Dusseldorf Two white balloons from China have sparked an international diplomatic crisis. Few details are known so far, but in addition to the balloon over the USA, a second one has now been sighted over Central America. After the launch of the first balloon off the Atlantic coast of the USA, experts see evidence of a Chinese espionage attempt.
Before the salvage, however, there is still statement against statement: Washington accuses Beijing of wanting to spy on US military facilities. The Chinese embassy portrays the incident as a failed weather research project.
The first data contradict this thesis. The first balloon is said to have been 61 meters high, as heavy as a small airliner and flying at an altitude of 60,000 feet, i.e. around 18,000 meters.
A spokesman for the German sensor specialist and radar manufacturer Hensoldt told Handelsblatt that weather balloons are moving at an altitude of 30,000 meters. So significantly higher.
Meanwhile, one can only speculate about the capabilities of the balloon. Michael Lauster knows what the USA should be looking for when salvaging. The institute director at the Fraunhofer Institute for Scientific and Technical Trend Analysis INT is an expert in space travel and the defense sector.
“The energy supply is certainly interesting,” he says. Photos of the balloon show solar panels that may have powered it.
Lauster also considers a type of control that can be used to take advantage of suitable winds to be conceivable. In addition, it is about the “primary payload”: Does the rescue team find meteorological measurement technology – as the Chinese claim – or radar, optics and radio receivers that could be used for espionage purposes?
Radar, optics, radio receiver: what to look for when recovering the balloon
US representations, according to which it is by no means a matter of “sophisticated” payloads, are rejected in German security circles. That is speculation at this point.
In any case, the Hensoldt spokesman assumes that such a balloon “is not very easy to steer”, even if it was powered. So he wasn’t “precise”.
One thing is certain: China has made no great effort to hide the balloon. According to the Hensoldt spokesman, no attempts were made to make the object “stealthy”. This is what missiles are called in the aerospace industry that are difficult or impossible to detect by radar.
Statements by the US Department of Defense are all the more astonishing: According to this, such balloons are said to have crossed the USA several times. However, these overflights are said to have only now been determined through the use of other sources.
The Hensoldt spokesman has a possible explanation for this: Due to its flight altitude, the balloon should already appear on the radar screen of a long-range radar at a great distance, he says. The North American Air Defense Command, NORAD, operates such a radar, for example in Alaska.
At the same time, the “probability of detection” may be limited by the low speed of the balloon. In order not to get too many false reports, a minimum speed can be set in the radar software, from which flying objects are displayed. Accordingly, the Chinese balloons could have moved unnoticed particularly slowly through the airspace.
According to the US Department of Defense, balloons have also been sighted over other continents in recent years, including in Europe. However, a spokesman for the Air Force told the Handelsblatt: “Of course we would recognize such a balloon if it were to fly over Western Europe.” That could be different in a low-flow airspace over the USA.
Images, data, conversations – the balloon could have recorded all of that
The suspicion of spying is fueled by the fact that balloons are an unknown but by no means new means of espionage. Balloons were already used in the First World War to reconnoiter enemy forces, says Michael Lauster. “My guess is that almost every major wartime nation has used spy balloons like this for a variety of purposes.”
And they definitely offer advantages for espionage projects: “Balloons fly lower than satellites and slower than airplanes. So you can observe parts of the earth’s surface longer and more intensively than with an airplane and satellite,” says Lauster.
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It is also conceivable that the Chinese were interested in eavesdropping on communications. That would also be technically possible. “In principle, you only need a sufficiently sensitive receiver that monitors the right frequencies,” says aviation expert Lauster. This means that everything that is emitted in the form of electromagnetic waves – i.e. images, data and conversations – can be recorded.
Lauster suspects that the US military shot down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina in order to clarify the matter as much as possible. The launch over the relatively shallow coastal waters would not only significantly reduce the dangers for people, but “at the same time open up the opportunity to salvage debris”.
However, he also thinks it is plausible that the matter would turn out to be literally a test balloon with which the Chinese wanted to produce a reaction from the Americans. Then the Americans would only fish “dummies” out of the water – i.e. simple devices that reveal nothing about the technological capabilities of the Chinese.
Such a find could also calm tempers in Latin America. There the balloon hovered over Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica.
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