The United States has said it is tracking a Chinese spy balloon flying over its territory but decided against shooting it down for safety reasons.
US defense officials said the balloon has been monitored since it entered their airspace at a high altitude days ago. It has been on close watch by several methods including manned aircraft and has most recently been tracked crossing Montana, where the US has silo-based nuclear missiles.
Flights out of Billings Logan airport were suspended on Wednesday, as part of precautionary measures.
China is yet to make a statement if the balloon actually belongs to them, but the Chinese media has used the incident to taunt America.
The Chinse Global Times mocked the United States arguing that the balloon itself entering the US airspace shows how porous its air defense is.
“The balloon itself is a big target which is banned in China. If balloons from other countries could really enter continental US smoothly, or even enter the sky over certain states, it only proves that the US’s air defense system is completely a decoration and cannot be trusted.”
However, China Daily said the accusation of a balloon from China in the United States was a lie.
“To spy on the US with a balloon, one must both fall far behind to use a 1940s technology and be advanced enough to control its flight across the ocean. Those fabricating the lie are only exposing their ignorance.”
Canada also reported having detected a high-altitude surveillance balloon that had traveled over part of Canada on its way to Montana.
A statement from the US Department of Defence reads;
“The United States Government has detected and is tracking a high altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now. The U.S. government, to include NORAD, continues to track and monitor it closely.”
“The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground. Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years. Once the balloon was detected, the U.S. government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”
A spokesperson for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, Mao Ning, said they were accessing the situation. “I would like to emphasize that until the facts are clarified, speculation and hype will not be helpful to the proper resolution of the issue,” she said.
However, the Pentagon has “high confidence” that the balloon was from China. After President Joe Biden briefed on the situation, he asked for military options, but it was decided there was too great a danger of debris harming people on the ground if the balloon were to be shot down. You can’t be sure of the contents you know.
It was also judged that although the balloon was flying over sensitive nuclear sites in the United States, it cannot gather any intelligence that could not be collected from satellites (Chinese or else-owned).
However, the US Reps House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s tweet in response to the incident suggests a heightened tension between Washington and Beijing, fueling talks of possible retaliation.
Military experts say the use of high-altitude balloons is likely to increase because they are cheaper than spy satellites, hard to spot by radar, and difficult to shoot down. Such balloons can also be controlled by changing altitudes, using computers to calculate how to use winds going in different directions at different layers of the atmosphere. Aside from the balloons being used for surveillance, they can also be used as a weapon to drop bombs or release poisonous gases.
