General Glen VanHerck, head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, made a stark admission on Monday revealing that the United States had failed to detect previous flights of Chinese spy balloons over its space. air.
The Air Force officer said the U.S. military has a “domain awareness gap,” in a blunt statement about its inability to detect the surveillance balloons most Americans have heard of for the first time last week when an F-22 fighter jet shot down one off the coast of South Carolina.
“We have not detected these threats,” the former fighter pilot said Monday.
VanHerck was referring to the US military’s failure to detect other Chinese spy balloons – three under the Trump administration and one earlier under the Biden administration – as they entered US airspace. His admission exposed an intelligence failure on China, the United States’ main rival.
VanHerck said US intelligence was “afterthought. . . evaluated these threats from additional means of collection” and informed the Pentagon.
Over the weekend, former Trump administration security officials said they were unaware of any Chinese balloons entering US airspace. Their claims raised questions about what the Pentagon knew more broadly about a Chinese surveillance program that had failed to garner public attention.
When the Pentagon released the unclassified version of its annual report on China’s military in November, for example, the 174-page document made no reference to the spy balloon program.
A former intelligence official said midway through the last year of the Trump administration that senior intelligence officials were “generally unaware” of spy balloons. He added that the balloon program “would not have been prioritized over more pressing issues” involving China.
It is not known when the intelligence community discovered the previous flights. But National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said Monday that President Joe Biden had taken office with instructions to step up efforts to detect Chinese espionage.
“We’ve improved our ability to detect things that the Trump administration couldn’t detect,” said Sullivan, who added that the administration had looked at “historical patterns” that helped identify ballooning incidents. precedents after they have occurred.
“This may be a situation where the intelligence community has uncovered previously missed evidence in existing databases and/or information from new, clandestine sources,” said Dennis Wilder, a former intelligence analyst. CIA China.
Since he downed the ball, the Biden administration has pushed back against criticism that it should have acted sooner.
US officials said the high-altitude balloon – which China says was a civilian weather balloon – was detected on January 28 when it entered US airspace near the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Two days later, it flew into Canada before returning to the United States over northern Idaho on Tuesday.
Officials said the balloon was not considered a security threat or an intelligence risk when it was first detected. But after he entered the continental United States on Jan. 31 — and in particular after flying over a military site in Montana housing intercontinental nuclear ballistic missiles — the Pentagon took steps to prevent him from obtaining sensitive information.
Biden asked for options last Tuesday to shoot down the ball and was briefed by his commanders the following day. After learning that targeting the balloon over land posed a risk to civilians, he ordered the military to devise a plan to shoot it down over US territorial waters.
Republicans have slammed Biden for letting the ball fly across the United States and spying on military sites. But Sullivan said it gave the military more time to watch the ball and learn more about its surveillance capabilities.
“A shootout over water would create a greater possibility that we could effectively exploit the wreckage than if it were shot over land,” he added.
Some experts have questioned why China would fly a balloon around the world to spy on the United States when it has satellites that provide high-resolution imagery. But several former intelligence officials have said it could have other functions, such as intercepting hard-to-get communications from space.
A former intelligence official said the “primary function” may not have been to capture footage. “China can use multiple types of sensors depending on the mission,” he said, referring to things like signals intelligence.
Another former intelligence official said the balloon may have been performing “tip and cue” operations. In this case, the balloon picks up something interesting – like conversations or electronic signals – and sends the coordinates to the satellites, which focus their high-end capabilities on the targeted location.
Others have suggested the balloon could have set off radar defenses to learn more about how US weapons systems communicate with each other.
VanHerck declined to say what the United States gleaned from the balloon during its flight, but said it gave the military a chance to assess things like its ability to relay information to China.
“You will see in the future that the delay was well worth its value,” he said.
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