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NEW YORK ― An entire new menace now threatens the world's warring factions. Who would have thought balloons would raise such a ruckus? Think about it, though. Just about any country, or any terrorist grouping, should be able to launch a balloon.
The danger is not just that instruments carried by the balloon can spy on bases and people down below. They can also carry bombs for dropping when directed by their navigators thousands of miles away. Drones can do the same thing but make a lot more noise, carry much more equipment and are far easier to detect.
It's hard to believe the Americans, the Canadians and no doubt others are just catching up with such a seemingly simple device. How can it be that a balloon, cruising tens of thousands of meters above the earth's surface, would prove to be the latest weapon in the inventory of great powers?
Nor is it just the Chinese who are launching them. Now it turns out the Americans have been playing with them too. It's safe to assume a number of other nations will be getting into the act, discovering the ease with which balloons can soar out of the sight of devices ordinarily so great at seeing anything up there from low-flying satellites to spy planes within air defense identification zones that are outside national space but close enough for intruding aircraft to be expected to identify themselves.
The balloon phenomenon has immediate significance for South Korea. North Korea has launched a number of drones over the South. Some have made it back to the North while others have crashed. Think of what the North Koreans can do if tempted to wage balloon warfare against the South.
For that matter, shouldn't the Chinese be expected to launch balloons over numerous other countries, including both North and South Korea? And why shouldn't South Korea send some balloons over the North?
Come to think of it, defectors from North Korea have been firing balloons from just below the demilitarized zone between the two Koreas over North Korea for years. They're laden with propaganda leaflets exposing the Kim dynasty and other news and views that North Koreans never get to see or hear. Kim Jong-un's sister, Yo-jong, has bitterly denounced them, indicating some of them are reaching their intended audience.
South Korean authorities have periodically cracked down on activists for their leaflet campaign, but it's easy to imagine South and North engaging in balloon warfare for real, beginning by using them to gather intelligence. Think of the challenge a balloon campaign would present to the South's air force, madly pursuing balloons right up to the DMZ.
First, though, they'd have to spot them, and that won't be easy. Not long ago, fighter planes and helicopters were unable to intercept a flight of North Korean drones. Reconnaissance balloons might be still more difficult, especially if they soared thousands of meters into the skies.
For now, though, American intelligence people need to figure out how the Chinese balloons worked, how much material they were sending back to operators in China, how they controlled their flight patterns and how valuable they really were as weapons in a new, dangerous Cold War that could turn hot any time.
We're not even sure if U.S. navy divers in the Atlantic off the South Carolina coast have recovered the working parts that are key to the success of the first balloon to be shot down by a missile fired from a U.S. air force plane. All we know is the Chinese had been conducting the balloon program for several years before the Americans began to catch up with what they were doing.
The primary responsibility for finding the balloons over North America rests with NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command. Although NORAD may be expected to be able to track the flight of any aircraft approaching the United States and Canada, incredibly, it was caught flat-footed by the appearance of the immense balloon that finally was seen high above Montana.
NORAD physicists, engineers and technicians can "hear" a North Korean nuclear test whenever Kim wants to test one. They've been waiting for months for Kim to order the North's seventh underground nuclear warhead, but nothing seems to have prepared NORAD for the shock of the Chinese balloons.
Call them China's once secret weapon. In a war of wits and nerves as well as strength and power, it's wise to expect the unexpected, including hot air blowing in from China.
Donald Kirk (www.donaldkirk.com) writes from Washington and Seoul about confrontation in Asia.
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