China’s spying balloons – like the one the US Air Force shot down recently after the Biden administration kept ignoring it – may present a much graver and even more devastating threat to the United States than mere surveillance operations, as they could be used for catastrophic electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks with nuclear weapons, experts reveal.
Chinese Balloon Way More Important than Biden Seemed to Think
After allowing it to float at will through the US and North American airspace from Alaska to South Carolina, on February 4, the administration of Democrat President Joe Biden finally ordered the US Air Force to destroy Communist China’s spy espionage airship.
In the week during which the Chinese military and intelligence enjoyed a front-row seat in their spying right on top of the US mainland, Biden and his aides exhibited that notable weakness projection and lack of leadership he has become so famous for. The same kind that got him to lose America’s 20-year-long war on terror in Afghanistan or to make Russian leader Vladimir Putin think it would be okay to invade Ukraine to revive the rotten Soviet Empire’s corpse.
It seems that Biden only reacted when the media hype surrounding the spy balloon’s voyage became impossible to ignore.
Then, as if to compensate for the spying balloon fiasco, the president ordered the Air Force to destroy three smaller flying objects within a single weekend. Fortunately or not, those turned out to be non-Chinese, private balloons.
What is far worse for the good people of the United States, though, is that the Democrats running the White House and the Cabinet might be failing to grasp the importance of something much bigger.
Means for ‘Secret Nuclear Attack’ on America
The spying balloon program of the Chinese Commies may not be solely about surveillance. Chances are it is about developing the capacity to carry out debilitating nuclear EMP attacks on America.
Apparently, those could quickly incapacitate what is otherwise the greatest military power in the history of the world.
This much is made clear by experts quoted in a report by The Washington Examiner published a day before the US Air Force finally downed the Chinese surveillance airship.
It quotes intelligence officials as stressing that “high-altitude balloons” are deemed a top “delivery platform” for carrying out “secret” nuclear attacks against America’s power grid.
Weapons of that type are known since Japan used them during the Second World War to drop bombs on American and Allied forces.
Yet, the surveillance balloons of today are described as “far more sophisticated.” They are capable of flying at altitudes reaching 200,000. They can avoid getting detected and carry small nuclear bombs.
The exploding of a single nuclear device of that type would cause the shutdown of the electric grid and obliterate electronics in an area with a radius of hundreds of miles.
Even though the threat of electromagnetic pulse attacks using balloon-launched nukes has now become overt, the US government and military were warned about it in 2015, the newspaper notes.
Earlier EMP attack warnings go back decades, such as a 2003 document by the government of Washington state.
No Way to Prevent Them?
One of the leading US experts on EMP attacks, Air Force Maj. David Stuckenberg, wrote in a report for the American Leadership and Policy Foundation, a nonpartisan, nonprofit think-tank, that balloons carrying bombs presented a severe threat to US national security.
Stuckenberg stressed that balloons could be used as a platform for delivering weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or weapons of mass effect (WME). Those carry multiple options America’s enemies could employ to target the US.
He emphasized further that there was no way to prevent a balloon from delivering “to altitude” weapon material weighing several hundred pounds. To top that off, such a device could be prepped and launched in just a few months.
The former US Air Force general, who led the Pentagon’s EMP Task Force, and is now employed in the private sector, commented on the Chinese spying balloon case he had no doubt the entire incident was a “provocative and aggressive act.”
Chinese Did ‘Dry Run’ for Knocking Out America
Stuckenberg went so far as to suggest that the Chinese balloon was meant to “send” America a “strategic message” – it was a “dry run” showing the military of the Chinese Commies were fully capable of reaching the airspace of the United States and performing a high-altitude nuclear strike that would wreak havoc on America’s power, electronics, and communications on the ground.
The national security expert insisted that the US had not faced such a grave threat since the Second World War when Japan’s “Project FuGo” used balloon bombs to target America.
He elaborated that back then, the Japanese would air-float bombs on the trade winds in the Pacific to strike the United States and Canada.
There have been other expert warnings that America’s foremost international enemies – Communist China and Putin’s Russia – but also Iran and North Korea – have developed programs for attacking America’s power grid using electromagnetic pulse weapons.
Such an attack could “cut the cord” for over a year, with the newspaper noting a US Congress report contains the warning a blackout could claim millions of American lives.
Biden Is Supposed to ‘Leave No Stone Unturned’
In his comments, Stuckenberg quoted research by the late Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst who headed the Commission of the US Congress to assess the EMP attack threat to America.
Pry’s research pointed out that an electromagnetic pulse attack using a high-altitude balloon could damage and destroy America’s electronic system “at the speed of light.” The EMP field could have a radius of hundreds of miles.
That is taking into account that America’s Eastern Grid alone produces 75% of the nation’s electricity and supplies most of the country’s population.
Pry stressed that any nuclear weapon detonated high in the altitude “anywhere” above the Eastern Grid would lead to its entire collapse. Furthermore, the affected zone would be much bigger than the EMP field since the blast would cause “cascading failures.”
In his report, Stuckenberg warned, in turn, that any failure to “anticipate all” possible modes of delivery in an EMP attack could have “immediate and widespread” consequences across the United States.
The now retired Air Force general insisted that the US government and military, tasked with defending the “nation’s future,” ought to “leave no stone unturned” in their question to prevent America’s foreign enemies from employing EMP weapons against it.
Especially since those are low-tech and low-cost weapons with “high consequences.”
Given how the Biden administration mishandled the Chinese spying balloon, it remains highly doubtful whether it has the necessary desire and rigor to defend America from a nuclear balloon attack from China or another enemy of the Free World.