The United States and Canada have had to retune their radars to better detect spy balloons, some of which have flown in North American airspace with impunity until recently.
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In a news conference Monday, White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby admitted unidentified planes likely flew across North American skies for years without governments bothering to investigate the phenomenon in depth.
But after the alleged Chinese spy balloon was shot down off South Carolina on Feb. 4, the radars of NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, were adjusted, which would also explain why other flying objects have been spotted in the past couple of days.
Archive photos
The balloon was recovering in South Carolina after being destroyed by the Americans on February 4th.
incognito giants
“Objects that fly slowly at high altitude […] are difficult to detect for our radar devices. Even objects the size of China’s spy balloon or the size of three school buses have not been detected by previous governments or other countries,” John Kirby said.
Changed NORAD radar settings to better detect smaller flying objects as well as those moving at high altitudes.
The American defense has also made its mea culpa after information circulated that at least three balloons had been sighted under the previous Trump administration.
“I will tell you that we have not detected these threats. And it’s a mistake that we need to understand,” NORAD’s head, Gen. Glen VanHerck, admitted in a press conference last week.
On the Canadian side, Major General Paul Prévost of the Strategic Joint Staff said Monday that another flying object was spotted in Canadian airspace in 1999, but to his knowledge there have been no others since.
A message sent to the opponent
What is certain is that the USA and Canada are not only discussing these flying objects in public space for military purposes, experts believe.
“Normally in defense we want to hide our capabilities, so we observe, we study, but we don’t intervene,” recalled Pierre Leblanc, a retired colonel and former commander of Joint Task Force (North) Canada.
According to the latter, a “political” context partly explains the media coverage of the phenomenon.
“It’s not a military decision, it’s a political decision. It shows the will not only of the USA, but also of Canada to signal to the enemy that we want to dissuade them from such an approach,” believes Christian Leuprecht, Professor at the Collège Royal Canadian Army.
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