- 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.