The Shadow
A US F-22 Raptor took off from Langley Air Force Base on Sat., Feb. 4, and shot down a 200’ tall Chinese balloon some seven miles off the coast of South Carolina near Myrtle Beach.
Commander in Chief Joe Biden said that he had given the order to shoot it down on Wed., Feb. 1, when the wayward balloon first crossed into US airspace in Alaska.
President Biden called the shootdown a success and noted that the military decision to shoot down the balloon was delayed in order to prevent any debris from harming anyone on the ground.
Alaska is the largest state geographically and is sparsely populated, making a shoot down there over land an unlikely threat to harm anyone below.
So, why did the military not shoot the balloon down there to prevent it from surveilling military sites in Montana and other states?
US Senator Tom Cotton questioned the wisdom of allowing the balloon to continue its flight beyond the Aleutian Islands where it could have been shot down in water off the coast there. Why allow the balloon to continue its path at 60,000’ over US missile sites in Montana where it was spotted by the public?
Why did the Canadian government allow the Chinese balloon to cross high above its territory to reach the lower 48 states?
Were the US and Canadian military forces sharing information about the balloon? Why was the balloon not shot down over Canada where there is much wilderness between Alaska and Montana?
The People’s Republic of China (PRC) claimed that the high-altitude balloon was a weather balloon that was blown off course due to Force Majenure (a legal term for greater force), insisting the flyover was an accident involving a civilian aircraft.
In fact, Zhuang Guotai, the head of the Chinese Metrological Administration, was removed from office on Fri. by the PRC, perhaps as a ploy to reinforce the idea that the incident was an accidental flyover.
However, if as the PRC had claimed were true, then why would the balloon follow the pattern it did over military sites rather than just be blown by the wind on a random path?
Was PRC guiding the balloon, or was it simply by chance that the balloon flew over US missile sites?
Did the US military block or intercept any signals the balloon was transmitting during its flight over US territory?
If the Chinese were gathering information that the balloon was transmitting back to China or to some PRC submarine closer to the balloon or to PRC entities inside the US, then why let the balloon travel as it did before the shoot down which raises more questions?
Why was a $150,000 sidewinder missile used to bring down the balloon when the US Air Force and US Navy have fighter jets that could have shot down the balloon with cannon fire that would have been far less expensive and would have preserved any kind of surveillance equipment with which the balloon was equipped?
The sidewinder missile struck the bottom portion of the balloon, blowing up the content thereof. Why not shoot the top part of the balloon with cannon fire so that the balloon’s entirety could have been retrieved?
If the balloon’s equipment did disseminate information about US military installations, would it not have been better to use less expensive cannon fire to bring down the entire balloon in one piece in order to examine the equipment rather than blow it up?
Notably, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken canceled his trip to China because the US perceived the spy balloon to be a probe of US defenses.
Perhaps the reason for the use of a $150,000 missile to bring down the balloon was that the military wished to test the performance of its fighter jet at a high altitude using a heat-seeking missile on a target without a heat signature, possibly using the pilot’s helmet and eyesight as the targeting method.
The larger question is, “What impact will the shooting down of the Chinese balloon have on the geopolitical relationship between the two nations?”
The stratospheric balloon’s debris was scattered over a seven square mile area in 47’ of water, making the US Navy’s task of collecting the remains of the balloon a much easier task than had the ocean’s depth been significantly deeper.
