The Pentagon is tracking a Chinese surveillance balloon that lingered at high altitude over the western US, home to sensitive sites including nuclear missile silos, injecting new strain into relations before a visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Antony Blinken.<\/p>\n
The Chinese balloon, first spotted earlier this week, was loitering over Montana \u2014 where Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos are located \u2014 but posed no physical or intelligence threat, a senior Defense Department official said.<\/p>\n
Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin informed President Joe Biden, but recommended leaving it alone because of the possible risk of falling debris.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe US has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,\u201d Brigadier General Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters. \u201cIt is currently travelling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n
The North American Aerospace Defense Command, or Norad, \u201ccontinues to track and monitor it closely,\u201d according to a statement by Norad and the US Northern Command late Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Canada\u2019s defence department said it was tracking \u201ca potential second incident,\u201d but did not elaborate.<\/p>\n
The White House declined to comment on the Canada statement.<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t the first time a spy balloon had been spotted over US territory, although this one is staying longer than in past cases.<\/p>\n
The official declined to say why the US believed the balloon belonged to China, saying only that US had high confidence in the assessment.<\/p>\n
The Biden administration briefed staff for the \u201cGang of Eight,\u201d a group including the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate intelligence committees, another official said.<\/p>\n
The administration disclosed the balloon\u2019s existence just days before Blinken\u2019s expected China trip, the first such-high-level visit to Beijing since before the coronavirus pandemic.<\/p>\n
The trip was presented as part of Biden\u2019s effort to set a \u201cfloor\u201d under the relationship, and it was unclear if Blinken would go ahead.<\/p>\n
Once US officials became aware of the balloon earlier in the week, Austin convened a meeting of his top advisers while on a trip to the Philippines on Wednesday and informed Biden.<\/p>\n
The technology doesn\u2019t offer any intelligence-gathering capability beyond what China\u2019s low-orbit satellites already provide, the official said.<\/p>\n
The senior official said the US had raised the balloon issue with China, and the Wall Street Journal reported that the State Department had summoned the Chinese charge d\u2019affaires.<\/p>\n
Neither the Chinese Foreign Ministry nor the country\u2019s embassy in Washington immediately responded to request for comment.<\/p>\n
Austin had been in the Philippines as part of a US effort to rally allies and counter what officials believe is China\u2019s increased assertiveness in the South China Sea and toward Taiwan.<\/p>\n
The US secured access to more Philippine military bases, clearing the way for a greater American presence in the region.<\/p>\n
Tensions between Washington and Beijing have been running high, with the Biden administration becoming more explicit about its willingness to defend Taiwan in the event of a conflict.<\/p>\n
Last week, an Air Force general told his staff he believed the US and China would be at war by 2025. China, at the same time, has taken a softer tone, calling for an end to hostile rhetoric.<\/p>\n
With no immediate response from China, it\u2019s unclear why the balloon is flying over the US at this particular moment.<\/p>\n
The Chinese have for decades complained about the US surveillance by ships and spy planes near its territory, leading to occasional confrontations over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chinese may see the spy balloon as a bargaining chip that may give them leverage in the talks with the US,\u201d according to Michael Raska, an assistant professor at Nanyang Technological University\u2019s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.<\/p>\n
They are aware that Washington is interested in restarting a dialogue on crisis management mechanisms and may be testing the US reaction, he said.<\/p>\n
Biden also faces pressure at home to respond strongly to any perception of Chinese encroachment.<\/p>\n
Republican lawmakers demanded action, with Representative Mike Gallagher, the chairman of a new House committee meant to highlight the Chinese threat, saying the presence of the balloon \u201cmakes clear that the CCP\u2019s recent diplomatic overtures do not represent a substantive change in policy.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cChina\u2019s brazen disregard for U.S. sovereignty is a destabilising action that must be addressed, and President Biden cannot be silent,\u201d House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican, said in a tweet<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n The US official declined to answer several questions about the balloon, including the precise target of its surveillance, its size or other specifications.<\/p>\n It\u2019s well above the altitude used by civilian aircraft \u2014 about 40,000 feet (12,000 meters) \u2014 but not at the edge of space, the official added.<\/p>\n The Chinese balloon, first spotted earlier this week, was loitering over Montana \u2014 where Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos are located \u2014 but posed no physical or intelligence threat, a senior Defense Department official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":341034,"featured_media":478901,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18668,27],"tags":[84067,19937,77958,54329],"class_list":["post-478881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-government","category-security","tag-spy-balloon","tag-spying","tag-us-department-of-defense","tag-us-china"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478881"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/341034"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=478881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":478903,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/478881\/revisions\/478903"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=478881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=478881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=478881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Now read: Biden under mounting pressure to ban TikTok in the US<\/a><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"