Mystery aerial objects pose a real challenge for the US

The whole US intelligence community is poring over the images of the three unidentified aerial objects flying in North American air space in the hours before they were shot down by fighter jets. As yet there appear to be no definitive conclusions. The stark questions are these: where did they originate from, did they contain surveillance or electronic jamming equipment, were they guided, how were they powered, and was China behind all three as well as the spy balloon? The first obvious fact is that the three objects were nothing like the spy balloon. They were much smaller - the size of a small car as the Pentagon revealed in one case. They operated at between 20,000ft and 40,000ft and there was no apparent sign of intelligence-gathering antennae protruding. One was described as of cylindrical shape and the third was said to be octagonal “with strings attached” . None of them were travelling at supersonic speed, undermining the notion they might be alien UFOs. A large percentage of claimed UFOs or unidentified aerial phenomena (UAPs) have reportedly had the ability to accelerate at fantastic speeds. US officials have described how the three objects broke up when they were targeted by Sidewinder missiles, suggesting that they were metallic. Without any obvious propulsion system on the outside – the spy balloon was fitted with solar panels - it could be that what powered the objects was contained inside. General Glen VanHerck, commander of North American Aerospace Defence Command (Norad) which is responsible for warning of all potentially hostile aerial or space systems approaching the US and Canada, said the objects might have contained a gaseous-type balloon inside the structure. The three objects were all travelling at wind speed, suggesting that some form of balloon system was involved. The chances are that if the 200ft Chinese spy balloon flying into US air space at more than 60,000ft had not woken up Norad in its Cheyenne Mountain bunker in Colorado to the continent’s alarming radar detection failures, the three aerial objects might never have been spotted, let alone shot down. They would have produced an extremely low radar cross-section. More than 45,000 commercial aircraft fly into or out of the US every day, and then there are military flights, (regular and classified prototypes) drones and balloons (commercial and US air force). Objects the size of a car can get lost in the radar traffic. Norad has been forced to widen its radar apertures to embrace the routes apparently taken by the balloon and the mystery objects to approach the North American coastline from the west. VanHerck has admitted what he calls “domain awareness challenges”. Detection of such objects in the future will need to be traced well before they reach the North American continent, both to give more time to assess the potential risk they pose and to pinpoint their launch location. The balloon is known to have taken about a week to reach the US, having taken off from the Chinese military base at Hainan in the south. But where did the three aerial objects come from, surely not all the way from Hainan or from some other Chinese military base? And if they were not equipped with surveillance antennae what was their role? Shooting them down may have been politically and militarily unavoidable but each AIM-9X Sidewinder cost $472,000, so it has been an expensive operation; and finding the debris to resolve the puzzle is going to be a lot harder than trying to rebuild the remnants of the huge spy balloon which landed conveniently in 47ft of water off the South Carolina coast. One option to be considered is that all three unexplained objects could have been launched from a submarine? Launching radar-detection balloons from a submarine, for example, is a technique that has been used by the US for decades. Submarine-launched balloon tests were first carried out by the CIA in the 1950s. During the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, a US Navy submarine surfaced near Havana Bay to release balloons carrying radar reflectors. A US Navy warship sailing beyond missile range off Cuba had transmitted a signal that simulated the sound of an American fighter jet flying at speed towards the island from Florida. The mission for the submarine-launched balloons was to see how quickly the Russians in Cuba would switch on their surface-to-missile tracking radars. The arrival of the aerial objects so soon after the dramatic presence of the high-altitude spy balloon had been spotted and tracked by Norad and two U-2S Dragon Lady spy planes flying at more than 70,000ft, suggests that all four systems were linked. The coincidence is too great unless these type of car-sized aerial objects have been entering US air space regularly over a much longer period and have never been detected. It is known that China sent a high-altitude airship around the world, including over North America, in 2019. Called the Cloud Chaser, it received scant attention at the time. The US understands the value of balloons in surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations. The Pentagon’s research establishment, Darpa, has an “adaptable lighter than air (ALTA)” programme which involves developing and demonstrating a high-altitude air vehicle capable of wind-borne navigation over extended ranges. These type of balloons will be capable of flying at more than 75,000ft. They will not have independent propulsion but will be fitted with sensors. This will enable them to navigate by changing altitude, taking advantage of different wind profiles.