In the midst of the endless news loop about debt limits, sloppy filing systems, and congressional investigations of investigations, the news this week was interrupted by the White House officially denying that the Air Force has shot down extraterrestrial alien space ships.
Well, OK, that’s different. Several likely spy vehicles are shot down, and the first place we go is space aliens. In the year of our Lord two thousand twenty three, in the United States of America, some unfamiliar balloon-like objects have been shot down, and serious reporters are asking serious government officials about extra-terrestrial space invaders.
These are not normal times.
The week started with a big Chinese spy balloon being shot down off the Carolina coast. The thing was first spotted in Alaska, then crossing from Canada into Idaho and Montana where it caught the attention of a border collie named Shep. It did not catch the attention of the Air Force for a while. It flew across the country, above nuclear missile silos and military bases, and then, when it got over the shallow water off the Carolina coast, they shot it down. They are now recovering the pieces.
Officials were able to determine that it was Chinese, largely because the Chinese said so. The Chinese were spying on us in a not particularly subtle way. Diplomatic spats ensued. There are spy satellites up there that can tell whether you are barbecuing chicken or steak, but a balloon? Well that’s different.
There’s been a lot of discussion about whether it should have been shot down the minute it was spotted, or whether there were things we could learn by tracking it across the country. There is some risk to people on the ground in blowing things out of the sky at 60,000 feet. The mood in Congress was that it was over Montana, and there’s nobody there for stuff to crash down on. The White House said a water landing improved the odds of finding some of it intact and being able to learn more about it. Seems like the density of fishing boats off the coast is about the same as density of people in Montana, but whatever. The whole thing has a “Mad Magazine Spy vs Spy” flavor about it.
Then over the next week, three other things flying at lower altitudes — shared by commercial aircraft — were shot down. One over Alaska, another just inside Canada, and the last in Lake Huron. That seems like a lot of unidentified stuff floating around in our airspace. Then, just for good measure, the Air Force admitted that they know of at least three similar Chinese balloons over the past several years that they just found out about now. So this has been going on for at least six years.
The people in charge admitted to a “domain awareness gap.” I think that is military speak for “nobody told us to look for balloons, so we didn’t.”
Somehow in a $780 billion dollar Pentagon budget, there wasn’t enough to pay somebody to keep an eye on balloons crossing into US airspace. The White House said the reason we’re suddenly finding more unknown flying objects is because we are just now starting to look for them. That’s a start. It kind of feels like a “mission competence gap” exists.
Maybe the division of NORAD that tracks Santa’s sleigh on Christmas Eve could spend some time the rest of the year looking for suspicious balloons. Just a suggestion.
Now that we’re seeing them, we have no idea what we are seeing. The General in charge of NORAD, which I hadn’t heard of since elementary school when we were cowering under our desks in duck-and-cover drills, was asked if they were space aliens. He said, “I haven’t ruled anything out at this point.”
It’s “War of the Worlds” all over again.
Of course, the latest stuff could be anything from Chinese spy missions, to weather balloons, to some kid’s 9th grade science project run amok. Space aliens are pretty far down my list, below North Korea, for example. Nobody knows, and while they are trying to recover the scattered remains of what got shot down, it’s unclear that there will be much left at the crash sites to dissect. It will all look somewhat silly if we have scrambled the fighter jets and burned up a million-dollar missile to shoot down a gender-reveal party balloon that broke loose. But it would still be good to know what they were and where they came from. And it would be even better to know that somebody in our $780 billion defense boondoggle is now on balloon observation duty.
Of course this sort of thing inevitably starts a new variety of arms race. Are our balloons as good as the Chinese balloons? What if we have a balloon gap? We should be building a fleet of anti-balloon balloons as part of the balloon defense shield. Maybe strategically placed, orbiting straight pins would create a barrier. Then do the Chinese counter with anti-anti-balloons? Raytheon could buy Party Central for their balloon technology. And what about the national helium reserves? Expect a big, dare I say ballooning, special appropriation to address the balloon gap.
It’s really amazing that the Federal Government can turn the lights on each morning.