Chinese Balloon: Will the 'Near Space' Become an Arena of Rivalry Between the Superpowers?

The New York Times revealed that in 2019, years before the discovery of China’s first high-altitude balloon flight across the United States triggered widespread alarm, one of China’s top aeronautical scientists made a big but little-noticed announcement at the time: His team had launched a balloon more than 60,000 feet in the air, and let it roam the world, including over North America.

This was Wu Zhe, who is considered by Chris Buckley, the New York Times’ chief China correspondent, to have pioneered the idea of the Chinese balloons that finally fueled the latent crisis between the United States and China. The goal of this innovation, says Buckley, is to control what is called “near space,” that is, the area that lies below the orbital range of satellites and above the flight range of aircraft.

 

Pioneering Figure

The New York Times emphasized that the Chinese plan was not born of the hour, as Zhe had been developing the engineering of airships and their working mechanism for two decades until he established a private company to produce them.

The latter was among the six institutions targeted by the administration of US President Joe Biden, during the past days, in its effort to counter Chinese plans. Zhe is also a shareholder in 3 of these companies.

Wu is a professor at Beihang University in Beijing, a leading aerospace research institution in China. He contributed to the design of Chinese jet fighters, developed his expertise in stealth objects, and won awards for his work from the Chinese army.

He was also a member of the advisory committee for the general armament department of the now-dissolved People’s Liberation Army, according to his biography on the Beihang University website.

At the moment of his first balloon launch in 2019, Wu told a Chinese state-run news outlet at the time that the Cloud-Chaser balloon was a milestone in his vision of filling the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere with steerable balloons that could be used to provide early warnings of natural disasters or pollution control or airborne operations.

“Look, there’s America,” Professor Wu said in an accompanying video, pointing to a red line on the computer screen that seemed to trace the balloon’s path across Asia, North Africa, and near the southern edge of the United States.

The New York Times believes that Professor Wu’s announcement is among a body of evidence that reveals the scope of the Chinese government’s ambitions to use high-altitude balloons to track ground activities, with an emphasis on domestic and military needs.

 

Science vs. Espionage

Until recently, China’s long-altitude balloon flights attracted little attention, and this, in part, is a testament to their success in maneuvering the radars of foreign governments.

Even the United States, according to what the reporter quotes from officials from the Biden administration, was only able to discover it by going back to the data record, meaning that it was not captured immediately the moment it entered the regional airspace.

According to the newspaper, the US military is now working to adjust its radars in order to monitor more incursions in real-time. Also, in this context, over the weekend, US fighter jets shot down three unidentified flying objects over Alaska, Canada, and Michigan.

These balloons are made of special materials that can handle extreme temperatures and carry weights in thin air. For balloons to be useful, operators on the ground must be able to maintain contact with them over great distances.

The Chinese balloon joins the category of high-altitude balloons, which are huge balloons usually filled with helium or hydrogen and launched into the stratosphere from the atmosphere, reaching between 18 and 37 kilometers above the Earth’s surface.

The balloon carries the devices below it, usually as transmitters, cameras, or satellite navigation systems, as well as devices for the purpose of the balloon, often for the purpose of studying the weather or some research work.

However, sometimes the balloon may be used for espionage purposes. At these altitudes, the balloon can obtain high-resolution images and maps of the Earth, as well as monitor changes over time. These devices can also intercept and analyze communication signals between military agencies and even monitor the movement of personnel and forces.

In the case of the Chinese airship, its bottom payload was huge, estimated to be 3 school buses long (about 20-30 meters) and payload weighing about a full ton, and it was supported by 16 arrays of solar panels installed on it.

Professor Wu’s publicly available academic publications, as well as other reports, indicate that he and his collaborating scholars have long studied these challenges.

 

Near Space’s Race

The New York Times describes Professor Wu, who turns 66 this month, as a central figure in China’s ambitions in “near space,” the band of atmosphere that stretches between 12 and 62 miles above Earth, between outer space and the near atmosphere.

Chinese strategists see, according to the newspaper, in the near space an arena for deepening the competition between the great powers, as China must master the new technologies necessary to establish a strong presence there, otherwise it “risks” handing them over to other powers. This concern has deepened with strained relations with the United States under current President Xi Jinping.

As such, Chinese analysts argue that near space provides a potentially useful alternative to satellites and surveillance aircraft, which may become vulnerable to detection, blocking, or attacks.

In addition, the newspaper quotes what the Chinese military commentator Shi Hong wrote in a current affairs journal last year when he considered that near space “is a major field of competition between military powers in the twenty-first century: whoever gains an advantage in close spacecraft will be capable of gaining more initiative in future wars.”