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19 February 2023

The Pentagon Isn’t Ready for Spy Balloons of the Future

James Stavridis

Over a decade ago, as part of an indoctrination course for newly selected admirals and generals, I toured Cheyenne Mountain, the sophisticated command and control citadel in Colorado that is the beating heart of the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD.

It was what you’d expect in a sophisticated military installation: huge screens, flashing lights, softly humming machines and serious-looking watch officers. The coffee reminded me of what you’d get on the bridge of a Navy warship on the midnight watch — dark, strong and consumed at a high rate. I went away impressed.

Over the past two weeks, that beating heart has probably been running at a very high rate. After four shootdowns of aerial objects, at least one likely a Chinese surveillance balloon, those watch officers must be getting a bit frazzled. Fire up another pot of coffee, sergeant!

As we learn more about aerial intrusions into American and Canadian airspace — NORAD is a joint US-Canada operation — we need to think anew about technology, tactics, operations and strategy. Each has a role in understanding a complex ecosystem that has been flying under the radar, so to speak.

Using balloons for military operations has been around for centuries, but they have recently become far more significant. Nanotechnology permits miniaturization of components that once would have been prohibitively large, including electro-optics and receivers; advanced materials provide a means to use the surface of the balloon itself for communications relay, solar power and sensors; and streamlined connectivity can link long-dwell balloons to satellites overhead and send real-time signals back to one’s rivals. In all these technologies, there will be steady, rapid improvements, which will also be applied to unmanned vehicles.

Tactically, the US military needs to think about how to deploy anti-balloon systems, with a particular emphasis on being able to recover them aerially as opposed to destroying them, so the technology can be reverse-engineered. This will be a complex feat of airmanship, but not entirely unknown as a concept. During the Cold War, the US Air Force routinely recovered film capsules after they had been ejected from satellites at altitudes as high as 60 kilometers.

The US should also be thinking through the tactics involving inexpensive shootdowns (using bullets instead of Sidewinder missiles costing over $400,000 each, for example) and better “landing zone control” to ensure civilian populations are safe from debris. Another option could be lasers to blind or destroy such systems. NORAD can work more closely with the Pentagon’s innovations arm, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the network of US labs and defense contractors.

One relatively bright spot in this week of mysterious shootdowns has been the operational coordination between the US and Canada. Once thought to be a Cold War relic, NORAD has been revitalized and joined with the relatively new US Northern Command, or Northcom, which is responsible for defending the North American continent.

Operationally, we need to provide NORAD and Northcom with the ability to amplify their existing surveillance, detection, command and control, and kinetic response options. This means seamlessly knitted radar systems; better precision in fire control (again, lasers show great promise); and being prepared for a much higher volume of cheap aerial systems being deployed. We can effectively take down one balloon or unidentified flying object at a time. But what happens when a fleet of 200 show up over the Arctic, floating inexorably toward NORAD’s early warning lines?

Speaking of the Arctic, an ability to monitor and project power there is vital because of both the juicy US military targets in the northern Great Plains (all of the Pentagon’s intercontinental ballistic missiles and many of its long-range strategic bombers) and the rising competition over the resource-rich region. While we currently assume the threat of spy systems comes from China, Russia has means, motive and geographic opportunity.

Ultimately, the most complex challenge here will be strategic. If, as seems likely, the first balloon downed is part of a global Chinese intelligence-gathering network, America has some strategic work to do.

First, we need to focus international attention on this behavior, which is a direct violation of international law and the sovereignty of any targeted state. It is also dangerous in terms of civil aviation and the potential for miscalculation and military escalation.

At the strategic level, the scores of government agencies that deal with security, intelligence, transportation and the like must pull together more coherently. President Joe Biden’s administration just announced a task force to do so. And there are private-public aspects of this challenge — notably with the commercial aviation industry — that require strategic attention.

Finally, a disquieting aspect of this has been the lack of communication. The military and civilian channels between the US and China have been jammed shut since former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan last summer. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin tried to contact his Chinese counterpart about the first balloon, and Beijing simply didn’t take the call. This situation vastly increases the odds for even a minor incident to spiral out of control. If you’ll forgive the pun, we can’t afford to “have the balloon go up” over this, especially if a similar event occurs over Taiwan.

The watch teams in Cheyenne Mountain face yet another challenge. Helping them be prepared to protect American sovereignty, defeat industrial espionage, and defend our northern border will require a coherent response that binds together the right technology, tactics, operations and strategy.

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