Tag: United States Defense and Military Forces

Inside the Hunt for U.F.O.s at the End of the World

Chin@Strategy

DEADHORSE, Alaska — Really? That’s it? The United States military is capable of many things, but finding the remnants of an unidentified flying object scattered across a blinding expanse of Arctic ice in minus-30-degree weather using six available hours of daylight is not one of them. The search for a downed U.F.O. began and ended near this oil-camp town at the frozen edge of the world, where Navy pilots flying P-8 Poseidons finally gave up on Friday, ending their mission with no answers. Hours later and some 500 miles away,…

Blinken Meets With Chinese Official Amid Spy Balloon Furor, U.S. Says

Chin@Strategy

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken met with China’s top foreign policy official on Saturday night in Munich, a State Department official said, a resumption of diplomacy between Washington and Beijing after a breakdown that followed the Biden administration’s downing of a Chinese spy balloon over U.S. territory. The impromptu meeting, on the margins of a security conference, happened while the two nations were still very much at odds. Hours earlier, the Chinese official, Wang Yi, had doubled down on China’s claim that the balloon was a “civilian” research craft…

China’s Balloons Draw Attention to an Overlooked Canada-U.S. Partnership

Chin@Strategy

The interest in balloons, other than the party and clown varieties, has recently reached levels perhaps not seen in Canada since the 19th century. It all began, of course, with a giant Chinese surveillance balloon that floated above British Columbia before drifting around the United States and ultimately being blown up by the United States Air Force over the Atlantic. Since then, three other objects have met a similar fate including one brought down over Yukon and another shot down above Lake Huron. [Read: A Rising Awareness That Balloons Are…

U.S. and China Vie in Hazy Zone Where Balloons, U.F.O.s and Missiles Fly

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — During the Cold War, American strategists feared the Soviet Union was outpacing the United States in arms production, potentially leading to a so-called missile gap. Now, U.S. officials are worried about a literal gap called near space and China’s growing presence there. High above earth, but below orbiting satellites, the United States and China are testing new defense systems. China’s exploitation of the zone with aerial craft and advanced munitions suggests it is pulling ahead of its superpower rival in important ways. This little-known and little-seen strategic contest…

How Questions Over a Spy Balloon and U.F.O.s Fed a Crisis Between the U.S. and China

Chin@Strategy

Other murky actions have challenged U.S. analysts trying to read Chinese intentions. On Jan. 28, when the balloon approached the Aleutian Islands and American airspace over Alaska in its off-course trajectory, the balloon’s self-destruct function did not activate, U.S. officials said. Chinese operators may not have wanted to destroy the balloon; it is also possible that they attempted to trigger the self-destruct mechanism and it failed. The Chinese Spy Balloon Showdown The discovery of a Chinese surveillance balloon floating over the United States has added to the rising tensions between…

U.S.-China Tensions Rise Over Spy Programs Amid UFO Investigations

Chin@Strategy

U.S. agencies are still investigating the origins of the three mysterious objects that U.S. fighter jets shot down between Friday and Sunday on the orders of Mr. Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada. Debris recovery efforts are underway at the sites in Alaska, the Yukon Territory in Canada and the Canadian side of Lake Huron, Mr. Kirby said. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? What’s their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information?…

After Shooting Down Flying Objects, U.S. and Canada Have More Theories Than Answers

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — If the truth is out there, it certainly is not apparent yet. Pentagon and intelligence officials are trying to make sense of three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada and Michigan that U.S. fighter jets shot down with missiles on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The latest turn in the aerial show taking place in the skies above North America comes after a helter-skelter weekend involving what at times seemed like an invasion of unidentified flying objects. The latest object had first been spotted on Saturday over Montana, initially sparking debate…

U.S. Jet Shoots Down Another Unidentified Object Over Canada

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — An American fighter jet, acting on the orders of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, shot down another unidentified flying object on Saturday, Canadian and American officials said, in the latest twist of the ongoing drama playing out over the skies of North America. “I ordered the take down of an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace,” Mr. Trudeau said in a statement he posted on Twitter. He said an American F-22 with the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which is operated jointly by the United States and Canada,…

What Was the Chinese Spy Balloon Trying to Collect?

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The U.S. government is combing over a variety of intelligence — debris, reconnaissance plane photos and old observations — to learn what the Chinese spy balloon was after as it made its way across the United States in early February, before being shot down by a Sidewinder missile fired by a stealth fighter jet last weekend. The Chinese spy balloon was equipped with an antenna meant to pinpoint the locations of communications devices and was capable of intercepting calls made on those devices, according to declassified intelligence released…

Chinese Balloon Had Tools to Collect Communications Signals, U.S. Says

Chin@Strategy

WASHINGTON — The Chinese spy balloon shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean was capable of collecting communications signals and was part of a fleet of surveillance balloons directed by the Chinese military that had flown over more than 40 countries across five continents, the State Department said Thursday. The United States used high resolution imagery from U-2 flybys to determine the balloon’s capabilities, the department said in a written announcement, adding that the balloon’s equipment “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the equipment onboard…