Ella Scott
A new report confirms the Chinese air balloon that entered US airspace in 2023 was using technology from at least five US businesses.
Two years ago (February 4, 2023), the US Air Force shot down a 200-foot high-altitude balloon over the coast of South Carolina.
The balloon, which had flown across Alaska and western Canada between January 28 and February 4, was first characterized as a surveillance balloon by the Pentagon.
China, however, maintained its innocence, alleging the unidentified flying object was just a civilian airship which had blown off course.
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According to a new military report, the balloon was actually carrying technology from at least five US companies.
This tech was capable of surveying, photographing areas, and collecting intelligence data, writes iHeartRadio.
Moreover, the balloon also had ‘launchable gliders for additional reconnaissance missions’, could have collected detailed data on oblivious Americans, and included a short-burst messaging module called Iridium 9602, the New York Post writes.
“A Chinese company would not have given them a full satcom [satellite communications] coverage of the US,” a former federal intelligence employee told Newsweek.
Newsweek reported that it had seen and reviewed a Chinese patent titled ‘A high-altitude balloon safety control and positioning recovery device and method’, which outlined a communications system which matched the one that crossed the United States.
The patent - awarded in 2022 to scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) Aerospace Information Innovation Research Institute in Beijing - is understood to have contained details explaining how China-based controllers could rely on a US business’s satellite transceiver to communicate with the balloon before transferring data.
It’s also reported that the balloon’s communications system was created by Iridum, along with tech from at least four other US companies.
These are alleged to be Texas Instruments, Omega Engineering, Amphenol All Sensors Corporation, and Onsemi.
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It’s also claimed that equipment from at least one Swiss company was involved, as per Newsweek.
Iridium’s executive director for communications, Jordan Hassim, has since said the company doesn’t ‘condone’ its radios or modules being ‘used in ways they shouldn’t be’.
“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,” he added.
Despite the report, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC has reiterated the aircraft was just an innocent balloon that had been blown off course.
“The straying of the Chinese civilian unmanned airship into the US airspace was an accident caused by force majeure,” a representative told the aforementioned publication.
“The airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into US because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability.”