Chinese "spy" balloons

A distraction, but from what?

Spy balloons! How quaint.

Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

Chinese spy balloons!

Not just quaint.

These guys they must be really behind in the spy game!

Dear Reader: Hold these thoughts…

Now it’s true that China boasts the world’s longest history of spy balloon deployment, dating back to the use in the 3rd century of floating lanterns to alert cities of imminent attacks. But the world of international spying has moved on into the high tech realms of spy planes, drones, and satellites. Has it passed China by?

https://www.csis.org/analysis/chinese-spy-balloons-skys-limit

Not a bit—and this is what makes the fears and rhetoric generated by the current spate of “spy balloon” sightings and shoot downs (four to date, in rapid succession) so dangerously beside the point. We are also operating, if we are honest, in an information vacuum.

We don’t have definitive information about these balloon platforms, their provenance, their payloads, or their missions. Two of them (those downed over the Yukon and off the coast of Alaska) are still officially characterized, owing to uncertainty about their exact nature, as “flying objects.” Chinese officials insist that the largest of the balloons, which drifted at high altitudes across both Canadian and US territory before being downed by a US air-to-air missile off the coast of North Carolina, was an innocent weather balloon, blown off course. The US is engaged in a recovery mission of the remains, and Pentagon officials have indicated they believe it was carrying equipment that could intercept communications—in order words that its mission was signals intelligence.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/12/schumer-chinese-humiliated-flying-objects-shot-down

Canadian officials, including the Minister of National Defence, have been more circumspect about the smaller “flying object” downed over the Yukon, where debris recovery will pose special challenges. The Defence Minister said at a press conference one February 11, that it was too early to tell whether the “object” came from China. To add to the uncertainly Minister Anand suggested that the “object” was “potentially similar” to the one shot down off the coast of North Carolina though smaller and “cylindrical in nature.”

(UFO-ologists might have a field day with that description).

For CPAC coverage of the Minister’s press conference see:

Whatever is discovered exactly about these balloons/flying objects (and whatever is released publicly) the story is a mere footnote to a larger issue about the scale and ambitions of Chinese high-tech spying, particularly from space.

The rise of Chinese capabilities in space surveillance has been remarkably rapid, and drawn remarkably little attention. According to a US Defence Department report to Congress in 2022, China nearly doubled the number of “ISR” (Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) satellite platforms in the past four years and its total satellite fleet, numbering 260 platforms, is second only to that the United States.

Canada, by contrast, deploys four dual-use satellites. Our procurement system for next generation satellites is predictably slow and likely to leave dangerous gaps even in our limited capabilities, especially when it comes to surveillance of our Arctic territories.

Office of the Auditor General, “Arctic Waters Surveillance,” 2022, https://www.oag-bvg.gc.ca/internet/docs/parl_oag_202211_06_e.pdf

The extensive Pentagon report about the Chinese satellite program, released in November 2022, was candid:

“Recent improvements to China’s space-based ISR capabilities emphasise the development, procurement and use of increasingly capable satellites with digital camera technology as well as space-based radar for all-weather, 24 hour coverage. These improvements increase China’s monitoring capabilities, including observations of U.S. aircraft carriers, expeditionary strike groups and deployed air wings. Space capabilities will enhance potential PLA military operations farther from the Chinese coast. These capabilities are being augmented with electronic reconnaissance satellites that monitor radar and radio transmissions.”

https://media.defense.gov/2022/Nov/29/2003122279/-1/-1/1/2022-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF

Beyond this fleet of space satellites, China is becoming a global force in satellite communications (SATCOM), and space-based navigation systems (Beidou). The Beidou system is linked to the Chinese economic Belt and Road initiative, and is being used as both an export market force and a strong incentive to align partner countries.

China also continues to develop counterspace capabilities, both in terms of kinetic weapons and cyber capabilities to hack into satellite systems and their downlink stations.

These ambitions are part of a larger military plan for “intelligentized warfare,” announced by the Chinese government (CCP) in October 2020. The precise meaning of a doctrine of “intelligentized warfare,” beyond exploitation of all manner of disruptive technologies, remains to be seen, but its application to the fast-paced rise of China’s spy satellite capabilities is clear.

China’s recent satellite launches of its “Yaogan 36” class of satellites are often officially described as involving scientific research, conducting land surveys and monitoring agriculture. But the reality is that many of these satellites are dual-use in nature. “Spy” satellites have both civilian and military/national security uses, often carried in the same payloads. Snap a picture of a farmer’s field; snap a picture of a military base.

China has global eyes in the sky. Hundreds of them. There will have more and better spy satellities in future. Eyes in the sky is one ambition. The civilian uses are enormously beneficial, especially to understand and mitigate climate change. The military/national security uses, well—like other forms of espionage the best you can hope for is decent levels of protection of your own secrets.

But if the Chinese ambition grows for spy satellite dominance (as opposed to equivalency with the U.S.), and the blinding of adversaries capabilities, then that will mark a very dangerous and unprecedented phase in the “space race.”

Forget spy balloons.