‘Domain awareness gap’ explains Trump-Biden differences on Chinese spy balloons: Pentagon
Mike Brest
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The Department of Defense had a “domain awareness gap” that allowed three suspected Chinese surveillance balloons to cross into U.S. airspace, according to the general responsible for providing air and missile defense over North America.
The Pentagon has disclosed in recent days that there were instances under the Trump administration where this occurred as well. Trump officials denied knowledge of any such incursions, but current officials said they only became apparent after President Joe Biden took office.
“Every day as a NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail,” Gen. Glen VanHerck, the commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, told reporters on Monday.
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He noted that the intelligence community was able to gather intelligence after the fact “from additional means that made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transited North America.”
National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters on Monday that they have “reached out to key [Trump administration] officials and have offered a briefing,” though he didn’t specify which officials received those invitations after multiple officials from the previous administration denied any previous spy balloon incidents.
In choosing not to shoot down the balloon over U.S. territory, defense officials said they were able to gather intelligence on the balloon as it traversed across the country from west to east over the last week. Military personnel shot it down once it reached the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday.
“There was a potential opportunity for us to collect intel where we had gaps on prior balloons,” VanHerck added. “And so I would defer to the intel community, but this gave us the opportunity to assess what they were actually doing, what kind of capabilities existed on the balloon, what kind of transmission capabilities existed. And I think you’ll see in the future that the time frame was well worth its value to collect over.”
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The Defense Department acknowledged that these balloons had been spotted in a number of different countries over the last couple of years.
“These balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations, which have also violated the sovereignty of other countries. These kinds of activities are often undertaken at the direction of the People’s Liberation Army or PLA,” a senior defense official told reporters on Saturday. “Over the past several years, Chinese balloons have previously been spotted over countries across five continents, including in East Asia, South Asia, and Europe.”