A senior State Department official said on Thursday that for eight days the U.S. Chinese balloons flying over the U.S. included “multiple antennas” capable of gathering signals intelligence, and the balloon maker has proven ties with the Chinese military.
While China condemned the US for destroying the weather balloon, a State Department official described the balloon as a device designed to collect communications and threaten action against Beijing.
According to the official, photographs taken by high-altitude U-2 aircraft confirmed the presence of equipment, including “multiple antennas … capable of collecting communications and geo-locating” and “operating solar panels”. large enough to produce the power required for Multiple active intelligence gathering sensors. The equipment was “incompatible” with weather balloons.
The official said that according to information published in an official procurement portal for the PLA, the US believes the manufacturer of the balloon “has direct links with China’s military and is an approved seller of the [People’s Liberation Army]”.
The official said the balloons are part of a fleet that has been “developed to carry out surveillance operations” which are often carried out on the instructions of the military.
“The United States will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the intrusion of balloons into US airspace,” the official said, using the initials of the People’s Republic of China. “We will also look to broader efforts to uncover and address the PRC’s extensive surveillance activities that pose a threat to our national security and those of our allies and partners.”
On Wednesday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. General Pat Ryder said the US has gathered extensive information about Chinese surveillance balloons over time and will be able to locate them in the future.
Ryder told a news conference that “in terms of monitoring these and collecting them, we’ve been able to build up a body of knowledge that enables us to detect and act on them.”
US officials had previously said that there were many Chinese balloon flights over US territory during the former Trump administration and during the Biden administration.
Ryder gave no further details about the routes of those flights or other information, but said the US government later determined that some of those sightings were Chinese high-altitude spy balloons.
“What we do know is that in some cases, while some of these balloons were not identified, subsequent analysis, subsequent intelligence analysis enabled us to indicate that these were Chinese balloons,” Ryder said. Said.
“We have publicly acknowledged that we knew they were looking to survey strategic sites in the continental United States to include some of our strategic bases,” he said.