Recent reports that China’s claimed “weather” balloon was taking multiple images of U.S. military sites and sending them back to the communist nation are raising greater national security alarms.
U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) is demanding the Biden administration release all information available on the spy balloon that invaded U.S. air space in late January and early February.
“What the United States needs to do as a result of that balloon, we need to know everything about that balloon and Congress needs a briefing on that,” Grassley told RadioIowa this week.
The Chinese spy balloon flew across the country for several days before it was finally shot down by the U.S. military over the Atlantic Ocean. It was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official told NBC News.
According to the report:
China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said. The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.
China has claimed the craft was a weather balloon that veered off course.
Grassley and his Republican colleagues have called on the Biden administration to turn over information about the multiple suspect aircraft detected over U.S. airspace.
“We have consistently learned more from press reports about the Chinese surveillance balloon than we have from administration officials. … I intend to hold this administration accountable,” Senator Roger Wicker (R-MS), ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told NBC News.
Grassley said the spy balloon incursion and other incidents of China’s saber-rattling underscore the importance of U.S. strength.
“A strong military is the best tool of peace to be prepared to ward off any actions that China may be taking in that part of the world that threaten countries that we have military alliances with,” the senator told RadioIowa.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
Photo “Chuck Grassley” by Senator Chuck Grassley. Background Photo “Chinese Spy Balloon Recovery” by U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
