The Washington Post reported that the U.S. tracked the first Chinese spy balloon right after it took off from Hainan Island.
The officials tracked the balloon for a week before reports came out about it over Montana.
The balloon didn’t enter U.S. airspace until January 28. The officials confirmed the balloon on February 2nd.
The military didn’t shoot down the balloon until February 4th over the Atlantic Ocean:
U.S. monitors watched as the balloon settled into a flight path that would appear to have taken it over the U.S. territory of Guam. But somewhere along that easterly route, the craft took an unexpected northern turn, according to several U.S. officials, who said that analysts are now examining the possibility that China didn’t intend to penetrate the American heartland with its airborne surveillance device.The balloon floated over Alaska’s Aleutian Islands thousands of miles away from Guam, then drifted over Canada, where it encountered strong winds that appear to have pushed the balloon south into the continental United States, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive intelligence. A U.S. fighter jet shot the balloon down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, a week after it crossed over Alaska.
But the officials are also “confident it was intended for surveillance.” They can’t ignore that the balloon hovered “over nuclear sites in Montana.”
Therefore, even if entering the American mainland was an accident, “Beijing apparently decided to seize the opportunity to try to gather intelligence.”
The Washington Post explained when the balloon was about 1,000 miles south of Japan on January 24, “it began to gain speed and rapidly veer north,” quite possibly because “of a strong cold front that had unleashed exceptionally frigid air over northern China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan.”
Officials said the balloon is part of a Chinese surveillance program based on Hainan Island that began years ago. The balloons fly higher than commercial flights, “between 60,000 and 80,000 feet.” Officials don’t know how many balloons China has in the program:
They take advantage of technology provided by a private Chinese company that is part of the country’s civil-military fusion effort — a program by which private companies develop technologies and capabilities used by the PLA.In a news briefing Saturday, senior Pentagon officials alluded to the PLA program, noting that balloons had been operating elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. “These balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations, which also violated the sovereignty of other countries,” said one senior defense official.
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