It seems to have advanced control technologies that the US military has not yet put into the air (File)
Washington:
The first Chinese surveillance balloon the Pentagon has found over sensitive US ballistic missile sites may be guided by advanced artificial intelligence technology, a US expert said Friday.
A second Chinese surveillance balloon was later spotted over Latin America, the Pentagon said, without specifying its exact location.
William Kim, a surveillance balloon specialist at Washington’s Marathon Initiative think tank, told AFP that balloons are a valuable means of observation that are difficult to shoot down.
Led by AI?
Kim said the first Chinese balloon looked like a normal weather balloon, but with different characteristics.
It has a fairly large, visible payload, the electronics for guidance and information gathering, powered by large solar panels.
And it appears to have advanced control technologies that the U.S. military hasn’t put into the air yet.
Artificial intelligence has made it possible for a balloon, just by reading the changes in the air around it, to adjust its altitude to guide it where it wants to go, Kim said.
“Before, you either had to have a chain… or you just send it up and it just goes where the wind takes it,” he said.
“What’s happened very recently with advances in AI is you can have a balloon that… doesn’t need a movement system of its own. By just adjusting its height, it can control its direction.”
That could include radio communications from home base, he said.
But “if its purpose is to guard (intercontinental ballistic missile) silos, which is one of the theories … then you don’t necessarily have to tell it to adjust its location,” he added.
What advantages over satellites?
Kim said that as satellites become more vulnerable to attacks from Earth and space, balloons have clear advantages.
First, they don’t show up on radars easily.
“These are materials that don’t reflect, they’re not metals. So even though these balloons get quite big, detecting … the balloon itself is going to be a problem,” he said.
And the payload, if small enough, can be overlooked.
Balloons also have the advantage of occupying relatively stationary positions over a surveillance target, compared to constantly orbiting satellites used by spy agencies to take pictures.
“These things can stay overhead, they can stay in one place for months at a time, compared to the low-Earth orbit satellites,” Kim said.
Could it have accidentally entered US airspace?
Kim called it a “real possibility” that a Chinese balloon was intended to collect data from outside US borders or much higher, but malfunctioned.
“These balloons don’t always work perfectly,” he said.
The balloons usually operate at an altitude of 65,000-100,000 feet, and this one is at about 46,000 feet, he said.
“That’s definitely a little low… If you want it to be harder to see, if you want it to be harder to shoot down, then it would make sense to operate at a higher altitude.”
Why can’t the US shoot it down?
Shooting a balloon isn’t as easy as it sounds, Kim said.
“These balloons use helium… It’s not the Hindenburg, you can’t just shoot it and then and then it goes up in flames.”
“If you punch holes in it, it leaks out very slowly.”
Kim recalled that in 1998, the Canadian Air Force sent F-18 fighter jets to try and shoot down a rogue weather balloon.
“They fired a thousand 20-millimeter rounds at it. And it took another six days for it to finally come down. These aren’t things that explode or pop when you shoot them.”
He said it was not clear whether using surface-to-air missiles would work because their guidance systems are designed to hit fast-moving missiles and aircraft.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NewsMadura staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)
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