Suspected spy balloons have been sighted in various parts of the world. Above all over the USA, but also over Latin America and Ukraine. Why are there so many sightings at the moment? This technology is not new.
A Chinese balloon flew across the United States for days earlier this month before being shot down off the Atlantic coast. Apparently it started on the southern Chinese island of Hainan at the end of January, writes the Washington Post. He then flew over Alaska, crossing Canada and the United States until the US Air Force shot him down off the coast of South Carolina on February 4th.
US says it was a Chinese spy balloon. Beijing itself denies this, speaking of a weather balloon that went off course.
After that, three more mysterious flying objects appeared over North America: US fighter pilots shot down an object over Alaska. A third was destroyed over Canada. And the fourth flying object was brought down by a US jet in mid-February, over the US-Canada border.
Shooting them down was a precautionary measure, said US President Joe Biden. According to the intelligence services, the three objects are most likely balloons belonging to private companies, leisure or research institutions that have studied the weather or something else.
Research and spy balloons are mostly in the stratosphere, higher than passenger planes. "Weather balloons rise to an altitude of 30 or 40 kilometers. That's nothing unusual. There are also some for research purposes, perhaps also for espionage or military purposes, which can climb even higher. Others, perhaps research balloons, can also be at lower altitudes," says Hakan Kayal in the ntv podcast "Learned something again". He is a professor of space technology at the University of Würzburg and heads the Interdisciplinary Center for Extraterrestrial Science.
Some of the flying objects over North America could be seen with the naked eye. That made it easy to spot them. Not all parts of the atmosphere are observed to the same extent. "The space below the satellites but above the balloons hasn't been that much of a focus," explains Kayal.
It is customary to monitor and coordinate civil aviation. "But military airspace surveillance is of course also important. Thirdly, space is relevant, ie the surveillance of satellites," explains the space expert.
A former CIA official told the Financial Times that up until now the United States has focused its counterintelligence activities primarily on outer space and less on the high altitude areas below. In addition, the American early warning and surveillance systems have been optimized, especially for relatively fast flying objects at an altitude of up to about 15 kilometers, explained the former deputy head of the United States Cyber Command, Charlie Moore.
That changed with the Chinese balloon. The US air defense is now looking more closely, also looking for smaller and slower objects. "By adjusting the radar instruments, they tried to do it better and also take a closer look at previously unnoticed regions," says Kayal. In addition, balloons are not so easy to detect by the devices because they are made of thin material and have little equipment on board.
The US military has now recalibrated its radars, making them more sensitive to such flying objects. "The filters were opened," as a US official described it in the Washington Post: The radar devices collected and filtered a lot of raw data so that people and machines would understand them. However, important information could be lost in the process. That is why these filters have been deactivated. The official likens it to a shopping website where the filter boxes are no longer checked.
"If you monitor the airspace with a radar device, then focus on cases that could be a threat, airplanes or spy planes," explains space expert Kayal in the podcast. Everything that is disruptive and militarily irrelevant, such as flocks of birds or weather phenomena, is filtered out. "But it is precisely in these filtered phenomena that new natural phenomena could be hidden that could be of interest to us."
What is behind the three flying objects recently shot down over North America is still not clear. After a statement by US General Glen VanHerck, there was wild speculation about UFOs and extraterrestrials. When asked about it, he replied that he is not ruling out anything at this point in time. He leaves it to the secret services and counterintelligence to find out. The White House then quickly made it clear that there was no evidence of aliens.
But the topic of UFOs is not that far off the mark. After all, more and more unidentified flying objects are being sighted. The US intelligence services have now collected reports of 510 UFOs, many of which are flying in sensitive military airspace. 366 of the sightings have been new since 2021. Later, 163 of these were identified as balloons. For 171 of the objects it has not yet been clarified what exactly was sighted in the sky. But that doesn't mean that there is evidence of extraterrestrial life.
Last summer, the United States set up its own authority for unidentified flying objects and other phenomena, the "All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office". This coordinates and investigates the cases. "A step forward," says Kayal in the "Learned Again" podcast. In addition, the US space agency NASA started a UFO study last year, reports the space professor.
In Germany, the topic of UFOs has so far been rather neglected. Those who report sightings are usually smiled at. The German collection point for UFO sightings, a private organization, registered over 300 reports last year. So far, there is no official authority for this, as there is in the USA or France.
Kayal would like more money for research and more support from politicians. "There are reports of UFOs. They are reported again and again." First of all, one has to acknowledge that unidentified flying objects exist. "What you then do with it and how you react if the worst comes to the worst is an extremely complex issue. Even if it turns out in the end that it's just military activities, spy balloons, weather phenomena or natural phenomena that we just don't know yet. "
It is important to collect data first. The UFO research could fill gaps in physics, says the space expert. Even if in the end there are no extraterrestrial flying objects.
