As the Chinese surveillance balloon made its way across the continental U.S. before being shot down this past weekend, a freshman Republican congressman from Arizona wondered aloud on social media what was taking so long.
The balloon was approaching the nation's eastern coast when U.S. House Rep. Eli Crane posted to Twitter early in the afternoon of Friday, Feb. 3.
"For days, the Biden Administration has permitted a spy balloon from communist China to invade deep into U.S. airspace," Crane said in his Twitter post. "Why hasn't the Admin shot it down?"
Image of Chinese surveillance balloon by Instagram user Chase Doak, taken before it was shot down
| instagram.com/ckdoak/
Crane, an Arizona native, combat veteran and small business owner, then provided an answer to his own question.
"Because they're utterly incompetent and seemingly obsessed with projecting weakness."
The following day, Saturday, Feb. 4, a U.S. Air Force fighter shot down the "Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon" following its fly-over of the U.S. for days prior, a U.S. Defense Department news release issued the same day said. The Defense Department has since been collecting remnants of the balloon, despite rough seas.
Last weekend's now shot-down balloon was noticed well-prior to Crane's Twitter post. The Defense Department announced the evening of Thursday, Feb. 2, that it was tracking the "intelligence-gathering balloon, most likely launched by China."
"The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in an impromptu briefing the same day. "The U.S. government, to include NORAD, continues to track and monitor it closely."
The balloon was not the first of its kind spotted over the U.S., according to an "official" quoted in the Defense Department's Feb. 2 news release, who also said it appeared to be acting differently than what previously had been observed.
"It's happened a handful of other times over the past few years, to include before this administration," the official said. "It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances. That would be one distinguishing factor."
The size of the balloon wasn't specified at the time, aside from calling it "sizable," but the official did say that its size was a factor in whether to shoot it down.
"We did assess that it was large enough to cause damage from the debris field if we downed it over an area," the official said. "I can't really go into the dimension — but there have been reports of pilots seeing this thing, even though it's pretty high up in the sky."
China weighed in the same day when a Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesperson denied the balloon was being used for intelligence gathering, saying it was a research balloon blown off course.
"The airship is from China," the spokesperson said. "It is a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes. Affected by the Westerlies and with limited self-steering capability, the airship deviated far from its planned course. The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure. The Chinese side will continue communicating with the US side and properly handle this unexpected situation caused by force majeure."
The following day, the National Review reported that Secretary of State Antony Blinken delayed a planned trip to China because of the balloon that had already flown over Alaska and Canada before it arrived over Montana. The National Review also repeated a NBC news story that said a senior defense official reported the balloon seemed to be monitoring Malmstrom Air Force Base, home to the US' intercontinental ballistic missile. Malmstrom Air Force Base is one of three U.S. Air Force Bases that house the United States' arsenal of Minuteman IIIs, according to the base's website.
Jitters over what China still claims was a weather balloon has been a long time building. The Heritage Foundation reported in September that the U.S. held nuclear superiority over China after the Cold War era, when China maintained strategies of "lean and effective" and "no first use." Those strategies meant China allegedly would never be the first to use nuclear weapons while also maintaining a small nuclear arsenal, sufficient only for critical target areas in the event of a retaliatory strike.
China possessed about 65 intercontinental ballistic missiles in 2010, along with a small number of dual-capable intermediate- and medium-range ballistic missiles, according to The Heritage Foundation.
China also began prioritizing modernization of its nuclear weapons about twenty years ago and, as recently as 2020, the country had fewer than 300 nuclear weapons, far less than the almost 2,000 in the U.S. arsenal, according to The Heritage Foundation. That same year, the Pentagon predicted China could double by the next decade. However, information gleaned over the last two years revealed China's nuclear capabilities could exceed those of the U.S. much sooner than anticipated, both qualitatively and quantitatively.
Admiral Charles Richard, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee in March - almost a year ago - that China now "possesses the capability to employ any coercive nuclear strategy today.”
Freshman Montana Republican U.S. House Rep. Ryan Zinke, a former Navy SEAL, told the National Review that the area of the state over which the balloon then was flying is not densely populated and that the balloon could easily be shot down without civilian casualties. That did not happen.
After the balloon was shot down off the South Carolina coast, news outlets worldwide, including NPR, reported that defense officials were working with the FBI and counterintelligence agencies to recover debris, including "any material of intelligence value."
"We don't know exactly all the benefits that will derive," a senior defense official said in NPR's news story. "But we have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities. And I suspect if we are successful in recovering aspects of the debris, we will learn even more."
