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2025-01-27 -Short Attention Span Theater-
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Shocking inside account of Chinese spy balloon fiasco and what the government didn't tell you
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[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] The shocking truth about a Chinese spy balloon that entered US airspace last year has finally been revealed.
Panic swept the nation when officials spotted a massive, white balloon float over the Canadian border in February 2023.
While the Chinese government insisted it was a civilian meteorological device that had blown off course, it floated near Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, home to some of America's intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The mysterious trajectory led to officials ordering it be shot down, sending an Air Force F-22 Raptor over the Atlantic Ocean to get the job done.
Glen VanHerck, retired Air Force general who led the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) told the National Post that officials only contacted him when the balloon was nearly over Alaska - two weeks before it crossed into the Lower 48.
He immediately scrambled two Raptor stealth fighters and two armed F-16s to deal with the balloon, but due to it not posing a physical threat the jets had to stand down until President Joe Biden gave the greenlight.
Now, more than a year later, VanHerck said he should have been warned about the spy balloon in advance. Reports have since suggested that U.S. intelligence may have been aware of the balloon from the moment it launched from Hainan Island in China.
'It's a failure of multiple intelligence, Department of Defense agencies. I should not get surprised by something that's coming into my area of responsibility … Anybody who knows about it should pass that on. It shouldn't be less than 24 hours notice.'
| This is why President Trump brought in all his disrupters to head the various agencies. |
News broke about two days before the take down that a Chinese spy balloon, the size of three buses, was spotted floating over Montana for day.
Biden was briefed two days before the take down and after it was spotted and reported by civilians in a commercial airliner.
The president suggested the high-altitude balloon should be shot down, but the Pentagon opposed the move, fearing civilian casualties if the giant balloon explodes in the air.
'The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now,' Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder told NBC News.
'We continue to track and monitor it closely.'
The Chinese government insisted that the device was a civilian meteorological device that had blown off course, but after the balloon altered course and passed over sensitive nuclear sites, it was shot down with a Sidewinder missile fired from an Air Force F-22 Raptor over the Atlantic ocean.
'The balloon opened up eyes,' said Glen VanHerck, a now-retired U.S. air force general who commanded NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) during the balloon's incursion into U.S. airspace.
VanHerck told the National Post that the balloon highlighted how attacks could arrive without warning, 'We're not going to see long-range cruise missiles. We're not going to see balloons over the horizon.
'Today, with missiles being fired off submarines, missiles being fired off aircraft, missiles being fired from the land well beyond curvature-of-the-Earth ranges, your time is limited to respond to those types of things.'
VanHerck said that although NORAD had been warned the previous year by U.S. intelligence sources about similar balloons, he 'knew immediately it would be a huge deal' as he was notified of the arrival of the craft.
Alarms were raised at NORAD after the balloon changed course, heading south on a trajectory that would take it over Idaho, which borders Montana, where a military base and nuclear missile silos are located.
Military officials hatched a plan to shoot down the balloon, but waited until it was over water, to minimize the risks to U.S. civilians and infrastructure.
Colorado-based NORAD dates from the Cold War and has a mission to deal with air- and space-based threats including nuclear missile attacks - and held back from shooting down the missile over fears that debris would fall in a seven-mile radius.
Vanherck, a former fighter and bomber pilot, had prepared for the arrival of a Chinese spy balloon, researching whether balloons which can float as high as 80,000 feet were still within U.S jurisdiction (his legal advisers told him that U.S. sovereignty extends all the way to space).
He said, 'I told my team it was just a matter of time before one of these approaches North America.'
VanHerck says that the intelligence community only got in touch on January 27, 2023, when the balloon was almost over Alaska's Aleutian Islands. 
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Posted by Skidmark 2025-01-27 00:19||
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Posted by Besoeker 2025-01-27 02:01||
2025-01-27 02:01||
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Posted by NN2N1 2025-01-27 06:05||
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Posted by Elmerert Hupens2660 2025-01-27 14:36||
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