When the intelligence community began releasing information on UFOs in U.S. air space, the most prominent possible culprit in the popular imagination was extraterrestrials, but the Chinese spy balloon saga indicates more attention could be paid to Beijing’s possible role.
Although the Chinese spy balloon that traveled across the United States from Alaska to the Eastern Seaboard was quickly spotted, it is possible other such incidents went undetected, with concern that advanced Chinese surveillance technologies may also be able to sometimes fly unobserved or unidentified above or near the U.S.
CHINESE BALLOON STORY BIGGER THAN IT SEEMS
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a “preliminary assessment” on UFOs in June 2021 stating that 144 UFO reports originated from U.S. government sources, with 80 of the UFOs being observed with “multiple sensors.” By definition, because the aerial phenomena are unidentified, it is not known if China is behind some of them.
“Frankly, if it’s something outside this planet, that might actually be better than the fact that we’ve seen some sort of technological leap from the Chinese or Russians or some other adversary that allows them to conduct this sort of activity,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in July 2020. “That to me is a national security risk and one we should be looking into.”
The ODNI said in 2021 it could only identify one reported unidentified aerial phenomena with high confidence, saying, “We identified the object as a large, deflating balloon. The others remain unexplained.”
The spy office divided the UFOs into five possible categories: foreign adversary systems, airborne clutter, natural atmospheric phenomena, U.S. government or U.S. industry developmental programs, and “a catchall ‘other’ bin.” The ODNI added that UFOs would “represent a national security challenge if they are foreign adversary collection platforms or provide evidence a potential adversary has developed either a breakthrough or disruptive technology.” The spy office said some UFOs might be technologies deployed by China or Russia, worrying that some UFOs “have been detected near military facilities or by aircraft carrying the U.S. government’s most advanced sensor systems.”
A follow-up report by the ODNI in January revealed that in addition to the 144 UFOs listed in its 2021 report, “there have been 247 new reports and another 119 that were either since discovered or reported after the preliminary assessment’s time period” — for a total of 510 UFO reports as of August.
The Pentagon said that of the 366 new reports, 163 were “characterized as 26 characterized as balloon or balloon-like entities,” while 26 were characterized as unmanned aircraft systems, or drones, while six were attributed simply to aerial “clutter.”
A senior defense official was asked this weekend about the ODNI’s assessment of 163 UFOs possibly being balloons, but the official largely dodged.
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“I’m not going to go into the exact nature of the technology. I don’t think that the payload on this is — I wouldn’t characterize it as revolutionary. I think the thing that is different is the altitude and of course the willingness to put it over the continental United States for an extended period of time. That’s the biggest difference here,” the defense official said.
The ODNI said in January that the UFOs “pose a possible adversary collection threat” and that these UFO events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity.”
