According to VanHerck, the incident ‘revealed substantial flaws’ in US intelligence.
Despite assurances from Biden administration officials that the Chinese spy balloon did not gather and transmit data, a newly unreported phone call presents a different picture of top officials concealing information about the balloon.
A phone discussion between President Joe Biden’s senior military adviser, Gen. Mark Milley, and NORAD chief Gen. Glen VanHerck on Jan. 27 gives additional light on China’s surveillance balloon, according to NBC News. According to many former and current administration and congressional officials, the administration initially wanted to keep the balloon’s presence hidden from Congress and the public.
“Before it was discovered publicly, the intention was to study it, let it pass, and never tell anyone about it,” a former senior US official told NBC.
A top Biden administration official refuted charges of a cover-up, saying decisions were made to safeguard key intelligence capabilities.
“To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking them,” the official was quoted as saying by NBC. “There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.”
Milley called VanHerck on Jan. 27 and said the Pentagon planned to send up F-22 planes and other aircraft beside the object to try to determine its characteristics.
NBC stated that soon after that contact, US military jets utilized targeting pods to establish the item was a balloon the size of three school buses with a big surveillance payload but no offensive capabilities.
According to NBC, Biden was not briefed on the balloon until February 1. The Chinese spy balloon was not made public until February 2, when NBC News broke the news.
VanHerck stated that the Chinese balloon program is still functioning and that the US has failed to create detection and tracking technologies for the craft.
“It exposed significant gaps, long range gaps, for us to be able to see potential threats to the homeland.” VanHerck explained. “I think that opened the eyes of a lot of people.”
According to the top military official, the United States is “not where it needs to be” in terms of developing “deterrence options.”
“Time is the opportunity to develop deterrence options or, if necessary, defeat options,” he said, adding that the United States is still “not where we need to be.”
Biden officials, according to the source, privately mourned the public reaction and implications of the spy balloon’s release in early 2023.
Officials said that the reputational ramifications of the spy balloon for China-US relations represented a far greater threat than the balloon violating US airspace.
“It caused so many problems,” remarked a senior administration official.
The White House of President Biden indicated that the delay in shooting down the surveillance drone was due to safety procedures due to the balloon carrying many thousand pounds of equipment.
The US eventually shot down the craft over open sea off the coast of South Carolina, raising questions about why it wasn’t taken down as it approached Alaska.
