Ian Williams Ian Williams

The vast scale of Beijing’s high-tech balloon programme

Sailors recover the spy balloon (Photo: Alamy)

There will no doubt be some tense moments in the boardrooms of western technology companies over the coming days after the revelation that the Chinese spy balloon shot down after traversing the United States had western-made components with English-language writing on them. The finding was reportedly contained in intelligence briefings to US lawmakers and will almost certainly lead to still greater scrutiny of the sale to China of advanced ‘dual-use’ technology.

China’s continuing claims that the balloon was an innocent weather balloon blown off-course are looking increasingly absurd

Investigators are continuing their efforts to recover the wreckage of the balloon and its payload of surveillance kit from shallow waters off the South Carolina coast but have already concluded that the craft was part of a fleet operated by the Chinese military with sensors capable of sniffing for electronic communications. The targets likely included data transmitted in and around US bases as well as between those bases and US satellites. Officials said the balloon’s surveillance equipment alone was the size of a regional jet, with solar panels capable of powering ‘multiple active intelligence collecting sensors’, with the data sent in real time to Chinese satellites orbiting above.

President Biden has faced fierce criticism for allowing the balloon to cross the US before shooting it down, but it is now clear that one reason – apart from the fear of damage from falling debris – was to observe the 60-meter-tall balloon in action. Officials provided high resolution images from U-2 spy planes that monitored the balloon. They also insisted that other countermeasures had been taken to prevent the balloon from harvesting data.

Officials insist they were monitoring the balloon’s progress well before it crossed into US airspace and was spotted loitering over Montana, home to the Malmstrom Air Force Base, which has more than 100 silos containing nuclear-tipped Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles.

On Friday Joe Biden ordered the military to shoot down another ‘high altitude object’ near Alaska, although the White House did not confirm whether this was another Chinese spy balloon.

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