Rejecting China’s Danse Macabre

During the Cold War, the United States was serious about the defense of its airspace. The principal threat was penetration from Soviet bombers. To defend U.S. and Canadian airspace, the United States created a network of radar stations in the far north, called the Distant Early Warning Line. Naval vessels and aircraft off U.S. coasts also provided radar warning of an attack. Later, other more powerful radars and satellites took over the weight of the responsibility to detect an attack. To down an aircraft once it had been detected, the U.S. Air Force’s Air Defense Command had many squadrons of interceptors augmented by Canadian forces, and the U.S. Army built a ring of Nike surface-to-air missile sites around the country to shoot down aircraft.

As the Soviet bomber threat was never the equal of its land-based ICBMs or submarine launched ballistic or cruise missiles, U.S. air defenses atrophied. The end of the Cold War only accelerated the decline. After 9/11, there was a renewed emphasis on the threat from aircraft, drones, and cruise missiles, but the balloon incursions belied the willingness of the Biden Administration to down them. Weaknesses also seem to be present in the ability of the U.S. Northern Command to identify them. One hopes that the ability of Northern Command to detect them has improved, as evidenced by the number it seems to have detected in the wake of the most notorious one, which waltzed through U.S. and Canadian airspace before it was ultimately downed off the coast of South Carolina.

China’s intent is clear. In the wake of the U.S. inability to detect and down them, the balloons serve three objectives.

First, and most obviously, they want to collect intelligence against U.S. and Canadian targets.

Second, they serve as a salvo in political warfare to convey to the rest of the world that the United States is unable to detect them and so is a declining military power. Although this is far from the truth, the United States does itself no favors when it either fails to detect or fails to down balloons once identified. This message is for a global audience. For friends the message is that the United States is in decline and its extended deterrent, upon which key allies like Australia and Japan depend, is weakened. China hopes U.S. allies conclude we will not be able to protect them. Our enemies, on the other hand, are emboldened as we beclown ourselves watching for days as an enemy balloon drifts over our sovereign territory…