China’s Balloons Could Signal a Greater Threat Than Espionage
High altitude balloons (HABS) or airships (HAA) can be used for more than just surveillance. In fact, they could be (and have been) used as offensive weapons.
China’s explanation for the HAA currently (2/3/2023) loitering over the US is that it is a stray airship for meteorological study that has been blown off course. This may very well be true, but the timing of the event, and its size (around 120 feet in diameter) makes this claim dubious — the largest weather balloons are usually no more than 20 feet in diameter.
If this is not a “spy balloon,” what could it be? Some of the most concerning possibilities for HAA use:
- An airship carrying one or more thermonuclear weapons. An HAB or an HAA could be an ideal platform to sneak attack with a nuclear weapon — especially those that are optimized to produce an electro-magnetic pulse (EMP). A nuclear explosion high in the atmosphere would produce an EMP that could destroy a large swathe of the US electrical grid. The Congressional EMP Commission’s report states:
EMP is one of a small number of threats that can hold our society at risk of catastrophic consequences. EMP will cover the wide geographic region within line of sight to the nuclear weapon. It has the capability to produce significant damage to critical…
