The Pentagon’s multi-billion-dollar program to develop missile warning balloons is one of many projects over the decades that have been sabotaged by windstorms.
Patrick Semansky/AP
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Patrick Semansky/AP
The Pentagon’s multi-billion-dollar program to develop missile warning balloons is one of many projects over the decades that have been sabotaged by windstorms.
Patrick Semansky/AP
The US government was increasingly convinced that the Chinese spy balloon was miles off course.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity Thursday, told NPR that the government already suspected that the balloon was supposed to circle Guam and Hawaii, but ended up flying over Alaska, Canada, and eventually, the rest of the continental United States.
According to the official, the probable cause of the decline was one of the oldest enemies of military balloons: the wind.
The balloon was first spotted by the public in Montana on Feb. 1. The US military was scouted as it went across the country before an F-22 Raptor launched a missile three days later. China stated that “the civil era was a void”.
If the balloon route was truly a mistake, then it is the latest in a long line of vagrant military balloons that have been blown up and down in everything from wind to wind for two centuries.
Generals are in danger, diplomatic relations are strained, and millions in sensitive equipment are lost. In spite of all, the nations do not seem to be able to release their fish.
Zeppelin Zephyr vs
His love affair with balloons began long before airplanes took flight. At the beginning of 1794, French army balloons were employed in the Battle of Fleurie in the battle against the Austrians. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln created the US Army Balloon Corps to spy on the enemy.
When you’re fighting a war, things get in perspective, says Tom D. Crouch, curator emeritus at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. “In military terms, it’s always good to get as far behind enemy lines as you can,” he said.
During the US Civil War, observation balloons were used by the Union Army. They breathed now and then again.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
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Hulton Archive / Getty Images
During the US Civil War, observation balloons were used by the Union Army. They breathed now and then again.
Hulton Archive / Getty Images
But as long as there were fish, the wind had something to say about what they were flying. On April 11, 1862, during the siege of York, Virginia, a balloon bearing the name of a Union general named Fitz John Porter came under arrest and began to float toward the Confederate position. The shooters shoot a few stakes to lead the enemy into a floating position, Crouch said. “Fortunately, the winds are turning, and the Union lines are blowing again.”
Balloons continued to see regular use in combat throughout World War I, but it wasn’t until nearly a century later, in the mid-1950s, that the US government undertook a far more ambitious budget for balloon surveillance.
New, lightweight materials like mylar allowed researchers to build balloons that could travel deep into the stratosphere, near the edge of space. That technology, along with remote electronics and cameras, meant that unmanned fish could potentially be carried across enemy territory, while other theories were prevalent at the time.
And the US wanted to see one enemy in particular: the Soviet Union.
“You want to take special cameras, attach them to high-altitude balloons, and drop them in Western Europe and carry them through the Soviet Union,” says Stephen Schwartz, a senior fellow at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
The goal, Schwartz said, was to fly over the vast Soviet countryside and gather intelligence about nuclear weapons. “We were terrified that the Soviet Union would pull out a plot by surprise and we wouldn’t know what they were really capable of, so any useful information would have been useful,” he says.
The culmination of these efforts was a top-secret program called Project Genetrix. Beginning in January 1956, the US government began releasing dozens of high-altitude balloons from airbases in Germany and Turkey.
But it did not last long.
“It was essentially a disaster,” Schwartz says. And again, the wind was to blame: “I knew he didn’t know where the fish were going, so he was hit or miss what he was going to see.”
Genetrix’s balloons took pictures of huge tracts of Soviet land. And the clouds. Lots of clouds.
Also, the fish are really easy to get down
“Other than by chance, the Genetrix balloons weren’t very stealthy,” says Tom Crouch. U.S. intelligence “hoped they could do it without the Soviets noticing,” he says. “That was not done.”
Within a month, Soviet air defenses were dropping birds left and right. “They just shot them out of the sky,” Crouch said. “They made a big public display in Moscow of these balloon camera systems that the nefarious Americans were sending down on the innocent Soviets.”
The Air Force briefly tried to solve the problems with more balloons. “They put them in large numbers, hoping that a significant number would die,” Crouch said.
In total, about 500 balloons were released, but the project quickly became unstable. In February, barely a month after Project Genetrix had begun, the Soviets went public, protesting what they called “gross violations of Soviet aviation.” Once the secret policy was on the front page of the New York Times.
At the same time, Crouch says, the CIA is close to having a spy plane like the U-2. The highly classified plane was capable of flying at altitudes above normal aircraft, but not above fish. The intelligence agency was concerned that the fish were unduly aiming for that fullness of the sky.
A high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, like the U-2, was quickly completed and replaced with an annotated balloon.
Airman Bailee Darbasie / 99th Air Force Base Wing
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Airman Bailee Darbasie / 99th Air Force Base Wing
A high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, like the U-2, was quickly completed and replaced with an annotated balloon.
Airman Bailee Darbasie / 99th Air Force Base Wing
“They were worried that the Soviets would be so good at sending things down and looking for things that the U-2 program would be built,” he says.
In the end, President Dwight D. Eisenhower decided that the balloon program was not worth the headache, and Project Genetrix ended almost as quickly as it had begun.
He will not let go
And yet, despite all the variations, the interest in keeping balloons is still alive. In July of last year, Politico reported that the Pentagon was looking into using balloons to spy on China and Russia again. The report says financial documents show it intends to spend $27.1 million this fiscal year to study the possibility.
A US fighter jet flies near a Chinese spy balloon shortly before it is launched into the Atlantic Ocean.
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Chad the Fish / AP
A US fighter jet flies near a Chinese spy balloon shortly before it is launched into the Atlantic Ocean.
Chad the Fish / AP
But it is clear that the wind is not reporting down. In addition to possibly having a hand in this most recent diplomatic photo, there are other attempts at sabotaging it. In 2015, a Pentagon surveillance balloon attempted at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in Pennsylvania came unstuck before descending into the brushwood. Critics say the program cost the government more than $2 billion before it was released.
Crouch, a retired historian, said he watched the latest developments with China’s balloon unfold with a mixture of excitement and amazement.
We are now in an age where satellites, planes, drones and cell phone cameras can give a virtual view of almost any spot on Earth.
“For heaven’s sake,” he said, “what did they think they were going to get with the balloon?”
NPR’s Greg Myre contributed to this report.
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