An official, photos taken by high-altitude U-2 planes confirmed the presence of the equipment.
The Chinese balloon that flew above the U.S. for eight days included “multiple antennas” capable of collecting signals intelligence, a senior State Department official said Thursday.
The State Department official described the balloon as carrying equipment designed to collect communications and threatened action against Beijing.
According to the official, photos taken by high-altitude U-2 planes confirmed the presence of the equipment, including “multiple antennas … likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications” and “solar panels large enough to produce the requisite power to operate multiple active intelligence collection sensors.” The equipment was “inconsistent” with that aboard weather balloons.
The balloons are part of a fleet “developed to conduct surveillance operations’ that are often undertaken at the military’s direction, said the official.
“The United States will also explore taking action against PRC entities linked to the PLA that supported the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace,” the official said, using the initials for the People's Republic of China. “We will also look at broader efforts to expose and address the PRC’s larger surveillance activities that pose a threat to our national security, and to our allies and partners.”
On Wednesday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that the U.S. has gathered extensive information about the Chinese surveillance balloons over time and will be able to detect them in the future.
U.S. officials said previously that there were had been multiple Chinese balloon flights over American territory during the former Trump administration and another during the Biden administration.
Ryder gave no further details about the routes of those flights or other information, but said the U.S. government later determined some of those sightings were Chinese high-altitude spy balloons.
“What we do know is that in some cases, where some of these balloons previously had not been identified, subsequent analysis, subsequent intelligence analysis did enable us to indicate that these were Chinese balloons,” Ryder said.
He added, “We’ve acknowledged publicly that we know that they were looking to surveil strategic sites, to include some of our strategic bases in the continental United States.”
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