A weird balloon-like item of unknown origin was recently sighted hovering in Montana skies, setting off alarms across the US. Analysts now believe that this flying enigma may have served a whole other purpose than that of a Chinese espionage operation.
The possibility that technology carried by balloons might be employed maliciously, such as in a biohazard or electromagnetic pulse attack, is a developing issue. Scientists warn us to keep a close eye on the skies for potential aerial hazards.
In an interview with CNN, former senator and Democratic statesman William Cohen, the former secretary of defense of the United States, raised the alarm: “We must act now or risk significant consequences later from China’s fast rising influence in the globe.” His statements serve as a welcome reminder that we risk losing ground if we choose to disregard this global challenge.
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“Secretary Cohen, if this was an Iranian balloon or a North Korean balloon, would we have reacted the same way?” CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked.
“I think we would have because the first thing we need to do is, number one, is the balloon a military or security threat, but number two, can we get information out of it before we destroy it? We didn’t know, for example, if it could have contained something within the balloon other than helium that could have posed a threat to us. Do we know if it has any kind of biological component to it? So you want to ask those questions,” the former defense secretary said.
“We need to find out as much information about this balloon as soon as we can to make sure we put the Chinese on notice, come again another time, and we know what to do. Right here, I think it was really important to find out what kind of information they were gathering, were we able to intercept it,” he added.
“I know we can take it down, and I think we can take it down in a fairly responsible fashion, so it doesn’t come crashing down. We have the capability to help move it down. If the Chinese can move it from China, we can move it from here, and I’m confident we can take it down,” Cohen continued.
Military authorities are on high alert as concerns grow that the strange balloon could be a delivery system for an EMP device. The Pentagon is considering its options to limit future harm.
High altitude balloons represent a significant risk, according to a 2015 warning from a specialist on the dangers of electromagnetic pulses (EMPs). The warning from Maj. David Stuckenberg sparked fresh alarm over this potentially catastrophic problem and increased understanding of its dangers for our contemporary world.
“Using a balloon as a WMD/WME platform could provide adversaries with a pallet of altitudes and payload options with which to maximize offensive effects against the U.S.,” he explained in a report.
“A high altitude balloon could be designed, created, and launched in a matter of months. There is nothing to prevent several hundred pounds of weapons material from being delivered to altitude,” he added.
On Friday, Stuckenberg spoke out again: “China’s recent balloon flyover of the United States is clearly a provocative and aggressive act. It was most likely a type of dry run meant to send a strategic message to the USA. We must not take this for granted.”
The Washington Examiner reported:
Now in the private sector, Stuckenberg, a national security expert and scientist who led the Defense Department’s EMP Task Force and chairman of the American Leadership & Policy Foundation, pointed to Japan’s World War II “Project Fugo” that targeted the U.S. with balloon bombs as an example of the threat. “Not since WWII has North America faced a threat of this nature. Project FuGo in Japan used balloons to float bombs on the trade-winds across the Pacific to the U.S. and Canada,” he told Secrets.
EMP experts have warned that China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran have programs to hit the U.S. grid with electromagnetic pulse weapons that would cut the cord for a year or longer. A congressional report has warned that a blackout that long could result in millions of deaths.
In a report Stuckenberg explained: “Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and member of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack, stated, ‘Imagine the consequences of a balloon EMP attack that damages and destroys electronic systems at the speed of light within an EMP field with a radius of hundreds of kilometers. The Eastern Grid generates 75% of U.S. electricity and supports most of the population.” Pry also notes, “Virtually any nuke detonated anywhere over the Eastern Grid will collapse the entire Eastern Grid, not just the area within the EMP field, because of cascading failures that will ripple outward.”
Stuckenberg finished in his paper, “In the case of EMP, the consequences of a failure to anticipate ALL delivery modes within the reach of an imaginative enemy could be immediate and widespread. As guardians of our nation’s future, planners must leave no stone unturned in the effort to deprive America’s enemies of low cost, lowtech, high-consequence military options.”
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