The shooting down of a Chinese balloon suspected of spying on the US had the makings of a one-off spat. But with security agencies on heightened alert, more incursions soon came to light. On Friday and Saturday, two smaller objects were downed over Alaska and Canada. A fourth was destroyed on Sunday over Michigan. The flurry of incidents has led officials to talk of a fleet operating over several continents.
What were the four objects?
The US detected the 60 metre-tall Chinese balloon in late January when it entered national airspace near the Aleutian Islands. Described as a surveillance balloon, it drifted over Alaska and into Canada before re-entering US airspace over Idaho. Amid concerns that it was monitoring sensitive military sites, officials waited until the balloon was safely clear of land before downing it off the South Carolina coast. While China insisted it was a “civilian airship used for research”, US officials said debris confirmed it was designed for surveillance.
According to the Pentagon, the balloon was flying at about 60,000 feet and had a gondola the size of three buses that weighed more than a tonne. It was equipped with multiple antennas and solar panels large enough to power several intelligence-gathering sensors.
The next incident occurred on Friday 10 February when US fighter jets downed another object over sea ice near Deadhorse in northern Alaska. The object was very different to the balloon, the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, and was flying at 40,000 feet without any obvious system of propulsion or control, officials said.
A third mysterious object was knocked out of the sky on Saturday after it was tracked over Canada’s central Yukon territory, about 100 miles from the US border. Officials described the object as smaller than the first balloon and cylindrical. It was also flying at about 40,000 feet when it was shot down.
A further incursion played out Sunday when the US president, Joe Biden, ordered US fighter planes to destroy a fourth object over Lake Huron in Michigan. It was shot down over the lake “out of an abundance of caution”, an administration official said. The object was an octagonal structure with strings hanging from it, but with no evident payload. It was not deemed to be a military threat to anything on the ground, but could have posed a hazard to civil aviation because it was flying at about 20,000ft (6,000 metres), officials said.
On Sunday, the US Senate majority leader, Charles Schumer, who was briefed by the Biden administration before the Lake Huron incident, said the second and third objects were very likely small balloons. But speaking to reporters the same day, Gen Glen VanHerck, the head of Norad, said: “I’m not going to categorise them as balloons. We’re calling them objects for a reason.” He said he wasn’t able to say how they stayed aloft, but speculated there could be a balloon inside or some type of propulsion mechanism. So far, only the first object has been attributed to China.
What has been recovered?
Teams working from planes, boats and mini-subs are scouring the 15 metre-deep waters off South Carolina for remnants of the giant balloon and its payload. Because it was downed at high altitude, the wreckage has spread over several square kilometres, but pieces have already been recovered for analysis. The balloon had propellers and could change altitude, officials said, allowing it be carried by winds in different directions. Though it was equipped with a self-destruct mechanism, this was not activated.
Operations to recover the second object are under way on sea ice near Deadhorse, Alaska, but the effort is being hampered by windchill, snow and limited daylight. Further recovery teams are searching for debris of the third object in the Yukon, while US military personnel with specialist diving gear are due to enter the frigid waters of Lake Huron in search of debris from the fourth object.
Why so many objects now?
US officials say the objects belonged to a “fleet” operating over five continents. And while some analysts suspect a ramping-up of Chinese surveillance ahead of potential future tensions over Taiwan, others have different explanations.
Speaking to the New York Times, Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s UFO programme, said the string of incursions were “low-end technology” being used to “harass” America. “It is a high impact, low-cost way for China to do this, and the more you look up in the sky, the more you will see,” he said.
Over the years, US Navy pilots have documented dozens of mysterious objects passing through restricted military airspace. A report from the US intelligence community in 2021 reviewed 144 such cases. Only one could be explained with high confidence – an object described as a “large, deflating balloon”.
The sudden flurry of objects is at least partly explained by heightened vigilance. Radar systems typically scan the skies for incoming missiles, not slow-moving objects. But since the discovery of the giant balloon, the Pentagon has scrutinised high altitudes more closely. Meanwhile, Norad has tuned its radar system to make it more sensitive. That has produced a spike in detections that would normally be missed.
These are not the first. Three balloons – undetected at the time – briefly flew over US territory during Donald Trump’s administration, and one earlier in Biden’s term.
Militaries around the world are increasingly investing in balloons and other high-altitude surveillance systems. Expensive spy satellites can be dodged on the ground by knowing when they pass over, but much cheaper balloons can slip into foreign airspace undetected and linger over targets for days to take images and eavesdrop on mobile communications. China’s military is known to be working on balloons that are more durable, manoeuvrable and harder to detect, but the US and UK are also investing in the technology. In November, the first demonstration of the UK military’s high-altitude balloon was completed. The balloon is intended for stratospheric communications, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions.
