Trial balloons

Randall Hill/Reuters

In today's NY Times:

To the Editor:

The Chinese spy balloon was never about what data the balloon might collect. The flyover was a probe of our defenses with the side benefits (to China) of sowing dissension and redirecting our national conversation.

After several earlier balloon flights failed to trigger a significant U.S. military response, the Chinese made this balloon so big and so bright that the American public could not fail to see it. It was the ultimate Big, Shiny Object. Why did they make it so visible?

Three reasons: First, public awareness of the balloon forced President Biden to take military action. The Chinese learn more about their adversaries every time they provoke a military response.

Second, it let the Chinese see how America responds to a low-level threat. China must have been happy to see that, instead of coming together as one nation, 9/11-style, Americans remained resolutely partisan. The president’s political opponents have used every difficult decision Mr. Biden has had to make as a way to score points against him.

And finally, such a bizarre threat inevitably went viral, directing America’s national conversation away from what we had been talking about just before: the threat of Chinese expansionism and the plans to add new U.S. military bases in the Philippines.

Xi Jinping must be pleased.

Paul Frantz

San Francisco

On the other hand, there's this:

....U.S. officials said some previous incursions were initially classified as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon speak for U.F.O.s. As the Pentagon and intelligence agencies stepped up efforts over the past two years to find explanations for many of those incidents, officials reclassified some events as Chinese spy balloons.

It is not clear when the Pentagon determined the incidents involved Chinese spying. When the determination was made, officials kept the information secret to avoid letting China know their surveillance efforts were uncovered, the officials said....

See also Chinese balloon part of vast aerial surveillance program:

....But balloons offer some advantages. They can linger over a target for hours, whereas a satellite orbiting Earth may have only minutes to snap a picture of its target. “If you have a balloon that’s moving extremely slowly you have persistence that you can’t get from a satellite,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charlie “Tuna” Moore, a former fighter pilot who helped run operations out of NORAD and retired in October as deputy of U.S. Cyber Command.

Analysts think the balloons, like drones, can be remotely piloted — at about 30 to 60 mph, said one official. And because balloons float along high-altitude winds, their paths are less predictable and thus more difficult to track. The balloons are also much cheaper to produce and launch than space-based satellites....