War of balloons: the “ears” of the Chinese balloon revealed its true purpose

Let’s start from the very beginning, that is, from January 28, when a strange white balloon crossed the US border unhindered over Alaska and flew into the interior of the country. Everyone saw him, whispered, wondered why American air defenses didn’t shoot him down, and three days later China announced that it was his weather balloon that had gone astray.

The United States confidently stated that a Chinese balloon that entered their territory from the Pacific Ocean, in the area of ​​the Aleutian Islands, was collecting intelligence. However, the “spy” was shot down only a week later, on February 4th. The Chinese were offended, accusing the States of damaging their material value with a kilowatt power plant.

No one understands how it turned out that after being discovered, the weather balloon that had gone off course confidently passed over Canada, then crossed the US border again, appearing over the state of Idaho, no one understands.

It is reported that President Joe Biden was only informed of him on January 31, when the Chinese unexpectedly “took” the ball. What was pulled before, one wonders, if he is harmless?

Meanwhile, the balloon flew over the states of Kansas and Missouri, flew to the state of Montana, where military bases are located, and then the US Department of Defense declared the balloon a reconnaissance device. It took a long time to figure out if he was carrying warheads, and then, on February 4, they finally shot him down by launching a missile from an F-22 Raptor fighter. The balloon burst over the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, where all of its “payload” with solar panels fell. She was taken out of the water only on February 6th. The fragments of the balloon with a total weight of 910 kg were delivered to the Quantico FBI laboratory.

In parallel with this, the American press reported on other cases of the discovery of similar balls, allegedly also of Chinese origin. So, the government of Costa Rica confirmed that on February 2, an unidentified object entered their airspace. On February 3, the US Department of Defense claimed to have spotted a similar balloon in the skies over Latin America, and on the same day, the Colombian Air Force spotted a balloon at 55,000 feet (17,000 meters). Observers from Venezuela also made similar reports. Only on February 6, again three days later, did the PRC Ministry of Foreign Affairs acknowledge that this balloon was also of Chinese origin and was lost during “test flights”.

Later, experts who commented on what was happening in the American media revealed the secret that, in fact, Chinese balloons often flew to the United States, as well as to the countries of South America in the past. But then, for some reason, no one raised a panic in the media about this.

We have reached out to Chief Researcher of the Institute of Applied Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, radiophysicist, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, Vice-President of the World Federation of Scientists Vyacheslav VDOVIN.

– Vyacheslav Fedorovich, I know that by the nature of your activity you were engaged in launching such balloons and you even have several scientific articles on this topic. Describe, please, the range of their application.

— Yes, I have a couple of publications related to balloons, and just the other day my Italian colleagues and I sent another one to Aerotecnica, Missili e Spazio magazine.

As for their application … The range of applications for balloons is colossal. This is primarily the same meteorology that the Chinese refer to, as well as atmospheric research in a broader sense than meteorology. There is a separate section of tasks for balloons related to space exploration. The fact is that the atmosphere seriously interferes with the study of stars and planets, and flying at an altitude above 20–30 km actually saves us from its influence, and we can look into space and study its various objects. And finally, thirdly, remote sensing of the Earth from above. This is an interesting task for a balloon, which consumes quite a bit of energy and costs much less than not only a spacecraft, but even an aircraft, which is also used for remote sensing purposes.

– However, in the photographs published by the Americans, we see powerful solar panels on the ball …

– In fact of the matter. Knowing the specific indicators of solar panels, one can roughly estimate what kind of energy is there. So in this case, it turned out to be in the vicinity of kilowatts, or hundreds of watts. This fact is evidence that a fairly powerful solar power plant was on the ball, which means that we can confidently say that the Chinese, to put it mildly, significantly underestimated the purpose of the ball. For a weather station of such an installation with burdock wings, batteries are not required – a small installation producing tens of watts is enough.

– Then why do we need kilowatt power?

– It is needed to ensure the operation of the positioning and communications system. These are industrial, commercial systems. When the ball flies far, you need decent energy, at least a hundred watts, to transmit telemetry about your location and the characteristics of the system, as well as data streams that you shoot with devices placed on board the ball, and energy is needed for these devices to work. That is, you need to broadcast a solid stream of information to the owners of the ball. In this case, the data transfer rate and the probability of errors are determined by the signal-to-noise ratio, and at a noticeable range, a rather high power of the onboard transmitter is needed. The big “ears” of the Chinese balloon indicate that they have already received all the information that the probe received during its flight from the balloon via a highly efficient radio channel.

What kind of information could this be?

– Most likely, there really were weather data – the Chinese could well measure the parameters of the atmosphere: wind speed, temperature, pressure. Then they transmitted their own telemetry, which included both positioning and system parameters (there probably were a lot of various sensors, devices that controlled themselves). Theoretically, they could study space, but judging by the photograph of the ball (there were no antennas pointing upwards), we can say that they did not. Therefore, there remain: weather data, transmission of own telemetry and received remote sensing information.

— What kind of espionage information could theoretically be obtained by the Chinese in this way?

– It is unlikely that they could get much more information than with the help of space satellites, which are now equipped with a fantastic set of equipment that allows you to see, if not stars on military uniforms, then aircraft, cars, tractors, tanks – one hundred percent. Therefore, launching a poorly controlled balloon for espionage purposes is probably not entirely logical.

– And in general, is it possible to say that the Chinese purposefully launched their balloon to the state of Montana? Is it in principle possible?

– Winds are predicted, the total flight line can be predicted up to 100-200 km. Let’s say there was a force majeure event, which, of course, happens, and the balloon was blown away by an uncontrolled wind flow to the USA. What should the Chinese have done first?

In this regard, there is a simple method of working with balls. Let me remind you that each of them is always in touch with those who launched it. If control over it is lost, a signal is given to turn on the squib – it shoots the ball from the payload, and it begins to decline. If you don’t want to lose it, don’t want it to crash when it falls, then the rescue balloon has a parachute that calmly lands it, you arrive at the place, guided by the radio beacon, and pick it up.

In addition, any organization involved in the launch of balloons is well aware that there are national and international standards that govern all possible cases. I remember how we launched a similar balloon to Svalbard with an international team. According to the calculated flight plan, it was supposed to cross the entire Russian Federation, the USA, Canada, Danish Greenland and even the territorial space of Iceland. So we coordinated this flight with all countries. At the request of the Russian FSTEC, which controls in Russia, in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of August 29, 2001 No. 633, before flying over them, they even equipped their balloon with small corner reflectors in order to better see it with radars.

Neither the Chinese nor the Americans could not know about the international rules for the flight of balloons. Moreover, the latter could not fail to notice the Chinese ball with huge solar panels.

– Why then were there so many illogical actions?

– Hard to tell. I would call what the US and China have said to each other and to the whole world in these weeks, fairy tales. All professionals are a little surprised, and sometimes just laugh, watching how incompetent people are “bred”.

– Is there an explanation for why the Americans did not shoot down the Chinese “weather balloon” immediately, but allowed him to travel over their territory for several days?

– It’s not clear. Without advance warning from the PRC that their stray balloon was flying towards the United States, the Americans had every right to shoot it down when the balloon approached the border. Perhaps they simply did not expect this, they missed the first opportunity, and therefore they wanted to hide this fact altogether so as not to embarrass themselves. We had a similar embarrassment in the days of the USSR – remember how the German Rust flew across the border without hindrance and landed right on Red Square?

– Another question: why, when the US military nevertheless decided to destroy the balloon, did they do it over the ocean, allowing the “payload” to fall into the water?

– It was said that the authorities were worried that on land she could get into someone’s home. Although, if you look at the territory over which he flew all the previous days, it was so deserted that a drop in cargo of about a ton or more would not harm anyone. The risk for a single person was no higher than the risk of becoming a victim of a meteorite.

– Now the question is about the whole armies of “UFOs”, which were announced the other day in Canada, and in Costa Rica, and in Uruguay, and in Venezuela, and in China itself. What could it be?

— I have no information about them. I have colleagues in the US, but they didn’t tell me anything about it. By the way, I can only say that a lot of people are involved in launching balloons all over the world. There can be a lot of goals and objectives, and sometimes the balls tend to go astray. India alone launches dozens of balloons with a wide variety of purposes, including commercial ones, for example, riding people at high altitudes.

– Some news reports have noted that some of these “UFOs” are in the form of polyhedrons …

I have never seen such balls. Any balloon must be inflated either in the shape of a ball or in the shape of an oval cigar. Now there is a lot of deliberately false information in the world, so I suggest that you and your readers use only reliable sources.

As they say, in any incomprehensible situation, look who benefits from the hype in the press. Let’s follow only some real events that followed from the US and China in the light of the “war of balls”. First, President Joe Biden delayed planning a possible diplomatic trip to China for US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken due to the incident. Second, China denied the Pentagon’s request for a closed-line conversation between US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chinese National Defense Secretary Wei Fenghe. Third, China’s Vice Foreign Minister Xie Feng said that the US actions against the Chinese balloon have harmed the process of stabilizing relations between the two countries. So, most likely, neither the individual “UFOs” of the Chinese over the American continents, nor the luminous balls flying by the “train” over the Chinese Qiqihar (they, by the way, were associated with the satellites of the StarLink system of the American entrepreneur Elon Musk), most likely, are not something out of the ordinary. It’s just that if StarLink lights up in the sky, then someone needs it… Perhaps in order to prevent a possible reconciliation between the two countries.