The Chinese balloon that crossed the continental US last week had multiple antennas for intelligence gathering and was part of a broader surveillance fleet, the state department said on Thursday.
A senior state department official said China had used similar surveillance balloons over more than 40 countries and five continents. It added that the US would continue to brief allies on the scope of the programme.
The official said that high-resolution photographs that were taken by U-2 spy planes had “revealed that the high-altitude balloon was capable of conducting signals intelligence collection operations”.
“It had multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geolocating communications,” the official added.
The Biden administration is looking into blacklisting Chinese entities linked to the country’s military that supported the balloon’s crossing into the US, as well as other actions to tackle Beijing’s surveillance programme.
“We will also look at broader efforts to expose and address the PRC’s larger surveillance activities that pose a threat to our national security, and to our allies and partners,” the official said.
Since shooting down the balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Saturday, the US has been conducting a salvage operation to learn more about the craft and China’s broader surveillance efforts. US officials have repeatedly said they have gained valuable information by tracking the balloon while it remained in the air.
The Biden administration on Thursday released additional details about the balloon, including its manufacturer’s links to the Chinese military, and equipment on board that indicated the aircraft was not used for weather research, as China has claimed.
Citing information from an official procurement portal for China’s military, the official said the balloon’s manufacturer has a direct relationship with Beijing and is an approved vendor for its military forces.
The Chinese balloon traversed the US for eight days, sparking a diplomatic crisis between the US and China. US secretary of state Antony Blinken cancelled a planned trip to Beijing, which would have been the first by a Biden cabinet official, in response to the discovery of the aircraft.
Michael Gallagher, the Republican lawmaker who heads the new House China committee, said he hoped the balloon incident would serve as a wake-up call to the American people about the threat from Beijing.
“It would be phenomenal if it were some sort of Sputnik moment, not because of the capabilities of this particular balloon . . . but just because it should give us a sense of urgency and we have glaring problems,” Gallagher told the Financial Times on Thursday.
“My hope would be that my colleagues and the American people understand that this is not just an ‘over there’ problem, sort of a matter of a territorial dispute in the South and East China Sea, but rather a right here at home problem,” Gallagher added. “We need to wake up and better defend our sovereignty in partnership with our closest allies.”
Defence officials said US defence secretary Lloyd Austin tried to reach his Chinese counterpart over the weekend after the US shot down the balloon, but could not get hold of him, in a sign that lines of communication between Beijing and Washington were continuing to fray.
Senate Democrats and Republicans questioned why the Pentagon had not downed the balloon when it was over waters around Alaska, implying the Biden administration had acted too late and allowed the aircraft to monitor sensitive military facilities, including a nuclear missile site in Montana.
“You guys have to help me understand why this baby wasn’t taken out long before,” said Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat, at a hearing on Thursday.
Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, criticised the administration for allowing the balloon to monitor military sites in her state.
“The clear message to China is: we got free range in Alaska,” Murkowski said. “The American public deserve more than they have seen in terms of transparency about why this spy balloon was allowed to spend two days over our waters and over the state of Alaska.”
Melissa Dalton, a top Pentagon official who was testifying before the Senate appropriations committee, said one reason for the delay was that the waters around Alaska were deeper than the coastal water off South Carolina, where the balloon was ultimately shot down.
She added that the much colder temperatures would also have made the salvage operation harder. “If we had taken it down over Alaska, it would have been a different recovery operation,” she said.
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