Long before Americans noticed a huge Chinese hot air balloon flying over their country, Taiwan may have foreseen Beijing’s ambition to turn these seemingly outdated and unwieldy flying balloons into elusive tools of 21st century military might.

Residents of Taipei and other places on the island have noticed and photographed mysterious balloons in the sky several times over the past two years. However, few people, even officials, dealt with their origin. Now Taiwanese are wondering if the balloons they saw are related to the fleet of flying spy planes China is deploying to gather information from the self-governing island it claims to be its own.

Flying higher than the runways of most commercial and military aircraft but lower than satellites, this technology’s balloon spans the region of near space, intermediate from that encountered by spaceflight, the celestial region through which hypersonic weapons and ballistic missiles pass. .

China followed the development of other countries in this area, and military analysts spoke of “a new front of militarization and competition between the world’s major military powers.”

In addition to developing advanced aircraft such as solar drones and hypersonic vehicles, China is resurrecting technologies that have existed for decades, such as stratospheric airships and high-altitude balloons like the one the United States shot down last Saturday, to cover this area of ​​the atmosphere. .

Chinese research on high-altitude balloons dates back to the late 1970s, although it has only been in the last decade that there has been a resurgence of interest in instruments adapted to modern technology due to the world’s superpowers vying for dominance in space.

“With the rapid development of modern technologies, the space for information warfare is no longer limited to land, sea and low altitude. Near space has also become a new battlefield in modern warfare and an important part of the national security system,” says a 2018 article in PLA Daily, the official newspaper of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

The same article states that a number of “near space aircraft” will play a key role in future joint combat operations.

“The balloons should be seen as part of China’s electronic espionage system,” said Su Tzu-yun, an analyst at the National Defense and Security Research Institute in Taipei. Even the data that these aircraft can collect about humidity and air currents is useful militarily, for example, “in the case of a missile launch from China to improve the accuracy of the strike.”

According to the New York Times, Chinese military scientists are studying new materials and methods to make balloons stronger, easier to control and harder to detect. In addition, the researchers are testing these balloons as potential aerial platforms from which they can fire.

“I believe that the Chinese military is relatively unmanageable these days. Not in the sense of the Wild West, the corruption of the past, but in the light of how they experiment and push the boundaries,” notes Bates Gill, author of a recent study titled “The Courage to Fight: China’s Global Ambitions Under Threat.” Xi Jinping”.

A search of CNKI, China’s largest online academic database, reveals that Chinese researchers, both civilian and military, have published more than 1,000 “near space” studies and reports, many of which focus on the development of “flying vehicles.” specific region of the atmosphere.

“It’s not just about China. Both the US and other countries are working on building high-altitude balloons, hot air balloons and similar vehicles,” explains Brendan Mulvaney, director of the China Aerospace Research Institute (CASI), a research center that acts on behalf of the US. Air Force.

“They are cheap, they provide a long-term permanent observatory for collecting images, communications and other information – even meteorological,” he adds.

Source: CNN/New York Times.