U.S. military shoots down Chinese spy balloon
The U.S. military shot down the Chinese spy balloon on Saturday afternoon. (Credit: Mike Phillips)
I was glad to see the Chinse spy balloon fall to F-22 Raptors from Langley Air Force base on Saturday. The clip looked to me like a careful air-to-air missile shot with the wingman plane’s contrail streaking below as the balloon plummeted.
Bravo! Praise goes to the military pilots who executed the mission and I can’t wait to hear their accounts.
But the fact remains: we shot this Chinese surveillance balloon down on the wrong coast. It should have met its end in the Pacific before it even crossed American shores.
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How could President Biden, who tracked this balloon for days, have dithered so long? It took the outraged howls of many state governors for the White House to pay attention and get their heads in the game.
China and the world saw that Biden struggles with crisis military decisions. He has not improved much since Afghanistan.
China’s spy balloon flight was a test of Biden as a commander-in-chief and he didn’t do well. On the contrary, the Chinese have to consider this a successful operation and here’s why.
First, China did not need to retrieve this balloon. Most likely, receivers on board the balloon continuously transmitted intelligence products they collected such as images, signals and electronic intelligence up to Chinese satellites where it was then piped down to Beijing.
The espionage take may even have included radar, infrared, and electronic profiles of U.S. military aircraft if they weren’t shooed out of the balloon’s flight path.
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I bet a lot of U.S. military airspace had to be cleared of traffic and training exercises during the balloon’s voyage. Not for collisions, but so the balloon sensors could not stare down at America’s best military planes in flight.
For example, the balloon flew over Missouri, home of the nuclear B-2 stealth bombers at Whiteman Air Force Base. China also got to see how U.S. military commanders reacted. That’s got to yield a lot of interesting tactical and operational data.
But sadly, China also got a big haul of precious strategic intelligence. And the real win was watching how Biden and team reacted. And I’m not talking about Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceling his China trip. Clearly China does not care a fig about Blinken.
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China and the world saw that Biden struggles with crisis military decisions. He has not improved much since Afghanistan.
Let’s review.
On Thursday, caught out by civilians taking pictures, the Pentagon tried to tell us that failing to intercept the spy balloon before it crossed into U.S. airspace was no big deal. The balloon was not armed, not a physical threat, blah, blah, blah.
Well, it turned out we Americans did not like having China’s spy balloon drift unhurriedly across our skies.
On Friday, the Pentagon laid out the legal case for shooting down the balloon by designating the intrusion as a violation of sovereign airspace and against international law.
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Finally, on Saturday afternoon the Air Force got the call and made us proud. (Probably some pilot will get the new callsign "Balloon Buster" for this.)
However, by shooting down the balloon over Virginia not California, Biden gave China enormous insight into his decision-making process. And it’s not pretty.
It took Biden and national command authorities days to come to grips with one brazen balloon making a slow coast-to-coast sweep.
Based on this delayed reaction, China may conclude — right or wrong— that they have at least a few days to mess with Taiwan before Biden can execute a military decision.
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To wrap up, there is also a lesson here for military planners. As we saw on 9/11, reacting to threats inside U.S. airspace is not easy. The Air Force and Navy need resources to practice more scenarios against Chinese balloons — or worse.
Still, next time, Xi Jinping, your balloon is going down in the Pacific.
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