China’s high-altitude balloon over the US is the latest gray-zone attempt to weaken its competitors’ sovereignty and boost Beijing’s combat edge.
The United States should learn from China’s strategy and match it. China has dominated the South China Sea for more than a decade without gunboats, but with a large fishing fleet.
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In conjunction with Beijing’s island-building, the marine militia provides China with de facto control over vital international transportation lanes. In recent years, these efforts have expanded to promote illicit fishing in the oceans of neighboring nations and in ecologically vulnerable regions.
In this sense, the balloon can be viewed as the first of what could be a large number of similar deployments, as China strives to weaken the United States’ sovereignty over the skies.
Chinese officials may receive fresh information from the balloon about the communication systems, bomber bases, and nuclear ballistic missile silos of the United States.
The balloon allegedly strayed off course and entered American airspace, according to China. Given that stratospheric balloons have been in use for many years and have robust and well-understood control methods, this is unlikely.
Stratospheric balloons, such as those produced by the US company Raven Aerostar for the Pentagon and Google, can steer by modifying their altitude, utilizing the variable wind speeds and directions that exist at different altitudes.
This method permits the balloons to remain stationed within a few hundred kilometers of the earth.
It is difficult to respond to the balloon now that it is in US airspace. Although fighter aircraft may shoot it down with missiles, radar, and infrared missile seekers do not consider balloons to be formidable targets. And fighters cannot typically fly high enough to fire machine guns at the balloon.
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Air-defense systems like the Patriot can reach high altitudes and see very small targets, but the missile and balloon would generate debris that would fall over a large area, potentially causing damage similar to that caused by an air-defense missile that recently landed in Poland and killed two bystanders in their home.
Given these obstacles, the US military should instead concentrate on blocking the balloon from transmitting data to China until it can be brought down in a secure region, such as over the Great Lakes or at sea.
Aircraft equipped with electronic warfare equipment, such as the Air Force’s EC-130H Compass Call or the Navy’s EA-18G Growler, might jam the balloon’s communications.
At higher intensities, these systems or high-power microwave warheads, such as those on the CHAMP missile, could cause damage to the balloon’s electronic components. When the balloon reaches a safe position, it might be shot down, just as future balloons should be when they enter US airspace but before reaching US soil.
The Pentagon has already experimented with stratospheric balloons, but this deployment demonstrates the difficulty they pose to an adversary.
Persistent, solar-powered, and able to carry radios and sensors, balloons may allow US forces to more carefully monitor Chinese airspace and territory during times of calm, thereby introducing Beijing to new sources of doubt. In times of conflict, balloons could replace satellites’ capabilities.
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