What is a suspected Chinese spy balloon doing above the US? - FindLiveJobWhat is a suspected Chinese spy balloon doing above the US? - FindLiveJob
What is a suspected Chinese spy balloon doing above the US?
Image by Google image
News that the Pentagon is monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon in the skies over the continental United States raises a series of questions – not least among them, what exactly it might be doing.
Image by Google image
US officials have said the flight path of the balloon, first spotted over Montana on Thursday, could potentially take it over a “number of sensitive sites” and say they are taking steps to “protect against foreign intelligence collection.”
Image by Google image
But what’s less clear is why Chinese spies would want to use a balloon, rather than a satellite to gather information.
Image by Google image
This is not the first time a Chinese balloon has been spotted over the US, but this seems to be acting differently to previous ones, a US defense official said.
Image by Google image
“It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances. That would be one distinguishing factor,” the official said.
Image by Google image
But with the advent of modern satellite technology enabling the gathering of overflight intelligence data from space, the use of surveillance balloons had been going out of fashion.
Image by Google image
“Balloon payloads can now weigh less and so the balloons can be smaller, cheaper and easier to launch” than satellites, Layton said
Image by Google image
“They’re very low signature and low-to-zero emission, so hard to pick up with traditional situational awareness or surveillance technology,” Herzinger said.
“An advantage of balloons is that they can be steered using onboard computers to take advantage of winds and they can go up and down to a limited degree. This means they can loiter to a limited extent.