fbpx

More Than Just a Balloon

The United States military is failing to “close the gap” in hypersonic weapons development with both China and Russia, according to my colleague, Gabriel Honrada of the Asia Times. Sadly, he’s correct. In fact, for the last 30 years, the People’s Republic of China has striven to convert its vast wealth from being the world’s sweatshop into making China the capital of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Hypersonic technology is but one of many areas that China is pioneering that could allow it, not the United States, to become the world’s most powerful nation.

Today, China is home to the most advanced hypersonic wind tunnel facility. At this facility in Sichuan Province, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has constructed working versions of hypersonic glide vehicles which can travel at Mach 10 and circle the Earth multiple times. In the summer of 2021, China’s military tested one such vehicle that came within 20 miles of hitting its intended target in the Gobi Desert. There are, of course, technical hurdles still to overcome. Yet, unlike the US military, China has real-world versions of this experimental, next-generation technology that they can perfect with live tests, whereas the Americans are still developing theirs in tightly controlled settings.

What’s more, these systems are intended for only one purpose: traveling long distances in short periods of time to reach targets—such as the North American continent—that are otherwise well-defended against more conventional attacks. Presently, the American homeland is completely undefended against China’s advanced (and growing) hypersonic threat.

Meanwhile, China is developing other technologies related to its hypersonic weapons program. With their new 6G internet and laser program, Chinese scientists believe they could perfect the communication blackout that hypersonic glide vehicles are subject to as they reenter the Earth’s atmosphere, making these vehicles uncontrollable during a critical period of its flight. New communication and laser technologies have helped China’s weapons scientists overcome this problem.

There are also more exotic technologies that China is heavily investing in. New forms of propulsion and metamaterials to make flying objects harder to track by ground-based sensors, quicker, and deadlier.

In the ultimate high-tech-marries-low-tech move, Chinese strategists have augmented their growing arsenal of sophisticated military technology with cheap low-tech capabilities. For the last decade, China’s military has used relatively simple balloons augmented by Huawei-built sensors to track the movement of US Navy warships in the contested South China Sea. These balloons float high above the ocean, unnoticed by the clueless Americans below, and provide real-time targeting intelligence to China’s growing coterie of anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) and anti-submarine (ASW) weapons systems that are deployed along the arc of the South and East China Seas—systems which are designed to sink American warships as they come from over the horizon.

Recently, American life briefly ground to a halt because of the presence of similar balloon technology entering the airspace over the continental United States. On January 28, US air defense networks tracked a large balloon entering North American airspace from China’s Hainan Island. Because the Biden Administration was hopeful about an upcoming Global Warming conference with China’s leaders, the White House opted to ignore Beijing’s clear provocation.

The balloon soon became impossible to ignore, because as it crossed into Montana airspace, airline pilots began taking pictures of the device and the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) began worrying about the risk the large balloon posed to domestic air travel safety. Shortly after it crossed into Montana, local newspapers there began sharing the stories about the balloon and the images of the dreaded dirigible.

The Biden Administration hesitated in shooting the balloon down, leading to the humiliating Great Balloon Hunt of 2023 at a time when the prestige and power of the United States have been ebbing. Just as with its cousins hovering over the South China Sea, the balloon that traversed the whole of the North American continent was designed for one thing: high-tech intelligence collection on the cheap. Floating freely over the Minutemen III nuclear missile silos of Montana at 66,000 feet in the air, the dreaded balloon—really, an “endo-atmospheric satellite” as my Air Force friends like to say—was likely collecting important signals intelligence coming to and from those American silos and the various US military satellites in nearby orbit.

Interestingly, on the same day that the balloon crossed into American airspace, January 28, Japanese scientists doing a study in Hawaii filmed an eerie display in the dead of night. Green lasers shot down from space and scanned the surface below. It has since been confirmed that these lasers emanated from a Chinese satellite.

The reason that China is throwing caution to the wind, violating our airspace with wanton abandon, and likely using exotic technologies in the process is because to Beijing, America is both weak and crazy.

Officially, China says that the satellite in question is an environmental monitoring satellite. But these lasers are dual-use in nature: in peacetime they can be used to conduct oceanographic and/or topographic studies. In wartime, however, they can be utilized to scan the ocean floor and track US nuclear submarines as they traverse the great depths of the Pacific Ocean. Considering that Pearl Harbor houses many US submarines, it is likely that the Chinese were attempting to get updated intelligence on US submarine movements from their point of origin in Hawaii to their likely destination nearer to China’s shores (where their tracks would be fed to China’s A2/AD systems).

The following day that the horrible balloon was finally downed over the Atlantic Ocean by a US warplane, a car-sized device was shot down by F-22 Raptors in northern Alaska. The White House was quick to claim that the device in question was not another balloon but instead was a “high-altitude object.” During that engagement, it was reported that the F-22’s sidewinder missile (which costs $450,000 per unit) could not lock onto the car-sized flying object. It was initially reported that the F-22’s targeting systems were being jammed by the device. The day after that, Montana’s airspace was shut down by the FAA as another unidentified aircraft was discovered to be hovering again near the nuclear weapons silos of “The Big Sky State.” The very next day, US military F-16s shot down an “octagonal” balloon over Lake Huron.

Since these incidents were widely reported to the press, the government has changed its story. Officially, the event in Alaska was nothing more than a hobbyist’s balloon. Ditto for the even stranger shootdown over Lake Huron. But these may be cover stories intended to hide the reality that China has clearly surpassed the United States in some key defense technology areas—and they are becoming more brazen in their dealings with the United States because of those technological advances.

As for the laser light show in Hawaii on January 28, NASA claimed that it was from one of their satellites (even though it has since been confirmed to have come from a Chinese satellite). The US government, rather than confront the uncomfortable reality that its vaunted military has been leapfrogged both strategically and technologically by the People’s Republic of China, wishes to bury its head in the sand and continue operating as if it’s 1993.

If only.

Actually, the US military is apparently more willing to let Americans believe that little green men are visiting our airspace rather than admit China’s increasing military advantage.

The reason that China is throwing caution to the wind, violating our airspace with wanton abandon, and likely using exotic technologies in the process is because to Beijing, America is both weak and crazy. Clearly, China has caught up to the Americans in key areas. What’s more, between America’s seemingly endless commitment to Ukraine—even at the risk of wider nuclear war with Russia—and recent comments by a bevy of US military officials claiming that America and China will be at war within the year, Beijing believes it needs reliable intelligence on America’s nuclear force posture (hence why these surveillance crafts are over our nuclear silos and the Chinese lasers were used on Pearl Harbor where we have many nuclear submarines).

Beijing’s leaders are attempting to ascertain whether the Americans are just posturing or if they really are contemplating nuclear world war with either Russia and/or China. If Washington is thinking about nuclear war, China is using these advanced systems to signal to the American leadership that they can seriously impinge on these plans with their sophisticated military gear.

Washington must comprehend that this is how high-tech great powers deal with each other and begin acting in accordance with this new paradigm. Rather than downplay the threat or redirect it with talk of hobby lobby balloons or aliens, American leaders must face the facts with courage and respond in kind. It’s time for America to dominate the high-tech race with China—before it’s too late.

Related