China’s alleged surveillance balloon over the United States has raised national security concerns, worsening already strained diplomatic relations. On Friday, the Pentagon announced that a second Chinese airship had been spotted, this time over Latin America. Beijing said on Saturday that the controversial flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the United States was used as a pretext to “slander” China, saying it was used for meteorological research and its trajectory was deviated from. The tracking method, first used in the 18th century, raises questions in 2023, when the Chinese have satellites.

News of an alleged Chinese spy balloon hovering over the US has left many wondering why Beijing would want to use a relatively simple tool to spy on the American continent, the BBC reports.

Balloons are one of the oldest forms of surveillance technology. The Japanese military used them to drop bombs on the US during World War II. They were also widely used by the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

Recently, the US was reportedly considering adding high-altitude balloons to the Pentagon’s surveillance network. Modern hot air balloons usually hover between 24 and 37 km above the earth’s surface, much higher than airliners, which usually do not exceed 12 km.

China sent the signal

A modern reconnaissance airship has a camera that hovers over a certain area, carried by wind currents. Equipment attached to the balloons could include radar and run on solar energy, The Guardian notes.

“Beijing is probably trying to send a signal to Washington that, ‘While we want to improve relations, we are also always ready for sustained competition, using any means necessary,’ without seriously inflaming the mood,” an analyst told the BBC’s independent He Yuanming. .

“And what better tool for this than a seemingly harmless balloon?”

The plane also flew near several military bases carrying ballistic missiles, suggesting it is unlikely the balloon deviated from its original course, as China claims, according to an analyst consulted by the BBC.

China has sophisticated surveillance technology

The U.S. Department of Defense said Thursday that the balloon was “well above an area of ​​civilian air traffic.”

China expert Benjamin Ho said Beijing has more sophisticated surveillance technology at its disposal.

“They have other means to spy on American infrastructure or other information they wanted to get. The balloon was to send a signal to the Americans and also to see how the Americans would react,” explained Dr. Ho, China Program Coordinator at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore.

Perhaps China even wanted the US to discover the balloon.

“China could use the balloon to demonstrate that it has the sophisticated technological capabilities to penetrate US airspace without the risk of major escalation. In that respect, the balloon is a pretty ideal choice,” said Arthur Holland Michel of the Carnegie Council on Ethics in International Business.

Spy balloons don’t offer the same level of surveillance as satellites, but they are easier to get and much cheaper to launch. Sending a satellite into space requires equipment that typically costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

Balloons can also scan more territory from lower altitudes and spend more time over a given area because they travel more slowly than satellites, according to a 2009 US Air Force Command and Staff College report cited by The Guardian.

When spy balloons were first used

The French were the first to use reconnaissance balloons, rising at the Battle of Fleury against Austrian and Dutch forces in 1794 during the French Wars of Independence. They were also used in the 1860s during the American Civil War, when Union members in balloons, binoculars in hand, tried to gather information about Confederate activities further away. They sent signals through Morse code or “a piece of paper tied to a rock,” explained John Blaxland, professor of international security and intelligence studies at the Australian National University and author of the book Revealing Secrets.

The United States has revived the idea in recent years, but has generally used balloons only on American soil.

Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Reuters that such balloons were widely used by the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War and were a low-cost method of intelligence gathering.

Alexander Neill, a Singaporean security analyst, told Reuters that while the balloon could become a new source of tension in China-US relations, it is likely to have limited intelligence value compared to other elements of China’s modernized military.