Why a spy balloon? It's a key question, retired NORAD commander says
Feb. 15—China has launched ever more satellites in recent years, so why would it need a balloon?
It's a key question, said Army Lt. Gen. Ed Anderson, former vice commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command, the Colorado Springs-based installation that gave the order to shoot down the balloon.
"We all understand that China has some very sophisticated space capabilities for surveillance," he said. "... Why would they need to do the balloon?"
The balloon, shot down Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina, had a payload the size of three school buses. It may have been designed to spend time loitering over sites to get better imagery than a satellite could gather, said John Kirby, spokesman for the National Security Council.
The Chinese could also be testing the U.S. military's response capability, intent or seriousness, Anderson said, although it is impossible to know the full intent right now.
"I think the most important thing right now is to get the stuff that we shot down and understand exactly what (it) was they were doing," he said.
Rep. Jeff Jackson, a Democrat from North Carolina, released a few more details on TikTok Tuesday about the three objects the U.S. shot down over North America after downing the Chinese balloon and efforts to recover them.
He said none of the objects had transponders required by the Federal Aviation Administration for commercial or academic balloons and all were close to sensitive Department of Defense sites. He also reiterated they posed a risk to civilian aircraft, a detail released Monday.
However, the source and intent of the three additional objects, including two roughly the size of ATVs and one much larger, was still unclear after his congressional briefing. He said collecting the wreckage is key.
"There was no direct evidence there was anything nefarious going on with them," he said.
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The Air Force shot down one object over Alaska, where it might have landed on moving ice, he said. The second went down in a Canadian mountain range and the U.S. is working with Canadians to find it.
The third one went down near the Canadian border and may be on the Canadian side. Canada is also involved in the recovery of this object.
The FBI is involved in the search for all the objects, he said.
While intense public scrutiny of the spy balloon and other objects has already started, Anderson said, there are strategic considerations over what will be released to the public.
"You don't want to tell your enemy what you know about them," he said.
In general, he said the rapid discovery of more objects is a sign of positive changes since U.S. forces have been traditionally focused on high-tech threats, such as missiles and fighter jets, Anderson said.
"We are now being a lot more alert in identifying those objects and then taking them down. I think that is a real good statement for NORAD and NorthCom." NorthCom or U.S. Northern Command is integrated with NORAD.
Radar is designed to filter out objects that it is not looking for, so it will not find a rain cloud when it is looking for an aircraft or ballistic missile, said Morgan Nicholson, CEO of InTrack Radar Technologies. His Colorado Springs-based company works for the Department of Defense and commercial contractors. The radar filters can be based on factors, such as speed and size, he said.
Most currently deployed radars are designed to detect threats in orbit, like satellites, those on ballistic trajectories such as missiles, or aircraft flying within the atmosphere, he said.
A balloon would have been floating between those threat categories and possibly filtered out by radars looking for either aircraft or missiles, but it's not difficult for those systems to detect floating objects.
"Any of the radars that have been fielded in recent years could handle this task," he said.
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