99 Silver Balloons: What do nations hope to gain with the invasion of sovereign airspace?
China has ushered in a new era of warfare with both their use of surveillance balloons and their violations of US airspace.
Recent events in the skies above the continental United States have led to a flurry of questions around the sovereignty of airspace, as well as what countries such as China might hope to gain from such incidents. This article will aim to define various terms used in this space, as well as other similar examples of probes on both sides of the East/West divide.What are ‘probes’? - Probes, formally airspace infringements or violations, are when aircraft enter into notified airspace without previously requesting and being granted clearance.
What is a ‘scramble’? - When the aircraft to which the airspace belongs hurredly intercept the aircraft violating their airspace.
National Security Council (US) - The National Security Council is “the President’s principal forum for national security and foreign policy decision making.”
What are the purposes of these probes?
At their core, probing events such as these serve two purposes.
To test, measure and evaluate response times and actions, whether this the sensitivity of defence systems, air force scrambles and intercepts, or the level of response to invasions of airspace – do they escort, shadow, attempt to capture or destroy the probe?
To attempt to gather intelligence on sensitive sites on any given target or targets.
Why balloons?
Based on the intelligence available at the time of writing, the ‘balloon incident’ has been interesting for many reasons. Firstly, the three, and counting, incidents on the 4th, 11th and 12th of February 2023 are among the first confirmed air-to-air kills for the United States’ Air Force (USAF) F-22 Raptor Stealth Fighter aircraft, with one balloon being destroyed near South Carolina, and the second and third being destroyed in Canadian airspace near the Alaskan Canadian border.
Balloons may have been employed due to the fact they typically have no active propulsion, and can be controlled autonomously, meaning there is no active crew aboard. Aside from the fact this reduces the overall footprint of the craft, as no sleeping, cooking or living quarters are needed – thus aiding the ‘stealth’ characteristics and helping to keep the craft invisible to air defence systems and sensors. The autonomy of the balloon platform in this way may also have been chosen to give an air of deniability to the mission, after all, if a balloon has no means of controlling its path, how can it be responsible for where it is? This gives the platform, and the sensitive equipment aboard, a slightly longer window to potentially gather sensitive information on targets in the flight path.
China have become somewhat pioneers of the use of ‘Steerable Stratospheric Balloons’, with the Academy of Opto-Electronics, a prominent school within the Chinese Academy of Sciences, being based in Beijing and spearheading the work on the ‘Lighter Than Air Vehicle Centre’ since 2005. Whilst Western Balloons focus almost entirely on algorithmic programming to determine altitude change, to the end of catching whichever wind channels in the Stratosphere are optimal to keep the craft in the desirable area, Chinese craft differ from this approach by fitting axillary propellers to provide a small but significant amount of propulsion. Reports following on from the first incident stated the Chinese balloon did indeed have propellers fitted, thus likely providing some ability to steer it’s course.
National Security Council spokesman, John Kirby, told reporters the balloon was almost definitely Chinese in origin, the balloon closely adhered to Chinese approaches to balloon construction, and the path the balloon followed were not considered to be coincidental – flying directly over numerous sensitive military sites. An article in 2017 detailed how two Chinese balloon tests has successfully released ‘bat-sized’ drones from 30,000 and 80,000 feet to provide ‘closer look’ capabilities. Ostensibly, these drones were for Search and Rescue usage, but there are undoubtedly military applications for such capability. However, no such drones have been confirmed as being recovered in the wake of these incidents.
“The goal of our research is to launch hundreds of these drones in one shot, like letting loose a bee or ant colony,” – Professor Yang, lead researcher at the Lighter Than Air Vehicle Centre, Beijing in an interview with the South China Morning Post.
Interestingly, there are no open-source documents on the platofrms to which Professor Yang may be referencing, leading to the assumption that the current iterations of such technology are classified, likely with military or intelligence applications.
US Navy sailors recover the wreckage of the Chinese surveillance balloon off the cost of South Carolina. (Image Source: Petty Officer First Class Tyler, US Navy)
Was the course accidental?
Whilst the Chinese state line is that the balloon was a civilian weather platform that simply deviated from its intended path, the flight path itself does cast doubt on this. Flying almost directly over Malmstrom Air Force Base (AFB), home to the 341st Missile Wing of the Air Force Global Strike Command, an intercontinental ballistic missile unit capable of firing the Minuteman III ICBM – the land-based leg of the US nuclear triad. The course also took the balloon within surveillance range of other sensitive ICBM missile sites, such as F.E. Warren AFB and Nellis AFB.
Secondly, the balloon was reportedly packed with explosives, likely in the case of capture or damage to prevent the module falling into enemy hands. Whilst this makes sense to protect experimental and undoubtedly sensitive equipment, it doesn’t do much to shore up the party narrative of this a civilian craft.
In short, it is highly unlikely that the balloon was civilian in nature. This narrative was likley crafted to give the US pause to simply destroy the balloon, thus giving a wider window of opportunity for the equipment aboard to gather sensitive information.
Is China the only nation probing airspace in this way?
In a word, no. Although balloons are a novel approach, China are not the only nation to use probes to gather intelligence. Closest to home, Russian strategic bomber aircraft have been escorted out of UK areas of interest before reaching UK airspace proper as recently as February 2022. RAF Typhoons were scrambled from RAF Lossiemouth on February 2nd to escort two Tu-95 Bear H and two T0-142 Bear F bombers. Lossiemouth, home to Royal Air Force bomber and fighter squadrons, as well as Royal Navy nuclear-capable submarine fleets, aircraft carriers and the RAF’s state-of-the-art P-8A Poseidon fleet.
Russia and America in 2019 were also both criticized for continual violations of each other’s airspace, with fighters and bombers taking turns loitering in the respective areas of interest of the other nation, occasionally entering foreign airspace for the purposes of testing scramble times and response measures.
Russian Air Force Tupolev TU-95 Bear Strategic Bombers are regulated escorted out of UK’s areas of interest. (Image source: Ministry of Defence)
Remarks
The US has claimed that it learned more about Chinese surveillance capabilities, than the Chinese could have gathered through their limited surveillance window during flight time. However, similar US sources have also stated that they took ‘careful precautions’ to limited Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) signatures of any sensitive sites on the flight path – suggesting the National Security Council at the time were unsure of the exact capabilities of the equipment aboard the balloon.
Anecdotally a friend state after the first incident, “the smartest thing the Chinese could do now is send another 200 balloons to the US and see how they respond”, yet this is perplexing. These balloons are clearly sophisticated pieces of technology, a high-tech tool of overt espionage wrapped up in an analog package, yet their purpose is largely unknown. The US on the other hand, has shown they have teeth. They are serious about defending their airspace, closely monitoring the balloon before destroying at least three in the last month.
Conclusion
In conclusion, although the concept of probing is nothing new, the brazen approach of the Chinese can certainly be interpreted as saber-rattling of sorts, hoping to put pressure on Biden in his own backyard. Flying so close to sensitive sites, with means of propulsion and on a clearly calculated flight path, the protests of the Chinese Government that this was simply a civilian weather balloon that was blown off-course are unlikely at best, the political equivalent of the child saying they don’t know how their hand got caught in the mousetrap.
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