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U.S. Defense officials are under fire for their decision to allow a Chinese spy balloon to traverse the continental United States.
Lawmakers told members of the defense community that they would be held accountable should Congress find fault with the Department of Defense’s (DOD) decision-making during a Senate Appropriations Defense hearing on the issue of China’s high-altitude surveillance balloons.
“Make no mistake about it: What China did last week was completely unacceptable and a real threat to American sovereignty,” said subcommittee Chair Jon Tester (D-Mont.). “It deserves a real response from a united America.”
“I am prepared to hold anyone accountable, including the people seated before this committee today, to get real answers. This administration owes Americans answers not only on what happened this week but on what steps they’re going to take to ensure that this never happens again.”
During the hearing, lawmakers heard from DOD officials that the U.S. military first tracked the Chinese spy balloon over the Aleutian islands of Alaska on Jan. 28, but decided it posed no threat and took no action at that time, though it had the ability to do so.
It was not until Jan. 30, when the balloon entered the airspace of the continental United States via Canada, that the military briefed President Joe Biden on the issue and presented him with options for destroying the airship, which it did only on Feb.4, after the balloon had reached the Atlantic Ocean.
Earlier this week, the DOD confirmed that new intelligence had allowed the United States to determine that at least four previous balloon incursions into U.S. airspace had occurred—three during the Trump administration and one during the Biden administration.
Tester said that the United States’ failure to either detect those incidents or respond to eliminate them had likely encouraged the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in its efforts to spy on the United States.
“It should not have been a surprise that China did this because nothing … has happened before to them for these overflights,” Tester said.
Tester also raised concern that Congress had not been given tangible evidence as to what information the CCP spy balloon was meant to collect.
“The truth is we think we know what they were going to collect. We don’t know,” Tester said.
“That scares the hell out of me.”‘Not a Harmless Event’
DOD officials struggled to account for the department’s actions throughout the hearing, fluctuating between insisting on a classified briefing and giving ambiguous answers as to the threat posed by China’s spy balloon and why it was not shot down before Feb. 4.
When pressed on whether the United States or China had gained more intelligence from the incident, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Jedidiah Royal declined to issue a judgment.
