According to authorities, the Pentagon opted not to shoot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been observed over American airspace for a few days because it could harm people on the ground. However, the U.S. is tracking the balloon. At a time when tensions are already high, the balloon’s discovery strains U.S.-China relations even more.
The U.S. has “very high confidence” that it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon flying over sensitive sites to gather information, a senior defence official told reporters at the Pentagon. One of the states where the balloon was noticed was Montana, which is home to Malmstrom Air Force Base, one of the country’s three nuclear missile silo fields. To discuss sensitive information, the official spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The government is still monitoring the balloon, according to a brief statement from Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, the Pentagon press secretary. It does not pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground, he said, as it is “currently travelling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic.”
He claimed that recent years have seen similar balloon activity. He continued by saying that the US took precautions to prevent the collection of sensitive data.
According to the defence official, the U.S. has communicated the seriousness of the situation to Chinese authorities through a number of channels.
The incident occurs right before Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s first visit to Beijing, which is scheduled for this weekend and is intended to try to find some common ground. Beijing and Washington have been discussing about his impending presence despite the fact that the trip has not yet been officially publicised.
It wasn’t immediately obvious whether Blinken’s trip plans would be affected by the balloon’s finding.
The U.S. does have fighter jets, including F-22s, ready to fire down the balloon on orders from the White House, according to the senior defence official. In the end, the Pentagon advised against it, noting that even though the balloon was over a sparsely populated region of Montana, its size would have produced a significant enough debris field to pose a risk to people.
What the military was doing to stop it from gathering sensitive information was unclear, as well as what would happen to the balloon if it wasn’t shot down.
However, the U.S. has determined that the balloon has limited value in terms of providing China intelligence it couldn’t already gather by other means, such as through spy satellites. The defence official claimed that the spy balloon was attempting to fly over the Montana missile fields.
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The source declined to say how big the balloon was but claimed that, despite being at a great height, commercial pilots could still see it. From 1:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Wednesday, all air travel was suspended at Montana’s Billings-Logan International Airport while the military gave the White House options. The Billings Gazette snapped a photo of a sizable white balloon hovering over the region, but the Pentagon would not confirm whether or not that was the surveillance balloon.
Without going into detail, the defence official claimed that the balloon’s altitude and the amount of time it spent hovering over a particular area worried them.
According to a statement from the Republican governor and spokesperson Brooke Stroyke, Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte said he was briefed on Wednesday after the Montana National Guard was informed of an ongoing military operation in Montana airspace.
The South China Sea, Taiwan, the Xinjiang area in western China, the crackdown on democracy campaigners in Hong Kong, and many other problems are causing particularly high tensions with China. Not least among the irritants are China’s ongoing trade and technology disputes, its refusal to restrain North Korea’s expanding ballistic missile programme, and its covert support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In response to nearby operations by 34 Chinese military aircraft and nine warships, which are part of Beijing’s strategy to unnerve and intimidate the self-governing island democracy, Taiwan scrambled fighter jets, put its navy on alert, and activated missile systems on Tuesday.
The central line in the Taiwan Strait, which has long served as an unofficial buffer zone between the two sides that split during a civil war in 1949, was crossed by twenty of those aircraft.
Beijing has also intensified its plans for a possible blockade or military action against Taiwan, which has caused growing alarm among military chiefs, diplomats, and elected officials in the U.S., Taiwan’s main ally.
First to report on the surveillance balloon was NBC News.
During the airport closure on Wednesday, some Montana residents claimed to have seen an odd item in the sky, although it’s unclear whether or not what they actually saw was the balloon.
Chase Doak reported seeing a “huge white circle in the sky” from a Billings office window, but he claimed it was too tiny to be the moon.
He snapped a few pictures, then hurried home to acquire a longer-lens camera so he could snap more pictures and videos. For about 45 minutes, he could see it, and although it seemed to be stationary, Doak claimed that the video suggested it was slowly moving.
He remarked, “I felt it might be a real UFO. Therefore, I wanted to be sure to record it and take as many pictures as I could.
VOA
