The US has accused China of operating spy balloons over a sensitive site containing nuclear weapons in Montana, raising tensions between the two countries ahead of a visit by Washington’s top diplomat to Beijing.
President Joe Biden has been briefed on possible options for a US response, including using fighter jets to shoot down balloons, which the Pentagon said on Thursday had been tracked hovering over Montana, a state northwest of a nuclear missile silo. .
Chinese officials on Friday urged the US not to “hype things up”, which came days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken was due to meet President Xi Jinping in the first visit to China by a Biden administration cabinet secretary.
News of the spy balloons, which U.S. officials said could gather limited intelligence, comes as the U.S. and NATO warn of China’s growing military capabilities and its intent to undermine western nations.
Speaking when the findings were announced, CIA chief Bill Burns said Beijing was the “biggest geopolitical challenge” facing the US in the coming decades, and that competition from China was “unique in scale”.
Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder said on Thursday that it was “tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States today”.
Canada’s defense ministry also confirmed its presence and said it was “actively tracked” by Norad, the North American aerospace agency. Canada also said it was “monitoring . . . a potential second incident” without providing details.
A senior US defense official said Washington was “confident that this is . . . theirs [China]”. “The flight path is now operating over several sensitive sites,” the official said, adding that it had entered US airspace “a few days ago” and had been tracked using manned aircraft.
Once detected, immediate steps are taken to protect against the collection of vital information, defense officials said, adding that surveillance balloons “do not create a significant opportunity” for China to gather intelligence beyond other means such as low-orbit satellites.
The incident comes as the US and NATO are sharpening their defense and security policies towards China, a shift that has been exacerbated by Xi’s support for Russian president Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin’s war on Ukraine.
“Now China is higher on NATO’s agenda. . . China is in many ways closer to NATO,” said Jens Stoltenberg, secretary general of the military alliance during a visit to South Korea and Japan this week.
“We see China investing heavily in new modern military capabilities,” he said. “We see them in cyberspace, we see what they are developing when it comes to space capabilities, satellites, everything, which is important for communication on earth.”
On Wednesday, air traffic was temporarily halted within a 50-mile radius of an airport in Billings, Montana, in case the president decided to take the balloon down.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is traveling in the Philippines, called on senior Pentagon officials on Wednesday. He recommended against shooting balloons due to the risk of hitting people on the ground, and limited intelligence gathering capabilities.
Chinese foreign ministry official Mao Ning said at a press conference in Beijing on Friday that the government had “taken note” of the balloon report and was “working to understand and verify the situation”.
“Speculating and hyping up matters before the facts have been verified is not helpful for the correct settlement,” she said.
The US has observed similar activity for years, including during the administration of Donald Trump. However, this time it “appears to be hanging around for a longer period of time”, a defense official said.