Balloons also have the advantage of holding fairly stationary positions over a surveillance target
The first Chinese surveillance balloon that the Pentagon set up flying over sensitive US ballistic bullet spots may be guided by advanced artificial intelligence technology, a US expert said Friday.
A alternate Chinese asset balloon was latterly spotted over Latin America, before it headed eastwards over the central United States.
William Kim, a specialist in surveillance balloons at the Marathon Initiative suppose tank in Washington, told AFP that balloons are a precious means of observation that are delicate to shoot down.
Guided by AI?
Kim said the first Chinese balloon looked like a normal rainfall balloon but with distinct characteristics.
It has a relatively large, visible “ cargo ” – the electronics for guidance and collecting information, powered by large solar panels.
And it appears to have advanced steering technologies that the US service has n’t yet put in the air.
Artificial intelligence has made it possible for a balloon, just by reading the changes in the air around it, to acclimate its altitude to guide it where it wants to go, Kim said.
“ Before you either had to have a tether or you just shoot it up and it just goes wherever the wind takes it, ” he said.
“ What’s happed veritably lately with advances in AI is that you can have a balloon that does n’t need its own stir system. simply by conforming the altitude it can control its direction. ”
That could also involve radio dispatches from its home base, he said.
But “ if the point of it’s to cover( multinational ballistic bullet) silos, which is one of the propositions you would n’t inescapably need to tell it to acclimate its position, ” he added.
What advantages over satellites?
Kim said that as satellites come more vulnerable to being attacked from the Earth and space, balloons have distinct advantages.
originally, they do n’t fluently show up on radars.
“ These are accoutrements that do n’t reflect, they ’re not essence. So indeed though these balloons expand to relatively large, detecting the balloon itself is going to be a problem, ” he said.
And the cargo, if small enough, can be overlooked.
Balloons also have the advantage of holding fairly stationary positions over a surveillance target, compared to constantly ringing satellites used by asset agencies to take photos.
“ These effects can stay above, they can stay over one spot months at a time, compared to the low- Earth- route satellites, ” Kim said.
Could it have entered US airspace by accident?
Kim called it a “ real possibility ” that a Chinese balloon may have been intended to collect data from outside US boundaries or much advanced but conked .
“ These balloons do n’t always work impeccably, ” he said.
The balloons generally operate at mound of,000-,000 bases, and this bone is at around,000 bases, he said.
“ That’s surely a little low If you wanted it to be harder to spot, if you want it to be harder to shoot down, also it would make sense to operate at advanced mound. ”
Why ca n’t the US shoot it down?
Firing down a balloon isn’t as easy as it sounds, said Kim.
“ These balloons use helium It’s not the Hindenburg, you ca n’t just shoot it and also and also it goes up in dears. ”
still, it’s just kind of going to blunder out veritably sluggishly, “ If you do punch holes in it. ”
Kim recalled that in 1998 the Canadian air force transferred up F- 18 fighter spurts to try and shoot down a mischief rainfall balloon.
“ They fired a thousand 20- millimeter cannon rounds into it. And it still took six days before it eventually came down. These aren’t effects that explode or pop when you shoot at them. ”
He said it wasn’t clear if using face- to- air dumdums would work, because their guidance systems are designed to hit presto- moving dumdums and aircraft.
