for the authorities.
In fact, local US media assure that the use of these devices is usually common and most of these episodes are ignored and never transcend public opinion. However, the fact that it entered the continental United States set off alarm bells.
Although this episode is not expected to end in a worsening of relations, this whole spy novel is one more chapter in the tensions between Washington and Beijing.
In addition, for newspapers like The New York Times, this episode will also add fuel to the Republican opposition and become another headache for the Democratic president, Joe Biden.
From now on, the US opposition demands forceful action to safeguard the security of the country.
For now, a meteorological model from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association projected that the balloon flying over US territory will leave the country between last night and tonight.
Two US defense officials told CNN the balloon is expected to reach the east coast and then head out to sea in the southeast near the Carolinas.
INTERNATIONAL WRITING
TIME
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