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Wafting across the United States and into the attention of an alarmed national and global public, a giant Chinese balloon has changed Americans’ awareness of all the stuff floating in the air and how defense officials watch for it and respond.
President Joe Biden said Thursday that the U.S. is updating its guidelines for monitoring and reacting to unknown aerial objects. That’s after the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon transiting the country triggered high-stakes drama, including the U.S. shootdowns of that balloon, and three smaller ones days later.
Biden said Thursday that officials suspect the three subsequent balloons were ordinary ones. That could mean ones used for research, weather, recreational or commercial purposes. Officials have been unable to recover any of the remains of those three balloons, and late Friday the U.S. military announced it had ended the search for the objects that were shot down near Deadhorse, Alaska, and over Lake Huron on Feb. 10 and 12.
In all, the episodes opened the eyes of the public to two realities.
One: China is operating a military-linked aerial surveillance program that has targeted more than 40 countries, according to the Biden administration. China denies it.
Two: There’s a whole lot of other junk floating up there, too.
A look at why there are so many balloons up there — launched for purposes of war, weather, science, business or just goofing around; why they’re getting attention now; and how the U.S. is likely to watch for and respond to slow-moving flying objects going forward.
Some are up there for spying or fighting. Humans have hooked bombs to balloons since at least the 1840s, when winds blew some of the balloon-borne bombs launched against Venice back on the Austrian launchers. In the U.S. Civil War, Union, and Confederate soldiers floated up over front lines in balloons to assess enemy positions and direct fire.
And when it comes to peacetime uses, the cheapness of balloons makes them a favorite aerial platform for all kinds of uses, serious and idle. That includes everything down to “college fraternities with nothing better to do and $10,000,” joked Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.
Himes’ role on the committee involved him in a congressionally mandated intelligence and military review of the most credible sightings of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UFOs.
