The Intercept: 10 scandals surrounding the Chinese spy balloon disaster a year ago

A Chinese spy balloon flies over the United States (Reuters)

The Intercept website described the incident of a Chinese spy balloon flying unmolested over the most important and secret defense facilities in the United States one year ago as a disaster for the administration of President Joe Biden.

He added that from the beginning, the US administration did its best to hide, obfuscate, challenge, or deny the details that would clarify the depth of this breach in American national security.

In this context, the American website monitored what it considered 10 scandals that reveal the depth of the Biden administration’s incompetence, as follows:

1- American agencies have known about the Chinese balloon monitoring program for years. These reconnaissance platforms are tracked by satellites of the National Security Agency, Space Command and the National Reconnaissance Office from launch to the end of their missions via the balloon's satellite communications with its controlling agency in China.

2- The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORD) relies on these agencies to alert and direct its group of 47 radar systems extending along the Arctic coast of North America to confront imminent threats, and it did so last January.

3- Nord radars can detect targets moving at speeds ranging from 25 miles to 3,000 miles per hour. Controllers usually set minimum speed starts to filter out low-speed returns such as cars, birds or weather. Contrary to the administration's claims, controllers can remove these filters in seconds from their consoles, allowing them to detect the Chinese spy balloon before it enters Nordic airspace.

4- This early warning also allowed the fighter wing at Elmendorf Air Base to inform the pilots of the threat they would face before boarding their planes the next day, instead of responding to a sudden threat by rushing to the fighters away from a traditional alert position, unaware of the threat they would encounter.

5- While the administration still claims that it did not know about the high-altitude capabilities of the balloons, the Department of Defense as recently as 2019 experimented with the navigation capabilities of World View balloons and the wide surveillance capabilities of Sierra Nevada sensors. Like China's spy blimps, World View's balloons change altitudes to take advantage of wind direction and speeds, allowing them to travel over large distances to specific target locations.

Once there, they can stay above those targets for days at a time, enabling the sensor packages to collect images and signals with much greater accuracy than satellite-borne systems. The Chinese balloon did not accidentally wander into American airspace, but rather flew there intentionally.

6- The accuracy of advanced satellite imaging systems is about 30 centimetres, but balloons operate at a much closer distance to the Earth than satellites, which allows similar imaging systems to achieve an accuracy of 5 centimeters, and capture all the details required for precise targeting.

7- Although the Biden administration insists that the balloon may not be able to collect complex images like a satellite, and therefore does not represent a security risk, proximity has a greater impact on collecting intelligence signals.

The Intercept pointed out that the Ministry of Defense knew that the balloon was a major threat, and should have been destroyed off the coast of Alaska, and wondered: Why did Nord not shoot it down?

8- Nord has the authority to deal with imminent threats that could strike targets in North America. However, dealing with non-imminent threats that cannot deliver munitions requires the approval of the President or Secretary of Defense.

Nord's commander notified the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the threat on January 27, one day before it entered Nord's airspace, and waited for a response that apparently never came.

9- The Biden administration did not do anything for 3 days. It was not until January 31 that President Biden requested the provision of military options from Nord. Fearing collateral damage, the administration allowed one of China's most capable reconnaissance platforms to fly across the entire continental United States.

The site commented that Biden could have ordered the balloon to be dropped off the coast of Alaska or over the frozen tundra in Alaska or Canada, where there is no actual risk of collateral damage, but for some reason, he allowed this spy balloon to complete its mission before ordering it to be shot down off the East Coast. .

10- If there were any doubts about the administration's "insincere" concerns about collateral damage, they were dispelled over the next eight days when 3 more balloons were shot down, and Nord most likely was able to locate them over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron.

The site criticized what it described as intelligence failure or lack of military capability within Nord as being what allowed this security breach, and that it was President Biden's hesitation and incompetence that allowed this to happen. He added that the United States will remain in danger until he leaves office.

Source: The Intercept