BALLOONING OPTIONS TO SPY

The saga of the alleged Chinese spy balloon over the United States ended in an anticlimactic puff of smoke on February 4 after an American F-22 shot down the airship over coastal waters in the Atlantic Ocean.
News of the Chinese airship went public on February 3.
This was not a far-fetched claim – in 1998 a weather balloon went off course over Canada and drifted across the Atlantic before coming down in the Arctic Sea.
The Chinese airship did have a few unusual features, including a motor and propeller for manoeuvrability and a large payload.
However, even if the airship could be used for surveillance, it may be impossible to distinguish it from a scientific research vessel.
Revolutions in information processing, communications and sensors are allowing states to deploy relatively simple dual-use tools to glean valuable information.
Chinese airships are also probably linked to some of what the US calls ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ or UAPs.
While the vast majority UAPs are the result of optical illusions, sensor errors, or airborne debris, a few may be functional airships. A recent Pentagon report counted 163 ‘balloon or balloon-like entities’ in 2022 alone.
In 2020, a similar airship was seen over northern Japan and in 2022 another one was spotted near Port Blair, in India’s strategically important Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Why use balloons

Spy balloons can do a few things that spy satellites can’t.
For one, satellites move in predictable orbits, and major powers have decades of experience in masking their activity from eyes in orbit.
While satellites can be moved around, such actions take up scarce fuel and are thus reserved for the most important tasks.
While flying aircraft or airships over another country’s airspace is risky, they can be used with little interruption over international waters.
Here airships offer many of the benefits of aircraft with fewer drawbacks.
They are cheaper and hence more expendable.
They can fly at very high altitudes,putting them beyond the range of many air-to-air and surface-to-air missiles.
Airships are also unmatched in their ability to hover over an area for extended periods of times, making them particularly useful for tasks such as monitoring an adversary’s naval exercises.
Finally, airships can reduce their detectability by using ‘stealth’ technology such as radar-absorbent material.
For India, airships are an attractive tool for improving surveillance along its restless frontiers.
Along India’s borders and littorals, airships can spot smugglers and help locate fishing boats in need of assistance.
Further out to sea, airships may find a role in maritime surveillance, providing a convenient means to track vessels, especially during peacetime and in crises that do not involve outright war.

Spying underwater

Balloons are not the only dual-use surveillance tools in use. In 2019 and 2020, Indonesian fishermen captured at least two Chinese Sea Wing uncrewed underwater vehicles (UUVs) deep inside the country’s territorial waters.
The UUVs were released by Chinese survey ships, which typically collect the vehicles after they complete a roughly two-month long undersea journey.
One such survey ship entered India’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in 2019 before being told to leave.
While such vessels could be carrying out harmless scientific research, their taskis fundamentally dual-use by nature.
Data collected on the contours of the seabed, salinity, and ocean temperatures in these strategically vital waters are all invaluable for China’s submarine operations and its anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
China’s undersea mapping efforts are not limited to the Sea Wings.
In 2019, locals on Indonesia’s Riau Archipelago found a curious propeller-driven craft with only a few markings to indicate it was Chinese.
China is not alone in surveilling the oceans with dual-use UUVs.
In 2016, the PLA navy intercepted an American UUV near the Philippines but returned the craft after Washington protested.
The Indian navy also operates six Sandhayak-class survey ships, which are soon to be complemented by four more vessels.
These ships can deploy both remotely-operated and autonomous UUVs, though the details are not clear.

Spread of dual-use technologies

Other forms of spying tools will continue to create new challenges for India.
Cheap commercial drones can be used by both states and non-state actors as expendable spies in the skies.
Besides developing various specialised jammers, India will have to develop cost-effective means of shooting down cheap drones that don’t involve the use of high-end air-to-air missiles.
More exotic spies can be found in outer space, where states including China operated rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) satellites that approach the vicinity of another orbital craft.
While there are legitimate uses for RPOs such as repair or refuelling, these satellites can also soak up transmissions from another craft or sabotage it.
Dealing with RPOs requires India to greatly enhance its space situational awareness, a task that requires both intense private sector collaboration and international cooperation with likeminded states.
India is accustomed to the reality that what passes for peacetime remains highly competitive and occasionally violent.
The task ahead for India’s government is to turn the table on its adversaries by embracing some of these tools of espionage.

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