An article published by the American newspaper The New York Times stated that the Chinese airship incident shed light on the new weapon that Beijing decided to use to achieve its strategic goals, and talked about the monitoring of many Chinese airships during the past two years, especially in the skies of Taiwan.

The newspaper added that many did not care about previous warnings about China sending balloons to it in different regions of the world, as the residents of the Taiwanese capital, Taipei, were the first to warn of these balloons, and they had previously taken pictures of them.

The New York Times quoted specialists as saying that the Chinese spy balloons are run by the Strategic Support Forces Division, a special and semi-secret department within the Chinese army that oversees electronic espionage operations.


Strategic choice

Su Tzu-Yun, an analyst at the National Institute of Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told the newspaper that the activity of this military department comes in implementation of the policies of Chinese President Xi Jinping, who had previously stressed the importance of developing the work of the People's National Army, and strengthening its means of work, especially with regard to advanced technology. .

Su Tzu-yun added that it was time to treat balloons as an integral part of China's spy policy.

According to the New York Times, Chinese scientists have worked during the recent period to develop the technology of making balloons, and means to ensure that they remain stationary for as long as possible, and make them difficult to track or destroy.


The newspaper quoted the head of the Taiwan Weather Bureau, Ching Ming-Din, as saying that he had previously seen pictures of balloons in March 2021, but he did not pay much attention to that, explaining that Taipei did not care about these small balloons.

Difficulty detecting and destroying

The New York Times confirmed that the danger of Chinese spy balloons lies not only in the difficulty of monitoring them, but also in the difficulty of destroying them.

It quoted former Taiwanese air force officer Shang Yan-ting as saying that shooting down a single balloon is very difficult and expensive for any air force, and stated that the United States had to use its latest military combat aircraft and its latest precision-guided missiles to shoot down the balloon.

He said that it is very difficult and it is like hitting a small bird with an artillery shell.