The balloons have some advantages over the satellites that orbit the earth in regular patterns. They fly closer to earth and can evade radar.
The Chinese spy balloon was struck down by a missile from an F-22 fighter jet over the Atlantic Ocean last week.Credit…Chad Fish/Associated PressWASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have assessed that China’s spy balloon program is part of a global surveillance effort that is designed to collect information on the military capabilities of countries around the world, according to three American officials.
The balloon flights, some officials believe, are part of an effort by China to hone its ability to gather data about American military bases — in which it is most interested — as well as those of other nations in the event of a conflict or rising tensions. U.S. officials said this week that the balloon program has operated out of multiple locations in China.
At a news conference on Wednesday, Brig Gen. Patrick S. Ryder, the Pentagon spokesman, said that over the past several years Chinese balloons have been spotted operating over Latin America, South America, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Europe.
“This is what we assess as part of a larger Chinese surveillance balloon program,” General Ryder said.
Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said at another news conference in Washington that the State Department has shared information on the spy balloon program with dozens of countries, both in meetings in Washington and through U.S. embassies abroad.
“We’re doing so because the United States was not the only target of this broader program, which has violated the sovereignty of countries across five continents,” he said.
The balloons have some advantages over the satellites that orbit the earth in regular patterns, U.S. officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters, say. They fly closer to earth and drift with wind patterns, which are not as predictable to militaries and intelligence agencies as the fixed orbits of satellites, and they can evade radar. They can also hover over areas while satellites are generally in constant motion. Simple cameras on balloons can produce clearer images than those on orbital satellites, and other surveillance equipment can pick up signals that do not reach the altitude of satellites.
On Tuesday, The Washington Post reported details about the surveillance program, including that it had operated partly out of the main island of Hainan Province off China’s south coast.
China’s military modernization has been driven by the conviction that the People’s Liberation Army had to catch up with advanced rivals like the United States, as well as develop weapons and strategies that could give it a surprise edge. And balloons became a small but active part of that strategy.
China’s National University of Defense Technology has a team of researchers who study advances in balloons. And as early as 2020, People’s Liberation Army Daily, the main newspaper of the Chinese military, published an article describing how near space “has become a new battleground in modern warfare.” In recent years, the paper has been telling its officer readers in sometimes hyperbolic language to take balloons seriously.
Balloons are “a powerful eye in the sky for covering low-altitude and surface targets,” an article in the newspaper said in 2021. “In the future balloon platforms maybe become, like submarines in the depths of the ocean, a chilling hidden killer.”
The balloons may help fill gaps in China’s network of satellites dedicated to intelligence and surveillance. Balloon collection may include data on atmospheric conditions and also communications that could not be gleaned from outer space, said John K. Culver, a former senior intelligence officer at the Central Intelligence Agency who is now a senior fellow at the Global China Hub of the Atlantic Council.
“Data collected by balloons flying over the U.S. or our allies and partners in the Western Pacific may also be valuable for Chinese missile forces by expanding and enhancing their targeting knowledge and knowledge of atmospheric conditions,” Mr. Culver wrote in an emailed response to questions.
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A photograph provided by the U.S. Navy showing sailors recovering the Chinese balloon in the waters off South Carolina on Sunday.Credit…MCS1 Tyler Thompson/U.S.NavyAmerican officials said that intelligence agencies during the Biden administration had developed a far deeper understanding of the scope and size of the Chinese spy balloon effort, discovering earlier incursions that had been classified as unknown events and tracking new operations by the Chinese spy balloons.
What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source.
However, U.S. officials said most of the previous observations of the surveillance balloons had been short. The latest spy balloon’s transit across the United States gave the U.S. military and intelligence agencies a long period of time to study the capabilities of the surveillance equipment attached to it. Officials said their knowledge of what China was capable of collecting from their balloon program has increased dramatically.
“This last week provided the United States with a unique opportunity to learn a lot more about the Chinese surveillance balloon program, all information that will help us to continue to strengthen our ability to track these kinds of objects,” General Ryder said.
Before last week, the United States had tracked Chinese surveillance balloons collecting information from more than a dozen countries around the world, officials said. Some of the Chinese efforts appeared to be focused on the Pacific region, and a number of the balloons and other Chinese surveillance efforts have been detected over U.S. allies and partners in that region.
The New York Times reported Saturday that a classified intelligence report given to Congress last month highlighted at least two instances of a foreign power using advanced technology for aerial surveillance over American military bases, one inside the continental United States and the other overseas. The research suggested China was the foreign power, U.S. officials said. The report also discussed surveillance balloons.
In the United States, at least five spy balloons have been observed — three during the Trump administration and two during the Biden administration. The spy balloons observed during the Trump administration were initially classified as unidentified aerial phenomena, U.S. officials said. It was not until after 2020 that officials closely examined the balloon incidents under a broader review of aerial phenomena and determined that the incidents were part of the Chinese global balloon surveillance effort.
While assessments differ on what the Chinese surveillance balloons can collect, many officials believe Chinese satellites are generally as capable of image collection as a balloon. But the balloons can linger longer over a site, and potentially collect multiple forms of intelligence, although officials have not described what they know about the balloons’ collection ability.
The Chinese government has claimed the balloon was meant to collect weather information. General Ryder said that if the balloon that traveled across the United States were really for civilian purposes, Beijing would have given Washington advance warning.
“The P.R.C. did not do that,” General Ryder said, » …
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