U.S. military leaders may develop a high-altitude surveillance balloon program, a top Air Force general said, as the Biden administration dismissed allegations from China.
“We’re looking at experimenting in that space,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Alexus Grynkewich said Monday during a Center for a New American Security event. “We haven’t done any of that yet.”
Grynkewich, who leads the air component of U.S. Central Command, cited the potential value of “long-endurance” platforms such as balloons for filling “gaps” in surveillance coverage. That acknowledgment suggests that an alleged Chinese spy balloon shot down off the coast of South Carolina could be a portent of future U.S. military tactics, while his emphasis that they haven’t “put sensors on” balloons to date dovetailed with other government dismissals of China’s latest allegation that the United States has flown such balloons over its airspace.
“We are not flying surveillance balloons over China,” White House national security spokesman John Kirby told reporters Monday. “I’m not aware of any other craft that we’re flying over [or] into Chinese airspace.”
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A Chinese diplomatic spokesman accused the U.S. of sending balloons “over Chinese air space ten times without authorization from China” earlier Monday, an allegation deployed nine days after the downing of a balloon that was spotted from the ground by a photojournalist in Montana. “The U.S. needs to reflect on its own behavior and change course rather than attacking others and stoking confrontation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said Monday.
That allegation received no credence from Japan or South Korea, as senior officials from both countries endorsed the U.S. denial following a meeting in Washington with Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman.
“No country is allowed to infringe on the sovereignty of another country,” Japanese vice foreign minister Mori Takeo told reporters Monday, moments after Sherman reiterated Kirby’s denial. “And regarding the Chinese accusation about U.S. balloons over the territory of China, well, I have to say that, about American activities, Wendy has the right answer.”
The hypothetical deployment of surveillance balloons in Chinese airspace would run contrary to U.S. interests, according to Western analysts, given the American advantage in satellite surveillance capabilities.
“Our view is very clearly that international law delimits what can or cannot be done in airspace … and what the Chinese have been doing is a clear violation,” American Enterprise Institute senior Zack Cooper told the Washington Examiner. “What the Chinese have been doing is a clear violation, and, I think obviously, like during the Cold War, we flew U-2s and SR-71s and things of that sort, but that was before we had the capability to do much of that collection with satellites. So, I think the United States would oppose any initiative of the type the Chinese are suggesting that would violate sovereign air space for surveillance purposes.”
Kirby said the government doesn’t “know exactly what” the downed balloon was deployed to achieve.
“Just, in general — and that’s an important caveat that I’d like you to remember — when you are at a lower altitude than space, you could perhaps get a better fidelity of imagery, for instance,” Kirby added. “When you are not moving at the speed of a satellite … when you can maneuver — left, right, slow down, speed up like this thing could — then you can loiter. If you can loiter, you can soak in a little bit more. You can spend more time over a sensitive site.”
Some lawmakers and observers think the value for China chiefly lies in the ability to embarrass President Joe Biden and confuse the American public.
“The Chinese government wants to distance itself from this object to make us look either incompetent or paranoid, and that is the background against which we should see [the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s] statements,” said Elisabeth Braw, an expert in hybrid warfare at the American Enterprise Institute. “And what they do very well is, ‘So, oh well, the other side … does this or that.’ And they, frankly … often make things up.”
Grynkewich floated the possibility of deploying surveillance balloons while discussing the need to reinforce existing surveillance capabilities.
He also touted the potential for U.S. forces in the Middle East to pioneer projects that could be redeployed in the Indo-Pacific due to the importance of ballistic missiles and air defense systems for both China and Iran.
“If you look at the tactical problem that you face in the Indo-Pacific [from China], just oversimplify it, you have thousands of ballistic missiles protected by an advanced integrated air defense system, and that’s a really hard anti-access/area denial problem to deal with,” the general said, referring to the risks faced by U.S. forces trying access areas within range of those Chinese weapons. “If you come to CENTCOM today … we’re looking at thousands of ballistic missiles protected by an advanced, integrated air defense system. It’s the same problem, just shift east and west and turn the water into sand.”
That observation will make his comments about how to improve early-warning capabilities all the more intriguing for U.S. defense companies.
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“I can promise you that many wheels will be turning in Silicon Valley to see what, whether this is something where existing companies or companies yet to be formed, can come up with a really, very extraordinarily creative solution that can be sold to the U.S. government and outwit the countries that would inevitably look for such activity,” Braw said.
