Spy Balloons: Modern technology has given a new look to these old fashioned eyes in the sky

London: The US military recently shot down four high-flying objects that entered US and Canadian airspace. Now questions are being raised about their purpose and who flew them and from where. The first of these items, a Chinese balloon, was downed by a fighter jet on 4 February. China says it was for weather monitoring, US officials say it was being used for surveillance. Knowledge of the technology in this area gives some indication of what might be going on. The balloon is believed to have carried a signals intelligence collection payload, although this has yet to be confirmed. The wreckage of the balloon has been retrieved from US waters off the coast of South Carolina and will be taken ashore for examination.

Three other objects were dropped between February 10 and 12 over Deadhorse in Alaska, near Yukon in Canada, and over Lake Huron near the US-Canada border. Signals intelligence, or “sigint”, refers to electronic data, which may include conversations, written messages, or data taken from weapons or radar systems. SIGINT is usually collected by satellites, but can also be collected from aircraft flying in international airspace. Typically, SIGINT collecting satellites are located in low Earth orbit (LEO) – at an altitude of 500 to 1,000 km – or in geostationary orbit, at an altitude of 36,000 km. Although this type of intelligence gathering by satellites is efficient and reasonably effective, there are some limitations.

A satellite in LEO will complete one orbit around Earth in 70 to 100 minutes but it will not pass over the same point on Earth again for 14 to 20 hours depending on its altitude. This is because our planet is also in motion. Even so, it will be visible at only one point on Earth for a maximum of 20 minutes; Which is called its “living time”. Increasing the number of satellites helps, but there is still a large time lag in coverage. In principle, a geostationary satellite could have a permanent time to tick. But, since it is located at a distance of about 36,000 kilometers from the Earth’s surface, it may miss the collection of important but weak signals.

The US military is developing signals – electronic data transmissions – with a low probability of interception. This is making Singut collection difficult for both Chinese and Russian spy satellites. There will be a large time interval in a 24-hour period, known as the silent time, when collection is not possible. China has tried to close this gap in time. In 2020, the country launched three new reconnaissance satellites of the Yaogan-30 series, part of a wider network, or “constellation”, called Chuangxin-5 (CX-5), into 600 km orbit. Launched as Due to which the number of satellites in the network increased to 21.

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