What Russia and China Have Learned From Testing U.S. Defenses
By Irina Tsukerman
February 13, 2023
While the Chinese spy balloon fell into the Atlantic, concerns remain about how and why it appeared undetected, and what are the takeaways from the handling of this situation. We now know this wasn’t an isolated incidence, but rather part of a chain of events.
The same day, January 28th, the U.S. Air Force spotted the spy balloon making its way inwards from Alaska, where it entered the extreme west of the U.S. near the Aleutian islands, it briefly drifted into Canadian airspace, returning inland on January 31st. Later, South American authorities confirmed another spy balloon hovering and moving overhead. Only a few days prior to the invasion of the Chinese spy balloons into the Western Hemisphere’s airspace, the U.S. Coast Guard caught a Russian spy ship gathering intelligence near Hawaii. While the media focused on one spy ship, the Coast Guard released photos of several. Far from being mysterious ghost ships materializing out of thin air, these ships had been tracked for weeks while changing course and making their way to the U.S., where they then spent more weeks doing what they do best.
These conspicuous and worrisome incidents seem less like random provocations and more like a joint operation by Russia and China to test U.S. defenses. Russian spy ships appeared off the east coast of the U.S. in 2019 and were spotted near an important military base in Scotland in 2020. Past successes—meaning Russian spying without significant repercussions beyond “stern warnings” and minimal public comment—encouraged China to anticipate acquiescence to its own adventurism.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/02/13/what_russia_and_china_have_learned_from_testing_us_defenses_881323.html
