Tag: china

Balloons, UFOs, fighter jets, oh my! What’s really going on in the skies above America…

In case you’re living under a rock and hadn’t heard, there was another “UFO” shot down over the Great Lakes this weekend.

According to reports, the US military had been monitoring Lake Michigan earlier in the day, and even closed the airspace for a short while before giving the “all clear” and reopening.

And just as Americans breathed a collective sigh of relief and returned to their Super Bowl snacks, word came down that fighter jets had shot down yet another “UFO” over Lake Huron, near the Canadian border, after the object ventured too close to a sensitive military site.

And if that wasn’t enough fuel for the already-raging media “UFO” bonfire, things heated up even more after General Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) announced that he wasn’t ruling out “aliens.”

Keep reading

BELIEVE IT OR NOT: China Claims It Sighted an Unidentified Flying Object Near Its Border

China state-affiliated media outlet The Global Times reported on Sunday that authorities in China’s Shandong Province have spotted an unidentifiable flying object over the coastal city of Rizhao.

Authorities in China are now preparing to shoot down the UFO and have sent out a message to local fishermen to stay out of the waters until the operation is complete.

The new report by China comes less than 24 hours after the United States shot down a high-altitude object in Canada and 48 hours after the United States shot down another object in Alaskan airspace.

Previously, China claimed the surveillance balloon that flew over Montana and was shot down in South Carolina was a “atmospheric research instrument” however the US military refuted those claims.

Many geopolitical analysts are confused about China’s new reports.

Some are claiming the report by China is a false flag in order for China to “pretend like it’s happening to us too”.

Others believe China is shooting down their own balloon in order to claim they “shot down a US balloon” in a move to not look weak after the US shot down their balloon.

Keep reading

First Balloons, Now Space Lasers: Chinese Satellite Blasts Green Lights Over Hawaii

Chinese spy balloons aren’t the only strange thing flying over U.S. airspace as of late.

Numerous green laser lights were spotted over Hawaii on Jan. 28, initially believed to be from a NASA satellite that monitors the thickness of ice sheets on earth. However, the claim was retracted on Feb. 6, and responsibility was instead attributed to a Chinese atmospheric monitoring satellite.

The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan published a photo of the lasers on Jan. 28 saying they were “thought to be from a remote-sensing altimeter satellite ICESAT-2/43613,” the NASA satellite. Then, on Feb. 6, NAOJ released an updated report and said it was unlikely to have come from the NASA satellite due to the trajectory of the lasers.

NASA scientist Dr. Alvaro Ivanoff determined via a simulation that the culprit was likely China’s Daqi-1/AEMS satellite, according to Science Alert.

Daqi-1 monitors the earth’s atmospheric environment and can project lasers from its Aerosol and Carbon Dioxide Detection Lidar (ACDL), according to The Science Times.

NASA’s IceSAT-2 functions similarly and fired 10,000 lasers per second to measure changes on the earth’s surface, according to The Science Times.

Keep reading

Nothing About the Chinese Balloon Saga Makes Sense

Nothing about the “Chinese spy balloon” story makes sense—but that hasn’t stopped U.S. officials from using it to stoke anti-China sentiment and cancel an attempt to ease diplomatic relations.

The basics: A Chinese balloon started drifting into U.S. territory about 10 days ago. It first entered Alaskan airspace, then drifted over Canada, then made its way back into U.S. airspace, appearing over Montana on February 1. By Saturday, when U.S. forces shot down the balloon, it was floating over the shores of South Carolina.

What the Chinese say: It was “a civilian airship used for research, mainly meteorological, purposes”—a weather balloon, essentially—that veered off course due to westerly winds and “limited self-steering capability.”

What Americans are saying: It’s a spy balloon! It’s an act of open hostility! U.S. Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken called it “a violation of our sovereignty” and “a violation of international law.” House China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) declared the balloon “a threat to American sovereignty” and “a threat to the Midwest.” Mitt Romney used it as an opportunity to call for banning TikTok.

The fallout: Blinken was supposed to visit Beijing this past weekend, on a trip designed to help keep relations cordial and keep lines of communication open between the countries. He was even scheduled to meet with Chinese president Xi Jinping. But Blinken canceled the trip last week, as the Chinese balloon loomed large (literally and figuratively) over America.

Not only did the balloon nix a diplomatic visit, it’s inflaming tensions—and paranoia—here in the States. The balloon is “more fodder for China hawks in Washington, for sure,” NPR correspondent Michele Kelemen said on Saturday. Kelemen described the incident as sounding like a story out of the Cold War, which was “exactly what [Blinken’s] trip was supposed to prevent.”

The absurdity: The balloon in question is absolutely massive, with “an undercarriage roughly the size of three buses,” as The New York Times put it. This would be an absolutely bonkers way to spy on the United States—especially since the images it picks up are reportedly no better than those it can obtain through satellites. One defense official said, as summarized The Washington Post, that the images a balloon like this could obtain “wouldn’t offer much in the way of surveillance that China couldn’t collect through spy satellites.”

Keep reading

How Did Biden Admin Retroactively ‘Discover’ Chinese Balloons in the U.S During the Trump Years?

The Biden administration has been trying to plug a gigantic hole in their story about Chinese spy balloons flying over U.S. territory during the Trump administration with no one in the government aware of it.

Initially, the Biden administration sought to deflect attention from their failure to shoot down the balloon by noting that Chinese spy balloons transited U.S. territory three times during the Trump years. But when several Trump administration officials hotly denied that charge, Biden administration officials changed their story. They claimed that the balloons were only over U.S. territory briefly — skirting Hawaii and flying over part of Florida — unlike this latest spy balloon, which traversed the entire width of the country. They also claimed that the balloons weren’t detected.

But how do we know this if the balloons weren’t detected and national leaders weren’t informed of their presence?

The American military had a “domain awareness gap,” according to Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command.

“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,” VanHerck said. “And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail.”

What’s a “domain awareness gap”? General VanHerck didn’t define the term, but Breaking Defense offered a partial explanation.

When VanHerck speaks of a “domain gap,” he’s referring to the U.S. Northern Command not having “the correct mix of sensor capabilities.”

Keep reading

By Shooting Down Balloon, the Expensive, Useless F-22 Fighter Finally Won a Dogfight

When it officially entered military service in 2005, the U.S. Air Force hailed the F-22 Raptor as an “exponential leap in warfighting capabilities.”

American taxpayers ultimately paid $67 billion to buy 187 of the planes, which had been in development since 1986 “to project air dominance, rapidly and at great distances” with technical capabilities that “cannot be matched by any known or projected fighter aircraft.”

On Saturday, the F-22 scored its first-ever victory against an airborne adversary when it shot down…a balloon.

There may not be a better metaphor for the costly grandiosity of the American military than the use of a multi-million-dollar fighter jet to dispatch an unarmed, unmaneuverable opponent. But the fact that the F-22 had never won a dogfight before its decisive victory over what may or may not have been a Chinese spy balloon is a nice illustration of why the United States has the world’s most expensive military by a massive margin.

In short, it’s because the Pentagon buys lots of expensive toys that have no use.

Keep reading

Chinese Police Sold Organs From Executed Prisoners, Witness Says

It’s not uncommon to see someone breaking down in tears in hospitals. So when Guo Zhigong, who was being treated for aplastic anemia, tried to help a fellow patient who was crying, he didn’t expect to hear a story about China’s opaque organ transplant business.

The patient, in his 40s, was worried about a kidney transplant scheduled the next day in eastern China’s Qingdao city. The promised organ was from a prisoner due to be executed hours before the life-saving surgery. They had already undergone blood matches.

But what followed was another eye-opener: the family of the executed appeared to have no knowledge that a part of their loved one’s body had been sold by the police.

The patient’s wife was told to give cash gifts to the police, Gao recalled what the woman told him. The police, according to the woman’s recount, told the father of the executed prisoner that he didn’t have all the necessary documentation to recover the body. This was an excuse the police gave so that they could keep the body for their grisly business.

“Once they got the body, the organs were sold to hospitals,” Guo, who now lives in the UK, told The Epoch Times. “This is the source of the kidney.”

That incident occurred in the early 1990s, when there was no voluntary organ donation system in China. Most kidneys, livers, corneas, and other organs for transplantation were taken from executed prisoners, the regime admitted in 2005. Prior to that, the authorities denied that it stripped organs from executed inmates, a practice that has long been criticized by human rights groups given that prisoners lack the ability to provide free consent.

But abuses in China’s transplant industry do not end there. Over the past decade-and-a-half, detailed accounts from informants and extensive research papers have shown that organs have been removed even before prisoners died.

Keep reading

Amid Spy Balloon Controversy, Biden Admin Approves $2.1 Billion Aid Package to Defend Ukrainian Skies

As national attention was captured by a Chinese surveillance balloon flying over the United States, the Biden administration has approved another $2.1 billion military aid package to strengthen Ukraine’s air defense arsenal.

The package includes $425 million in arms and equipment drawn from existing U.S. stockpiles, as well as $1.75 billion in Ukraine Assistance Security Initiative (UASI) funds, which Ukraine can use to purchase new weapons—particularly those related to air defense—from manufactures contracted with the U.S. Department of Defense.

In Friday’s announcement, the Pentagon said the package includes “critical air defense capabilities to help Ukraine defend its people.”

Keep reading

US military shoots down Chinese spy balloon over Atlantic Ocean

The U.S. military has shot down the Chinese spy balloon over the Atlantic Ocean.

While the balloon was off the coast of South Carolina, the balloon was shot down by U.S. military fighter jets on Saturday afternoon, according to Fox News sources. 

A senior defense official said during a Thursday afternoon briefing that the U.S. government is “confident” the surveillance balloon is from the People’s Republic of China. 

When asked about the balloon on Saturday by a reporter, Biden said “we’re going to take care of it.” 

Keep reading

Suspected Chinese Spy Balloon Spotted Over North Carolina; US Might Shoot It Down Over Atlantic

A suspected Chinese surveillance balloon appears to be heading toward North Carolina, according to ABC News, citing a senior US official familiar with the situation. That official said the US would probably shoot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean and retrieve it. 

Within the last hour, numerous Twitter users have uploaded footage of what appears to be the Chinese balloon floating above North Carolina. 

On Friday, we cited Capital Weather Gang, who accurately predicted the balloon’s trajectory while it was floating above the Midwest. Now updated predictions for Saturday morning show the balloon might be headed toward the Atlantic. 

Keep reading