The Chinese balloon that sparked panic when it flew over the US two years ago was, as long suspected, set up to spy on Americans — but surprisingly with US-made technology, according to a new report.
The 200-foot-tall balloon was loaded with a satellite communication module, sensors and other technology from at least five American firms, two sources with direct knowledge of a classified US military report told Newsweek.
The craft — which floated from Alaska over Canada and into the US Midwest before it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, 2023 — could have collected detailed data on oblivious Americans, the sources said, citing what was discovered in parts of the recovered balloon.
That included tech to survey, take photographs and collect other intelligence data — and even launchable gliders that could have flown on other recon missions, the sources said, citing the classified military report.
“A Chinese company would not have given them a full satcom [satellite communications] coverage of the US,” one of the sources, a former federal intelligence employee, said.
The technology matched a patent awarded in 2022 to scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Aerospace Information Innovation Research Institute in Beijing, which has links to China’s military, according to Newsweek, which said it was briefed on the report but did not see it directly.
Included in the patent, titled “A high-altitude balloon safety control and positioning recovery device and method,” was a short-burst messaging module called Iridium 9602, Newsweek reported.
Module maker Iridium is a global satellite communications provider whose command post is in McLean, Va. — mere miles from CIA headquarters, the report noted.
The balloon also had a communications system by Iridum, along with tech from four other US companies: Texas Instruments, Omega Engineering, Amphenol All Sensors Corporation and onsemi, the report said, noting other equipment from at least one Swiss company.
Iridium told Newsweek it was impossible to always know how its tech — some of which costs just $150 online — would be bought and then used.
“We certainly don’t condone our radios or our modules ending up and being used in ways they shouldn’t be,” said Jordan Hassim, Iridium’s executive director for communications.
“There’s no way for us to know what the use is of a specific module. … For us it could be a whale wearing a tag tracking it, it could be a polar bear, an explorer hiking a mountain.”
The since-obliterated spy aircraft was roughly 200 feet tall and weighed thousands of pounds.
It also may have carried explosives meant for self-destruction, US North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) previously revealed.
Despite the report, Chinese officials stuck to its story that the balloon was an innocent weather-research airship that had blown off course.
A spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington DC held steady in that narrative this week.
“The straying of the Chinese civilian unmanned airship into the US airspace was an accident caused by force majeure,” a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, DC told Newsweek.
“The airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into US because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability.”
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