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| China-Japan-Koreas |
| How the West May Have Helped Build China's Spy Balloons |
| 2023-02-17 |
| [Defense One] China’s high-altitude spy balloons took Western politicians and publics by surprise, but they really shouldn’t have. Chinese strategists and industry have worked for more than a decade on 21st-century applications of the 18th-century invention—with some assistance from the West. Aerostats—the word encompasses powered airships ("blimps") as well as unpowered balloons—have long been associated with military applications, particularly information-gathering activities. They hold numerous advantages in persistence and cost, and thus many of the Chinese organizations that produce them are directly funded by China’s military industry. China’s interest in aerostats dates at least to the Mao era. Their modern applications have been noted as far back as 2010, when the National Air and Space Intelligence Center reported that China considered aerostats desirable for their large surveillance area between 1,000 and 2,000 km, low radar profile, ability to persistently loiter above desirable locations, and for their relatively inexpensive operating costs. Two years later, a seminal conference further illuminated Beijing’s visions for aerostat development. The event was held at China’s Northwestern Polytechnical University, one of China’s "Seven Sons of National Defense" with extensive ties to the PLA and defense industry. It drew a wide range of participants, including Beihang University (another one of the Seven Sons, and the home of an aerostat company recently sanctioned by the Biden administration), the Chinese Aeronautical Society, and the PLA Air Force Equipment Research Institute. The main theme of the conference was "innovation, development, exchange, and cooperation" with the clearly military goal of deploying aerostats for "early warning, command and communication, and anti-submarine activities." The conference was particularly interested in topics such as how to increase aerostat payloads, improve energy efficiency, and aerodynamics. It also encouraged participants to track aerostat developments internationally. In 2020, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission concluded that the PLA envisions an overlapping network of satellites and near-space aerostats to provide redundant and persistent intelligence and targeting capabilities. The value of that persistence is illustrated by not just the balloons crossing over U.S. and other nations’ skies, but by China’s own aerostat makers. For example, the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation claims that one of its model aerostat systems can stay aloft for two weeks, while the Aerospace Information Research Institute, claims its Jimu-1 can operate for months some 20 kilometers up in the air. |
| Posted by:Besoeker |
| #3 ^ Who remembers "Communism With a Smiley Face"? Who's smiling now? |
| Posted by: Rex Mundi 2023-02-17 15:29 |
| #2 Someone forget Clinton making satellite and launch platform information available to them? |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2023-02-17 12:23 |
#1  This example of a Western aerostat company cooperating with PLA-linked organizations is, however, not unique. In 2018, the Texas-based company Nanoracks signed a partnership agreement with the China's Kuang-Chi Science company to produce the Traveler series of near-space balloons. In the words of Nanoracks, the Traveler balloon would have various uses “from ecological and terrestrial observation to satellite deployment and space research.”The Nanoracks Team |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2023-02-17 11:13 |