The suspected Chinese spy balloon shot down by the United States caused diplomatic tensions between the two countries. But why are such balloons used at all in times of drones and satellites? And how do they work?
A suspected Chinese spy balloon over the United States, a second according to the Pentagon over Latin America: The United States has now shot down the balloon over its territory off the coast of the state of South Carolina – although Beijing assured that it was only a weather balloon.
The overflight of the balloon the size of three buses became public last Thursday. “The aim of the balloon is clearly espionage and its current route takes it through sensitive bases,” a Pentagon official said. At this point, the balloon was hovering over the state of Montana, which includes Air Force bases and underground nuclear missile sites. He later flew on towards the east.
A balloon to spy on another country? In times of satellites and drones, that sounds very old-fashioned. According to a US expert, however, balloons are a valuable espionage tool – peppered with artificial intelligence.
Artificial intelligence guides spy balloon
The balloon over the United States looked like an ordinary weather balloon, but had certain peculiarities, William Kim, an expert on surveillance balloons at the Marathon Initiative think tank in Washington, told AFP. Its “charge” was quite large – an indication of the electronics it contained and was powered by solar cells for guidance and information gathering.
The balloon also appeared to have modern guidance technology – the US military has not yet used such technology for the air.
According to Kim, thanks to artificial intelligence, a balloon can adjust its altitude just by detecting changes in the air to take the desired direction. “In the past, you either needed a line or you sent the balloon into the air and it just flew where the wind took it,” said the US expert.
This graphic shows the structure of the suspected espionage balloon from China
© RTL Animation
Thanks to advances in the field of artificial intelligence, balloons without their own propulsion system are now possible. The control by altitude adjustment also includes a radio link to the home base.
Balloons have advantages over satellites
Reconnaissance balloons have been used for many years: in 1794, during the French Revolutionary Wars, the French used reconnaissance balloons against Austrian and Dutch troops, the British newspaper writes “The Guardians”. They were also used in the civil war in the USA. With the two world wars and the cold war, the balloons were used more and more frequently.
With satellite surveillance, spy balloons went out of fashion, but they still have advantages over satellites. Unlike these, balloons are far more difficult to attack, Kim said. On the one hand, this is because they can hardly be detected by radar and their payload can easily be overlooked.
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The balloons also have the advantage of being able to observe detail and movement from relatively close range over a longer period of time and to intercept communications – unlike satellites, which are constantly in orbit and are used by spy agencies to take photos. “These things can stay in one spot for months,” Kim said. They are also cheaper than satellites and hard to detect for radar.
“You shouldn’t think of them as opposites – balloon or satellite or drone,” explains intelligence expert Dr. Christopher Nehring dem starPodcast “important today” from Tuesday. “But in a combined approach – both and. The big intelligence nations use all of them at the same time, drones, planes, satellites, balloons.”
“These balloons don’t always work perfectly”
Australian military expert Peter Layton told CNN that balloons are making a comeback because the technology they need is getting smaller and lighter. There’s just one problem: when they fly low, they’re visible to the naked eye, as they are now in the US.
“These balloons don’t always work perfectly,” said balloon specialist Kim. Normally they acted at an altitude of 20 to 30 kilometers, but the alleged spy balloon over the USA only flew about 14 kilometers high. Despite suspected espionage, he believes a malfunction in the Chinese balloon over the United States is “a real possibility.”
Launching a balloon isn’t as easy as it might sound, Kim said. “These balloons use helium.” If the balloon were shot at, the helium would escape “only very slowly”. “These aren’t things that explode or burst when you shoot them.”
The balloon over the north of the USA, which was supposed to spy on US military installations, has now been shot down by a fighter jet with a guided missile. The remains of the balloon fell into the sea.
Pentagon: China has “balloon fleet”
According to the United States, China has previously sent such observation balloons over North America. During the tenure of US President Donald Trump from 2017 to 2021 alone, surveillance balloons from China flew over the United States at least three times, a Pentagon official said. There has been a brief overflight since Joe Biden began his tenure. Overall, the flights were usually not particularly long or were only discovered retrospectively, it was described. The balloons would also have headed for the areas around Hawaii or Guam, where the Indo-Pacific Command and the US Pacific Fleet are based.
But intelligence expert Nehring considers the balloons to be the “harmless type with the least potential for escalation”: “A military, manned reconnaissance aircraft that penetrates foreign airspace, or a downed satellite, or a drone that is perhaps even being operated from the ground somewhere in the country, it would all be a much bigger injury and a much bigger provocation.”
However, the recent launch of the alleged Chinese surveillance balloon off the Atlantic coast of the USA is only a small piece of the puzzle in the reconnaissance activities between the two great powers.
The US is flying reconnaissance planes off the Chinese coast from US military bases in Japan and the Philippines. A Chinese think tank estimated in December that the United States had undertaken around 600 close reconnaissance flights off the coast of China last year. The actual number was estimated even higher because the airmen didn’t always turn on their transponders for detection.
The Pentagon warned in Washington that China has an entire fleet of balloons that are also used to monitor other countries in the western hemisphere. In recent years, Chinese balloons have been sighted over countries on five continents, including East Asia, South Asia and Europe. Whether over or near Germany is currently being determined by the responsible authorities.
Sources: news agencies DPA and AFP, “The Guardians”, Al Jazeera