A US official says a suspected Chinese spy balloon that the US shot down this week was able to gather communications signals.
A senior State Department official revealed in a background briefing that it had numerous antennas capable of “intelligence collection operations.”
Congressmen from the US passed a non-binding resolution Thursday criticising China for the balloon.
China has refuted claims that the balloon was used for espionage.
It has claimed that the balloon was a weather instrument that got lost.
The US, however, believes the balloon is part of a wider fleet of surveillance balloons that has spanned five continents.
House of Representatives lawmakers called the balloon it a “brazen violation of United States sovereignty” as the body voted 419 to 0 on Thursday morning to condemn its use.
Its appearance in US airspace has provoked a diplomatic crisis and led US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to cancel a trip to China – the first such high level US-China meeting there in years. The US military used a fighter jet to shoot the balloon down over the Atlantic Ocean over the weekend.
China has said the decision to shoot down the balloon was “irresponsible” and did not “create a proper atmosphere for dialogue” between the two countries.
High resolution images revealed the balloon – which was about 200 ft (60 metres) tall – had large solar panels capable of operating “multiple active intelligence collection sensors” as well as antennas that were able to collect and geo-locate communications, the senior State Department official said on Thursday.
The US is considering taking action against groups linked to the Chinese government that were involved in the balloon’s flight, the State Department official said.
The latest US government information suggests that the craft indeed was some type of surveillance balloon, experts told the BBC.
“The types of antennas are meant for surveillance technology and this is not something you would expect for any type of scientific mission,” said Gregory Falco, an assistant professor at Johns Hopkins University’s Department of Civil and Systems Engineering.
It’s still not possible to glean exactly what type of data China might have been trying to gather on the balloon mission, experts said, but it may have intercepted radio, cell phone and other communications from the military bases it flew over, said Matt Kroenig, the senior director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council.
The balloon’s large solar panels – as well as the fact that it was able to hover over US airspace for long periods of time – is concerning, Dr Falco said.
“They have a high-powered system that can do a lot of data relay,” said Dr Falco. “I don’t know exactly what they were collecting, but all the mechanics are there for getting a lot of data back to their satellites.”
The US may have taken countermeasures to prevent China from gathering data, including jamming equipment, Dr Kroenig said.
But it could have been “too little too late”, Dr Falco said, adding that there was likely a gap in time before the US was aware of the craft and could take action.
https://emp.bbc.com/emp/SMPj/2.47.2/iframe.htmlMedia caption,
Watch: BBC security correspondent Gordon Corera explains the US/China row
US Congress hold balloon hearings
US intelligence, military and foreign policy officials began briefing members of Congress on Thursday about the balloon.
The hearings come amid mounting criticism of the Biden administration’s handling of the incident from his political opponents.
On Wednesday, an open letter from Republican Senators Marco Rubio and Roger Wicker said they lack “a clear understanding” of the government’s response to the balloon.
Speaking to senators, US Army Lieutenant General Douglas Sims said that “the risk of Chinese intelligence collection was low to moderate” as the balloon flew over the US.
The potential of harming civilians on the ground if it was shot down over land, conversely, was “moderate to significant”.
Officials also defended the timing of the balloon’s destruction, saying that doing so over rough terrain in Alaska or the cold waters of the Northern Pacific would have made recovery efforts difficult and dangerous.
At a Wednesday news conference, Defence Department spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder confirmed that the US believed similar balloons had operated over North and South America, South East Asia, East Asia and Europe.