Balloons, again?
So, earlier reports of UFOs can be explained away as sightings of inquisitive Chinese balloons, eh? Fox Mulder rolls his eyes, Jack Butler narrows his, and Roswell sleuths laugh contemptuously. Couldn’t the Feds think of anything better?
The top military commander overseeing North American airspace said Monday that some previous incursions by Chinese spy balloons during the Trump administration were not detected in real time, and the Pentagon learned of them only later.
“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats, and that’s a domain awareness gap,” said Gen. Glen D. VanHerck, the commander of the Pentagon’s Northern Command.
One explanation, multiple U.S. officials said, is that some previous incursions were initially classified as “unidentified aerial phenomena,” Pentagon speak for U.F.O.s. As the Pentagon and intelligence agencies stepped up efforts over the past two years to find explanations for many of those incidents, officials reclassified some events as Chinese spy balloons.
A “domain awareness gap.” That’s a phrase to be reused.
“How come you’ve taken the wrong exit?”
“Easy mistake to make. Domain-awareness gap. Could happen to anyone.”
Meanwhile, the administration is not letting a wasted balloon go to waste.
Jake Sullivan, the White House’s national security adviser, on Monday credited improved surveillance under the Biden administration with detecting the balloon that passed over the United States last week.
“We enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect,” said Mr. Sullivan, speaking at an event hosted by the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition.
Fortress Biden! (Don’t mention the southern border.)
On the other hand, according to John F. Kirby, a National Security Council spokesman, the balloon incursions during the Trump administration (there were at least three, apparently) were furtive, short-lived, coastal affairs rather than leisurely cross-country jaunts. That might suggest that Beijing was more nervous of the U.S. during the last administration. Or it might mean nothing at all. Or it might mean that Beijing wanted to see how the U.S. would react when a spy balloon, drifting in plain sight, was detected. Or maybe the Chinese just wanted to send an encouraging message to John Kerry, our climate Metternich, someone whom Beijing treats with the utmost seriousness. We may be spying on you (it was a spy balloon), but we’re keeping greenhouse-gas emissions to a minimum while we do so.
On the other hand:
U.S. officials believe that, in addition to the balloon surveillance, China has used quadcopter drones to spy on the U.S. military.
At this point, however (someone somewhere is bound to think), Washington could not resist dusting off the old Roswell script and giving it an (updated) try. As some readers will recall, after wreckage was found in the high desert near(ish) to Roswell, N.M., in 1947, the public-information officer at the USAAF base located just outside the town announced that the air force had recovered a “flying disc.” This announcement was later retracted. Wreckage had been found, but it was of a “weather balloon.”
That line held, and the story of the crashed disc was largely forgotten for three decades until a few people started making things up talking and a farrago of wild speculation scrupulously researched book, The Roswell Incident, was published, sold very well, and set in motion the mythmaking that continues until this day.
In response, the official story eventually changed. The wreckage was not of a humble weather balloon, but of something more exotic. It was part of a “balloon train” used in a secret project designed to discover if the Soviets had tested a nuclear weapon. Some fools even believe that explanation!
So, here we go again.
Back to the New York Times:
The intelligence community issued its first public report on unknown incidents in 2021, but that document failed to offer explanations for all but one of the 144 incidents it looked at.
After that report, the Pentagon and intelligence agencies began to intensify efforts to attribute and explain more incidents. Last year they participated in an open hearing with the House Intelligence Committee, and the Biden administration offered a closed-door briefing to Congress on Chinese surveillance efforts in August, according to a White House spokeswoman.
A follow-up report on the unexplained incidents was delivered to Congress last month and looked at 366 additional reports. While 171 remained unexplained, the report labeled 163 of them as balloons.
Although there has been speculation by the public and lawmakers that some of the unexplained incidents reported by military pilots and recorded by Navy and Air Force sensors could be signs of extraterrestrial activity, U.S. officials working on the issues have said they believe they are surveillance activity or airborne trash.
Balloons! Drones! Airborne trash!
Those who know, know.