Spy balloon effort operates in Hainan province off China’s south coast and has for years collected information on military assets in several countries, officials said
The U.S. intelligence community has linked the Chinese spy balloon shot down on Saturday to a vast surveillance program run by the People’s Liberation Army, and U.S. officials have begun to brief allies and partners who have been similarly targeted.
The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, according to several U.S. officials, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Officials have said these surveillance airships, operated in part by the PLA air force, have been spotted over five continents.
What the Chinese have done is taken an unbelievably old technology, and basically married it with modern communications and observation capabilities” to try to glean intelligence on other nations’ militaries, said one official. “It’s a massive effort.”
On Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman led a briefing on China’s balloon espionage for some 150 people from about 40 embassies, said a senior administration official familiar with the matter. The department has also sent to every U.S. Embassy “detailed information” on the espionage that can be shared with allies and partners.
Separately, U.S. officials have begun to share specifics with officials in countries such as Japan whose military facilities were targeted by Beijing.
“There has been great interest in this on the part of our allies and partners,” said a senior administration official.
Many of them recognize that they, too, may be vulnerable or susceptible to this or an object of interest to the PRC,” the official said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
In Japan in 2020, an aerial orb drew speculation. “Some people thought this was a UFO,” said a Japanese official. “In hindsight people are realizing that was a Chinese espionage balloon. But at that time it was purely novel — nobody had seen this. … So there’s a lot of heightened attention at this time.”
While most of China’s long-range surveillance efforts are conducted by its expanding military satellite array, PLA planners have identified what they consider to be an opportunity to conduct surveillance from the upper atmosphere at altitudes above where commercial jets fly, using balloons that fly between 60,000 and 80,000 feet or higher, officials said.
Analysts still don’t know the size of the balloon fleet, but there have been “dozens” of missions since 2018, said one U.S. official. They take advantage of technology provided by a private Chinese company that is part of the country’s civil-military fusion effort — a program by which private companies develop technologies and capabilities used by the PLA.
In a news briefing Saturday, senior Pentagon officials alluded to the PLA program, noting that balloons had been operating elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. “These balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations, which also violated the sovereignty of other countries,” said one senior defense official.
The official flatly rejected China’s assertion that the airship moving over the United States was a weather balloon blown off course. “This is false,” the official said. “This was a PRC surveillance balloon. This surveillance balloon purposefully traversed the United States and Canada. And we are confident it was seeking to monitor sensitive military sites.”
Some commentators have made light of the Chinese effort, noting that balloons are not the most high-tech of platforms. But others caution against dismissing the balloons’ potential.
“For those who have a sanguine view about the actual intelligence collection capabilities of this balloon, I think they’re underestimating the creative ways the PLA might use it either for intelligence and surveillance purposes, or as a platform for weapons,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the Select Committee on China, who was commenting on public remarks made by Pentagon officials over the weekend.
In recent years, at least four balloons have been spotted over Hawaii, Florida, Texas and Guam — in addition to the one tracked last week. Three of the four instances took place during the Trump administration but were only recently identified as Chinese surveillance airships. Other balloons have been spotted in Latin America and allied countries in the Pacific, officials have said.