It’s well known that during World War II the Japanese put bombs on huge balloons and let them loose. The prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere blow from west to east. So if you put something high enough up for long enough it’ll travel in that general direction.
The Japanese had intended for their bombs to hit the continental U.S. They had no way to track their bomb balloons so they had to design the balloon such that it would last a certain amount of time and then fall, hoping that the amount of time they guessed was correct. We know they did this because we found some of these balloons and their bombs on the West Coast. Luckily only a few ever made it to the United States and the bombs never went off.
The Chinese have spy satellites that fly over the U.S. every day to take pictures. And they claim that their balloon that recently crossed the U.S. was a civilian weather experiment that went astray. No one believes that, of course.
You can actually kind of steer a balloon by raising or lowering its altitude to try to find different wind directions, and this balloon had the ability to do that. If you look at the path the balloon took, it went through Alaska and then came down through Canada to Montana. It then went southeast across the country, taking it over several important military installations and eventually exited the country after flying over the Carolinas.
So why would China send a balloon across the U.S. if they have satellites that can take pictures? There are several possibilities. They might have extra equipment on the balloon like ground penetrating radar to give them an idea as to what’s going on underground. They might have decided that photos from space are too low resolution. The balloon is 60,000 feet up, but that’s still far closer than any satellite would be. Maybe they were hoping we would shoot it down and they could gather information on the radar signature of the fighter sent to do the job.
So why did the military decide to let the balloon cross the U.S. before shooting it down? There could be several reasons.
The first is public safety. Most weather balloons grow to be about 20 feet in diameter, while this Chinese spy balloon was about 90 feet in diameter – about three bus lengths — which makes all of the equipment hanging beneath the balloon about the size of one bus. That’s a lot of debris that could cause a lot of damage.
The second reason is that it’s highly unlikely the balloon would have been able to gather any information that a satellite can’t already. The third is the information we could gather from the balloon as it traveled across the U.S. We had intelligence planes shadowing the balloon from the time it entered U.S. airspace, intercepting signals to and from it. The signals are likely encrypted. But even if we cannot read them we might be able to figure out what address they are being sent from and to. Just that bit of information is extremely useful.
It was the smart choice to wait until the balloon was over the ocean before shooting it down. And I wouldn’t be surprised if the Air Force put some reflective coating on the F22 that fired the missile so that its true radar signature wasn’t revealed.
Another balloon was spotted over Central America, and it has been confirmed that it’s another Chinese surveillance balloon. Why China would send a balloon over Central America isn’t exactly known at this point, but I doubt it’s a mistake. I also doubt future balloon incursions will be tolerated.
When the F22 shot down the balloon off the coast of the Carolinas, that marked the first air-to-air kill for any F22. I’m sure we’d be happy to rack up some more using balloons for target practice.
