The shocking truth about a Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace last year has finally been revealed.
Panic swept the nation when officials spotted a massive, white balloon float over the Canadian border in February 2023.
While the Chinese government insisted it was a civilian meteorological device that had blown off course, it floated near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, home to some of America’s intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The mysterious trajectory led to officials ordering it be shot down, sending an Air Force F-22 Raptor over the Atlantic Ocean to get the job done.
Glen VanHerck, retired Air Force general who led the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) told the National Post that officials only contacted him when the balloon was nearly over Alaska – two weeks before it crossed into the Lower 48.
He immediately scrambled two Raptor stealth fighters and two armed F-16s to deal with the balloon, but due to it not posing a physical threat the jets had to stand down until President Joe Biden gave the greenlight.
Now, more than a year later, VanHerck said he should have been warned about the spy balloon in advance. Reports have since suggested that U.S. intelligence may have been aware of the balloon from the moment it launched from Hainan Island in China.
‘It’s a failure of multiple intelligence, Department of Defense agencies. I should not get surprised by something that’s coming into my area of responsibility … Anybody who knows about it should pass that on. It shouldn’t be less than 24 hours notice.’
The Chinese government insisted that the device was a civilian meteorological device that had blown off course
News broke about two days before the take down that a Chinese spy balloon, the size of three buses, was spotted floating over Montana for day.
Biden was briefed two days before the take down and after it was spotted and reported by civilians in a commercial airliner.
The president suggested the high-altitude balloon should be shot down, but the Pentagon opposed the move, fearing civilian casualties if the giant balloon explodes in the air.
‘The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,’ Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told NBC News.
‘We continue to track and monitor it closely.’
The Chinese government insisted that the device was a civilian meteorological device that had blown off course, but after the balloon altered course and passed over sensitive nuclear sites, it was shot down with a Sidewinder missile fired from an Air Force F-22 Raptor over the Atlantic ocean.
‘The balloon opened up eyes,’ said Glen VanHerck, a now-retired U.S. air force general who commanded NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) during the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace.
VanHerck told the National Post that the balloon highlighted how attacks could arrive without warning, ‘We’re not going to see long-range cruise missiles. We’re not going to see balloons over the horizon.
Glen VanHerck, a U.S. air force general who commanded NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command)
The balloon was eventually shot down by an American F-22 aircraft
‘Today, with missiles being fired off submarines, missiles being fired off aircraft, missiles being fired from the land well beyond curvature-of-the-Earth ranges, your time is limited to respond to those types of things.’
VanHerck said that although NORAD had been warned the previous year by U.S. intelligence sources about similar balloons, he ‘knew immediately it would be a huge deal’ as he was notified of the arrival of the craft.
Alarms were raised at NORAD after the balloon changed course, heading south on a trajectory that would take it over Idaho, which borders Montana, where a military base and nuclear missile silos are located.
Military officials hatched a plan to shoot down the balloon, but waited until it was over water, to minimize the risks to U.S. civilians and infrastructure.
Colorado-based NORAD dates from the Cold War and has a mission to deal with air- and space-based threats including nuclear missile attacks – and held back from shooting down the missile over fears that debris would fall in a seven-mile radius.
Vanherck, a former fighter and bomber pilot, had prepared for the arrival of a Chinese spy balloon, researching whether balloons which can float as high as 80,000 feet were still within U.S jurisdiction (his legal advisers told him that U.S. sovereignty extends all the way to space).
He said, ‘I told my team it was just a matter of time before one of these approaches North America.’
VanHerck says that the intelligence community only got in touch on January 27, 2023, when the balloon was almost over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands.
U.S. pilots rapidly captured images of the balloon as it hovered over U.S. airspace
By January 28, NORAD detected it over St Matthew Island in the Bering Sea.
The NORAD commander immediately scrambled two Raptor stealth fighters and two armed F-16s to deal with the balloon.
The jets had to fly at more than 400 miles per hour to stay airborne in the thin air 10,000 feet up, meaning they had to loop back repeatedly to scan the slow-moving balloon.
The inspection made it clear that it was not a physical threat and was not able to drop bombs or launch missiles.
That meant that the NORAD commander could not order a shoot-down himself, but had to wait for President Joe Biden to give the order.
Reports have since suggested that U.S. intelligence may have been aware of the balloon from the moment it launched in Hainan Island in China.
VanHerck believes that NORAD should have been warned sooner about the balloon.
He told The National Post, ‘To me, that’s a failure of the entire system — to not have the ability to let everybody know this thing’s out there and potentially going to drift into North American airspace.
‘It’s a failure of multiple intelligence, Department of Defense agencies. I should not get surprised by something that’s coming into my area of responsibility … Anybody who knows about it should pass that on. It shouldn’t be less than 24 hour’s notice.’
The suspected Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, South Carolina
The U.S. government declined to say which sites the Chinese balloon surveyed before being shot down.
It appeared to travel near sensitive U.S. bases including Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which oversees 150 intercontinental ballistic missile silos, and Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, home to U.S. Strategic Command, which is in charge of nuclear forces.
It also appeared to drift over Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, which operates the Air Force’s B-2 bomber.
VanHerck says he did not have the authority to act alone, and said that an initial assessment by NASA suggested the debris field could be up to 100 miles wide.
He believes that the decision to wait meant that the U.S. could gather intelligence on the balloon.
Republican Senator Tom Cotton said later, ‘I think it was a bad mistake to let a Chinese spy balloon float all across America and only to leak it to The New York Times once some rancher or amateur photographer in Montana spotted it. I suspect if they had not … this would have never become public.’
VanHerck says that subsequent analysis of balloon debris by the FBI showed that the balloon never gathered any intelligence, or transmitted anything to China.
He said, ‘In the end, the best thing happened for the Canadian and American people. Number one, they (China) didn’t collect (intelligence), we know that for a fact. Number two, we maximized our collection, and we exposed the PRC (People’s Republic of China) and what they’re doing. And number three, and most important, the Canadian and American people were safe.’
