U.S. Military: We Failed To ‘Detect’ Chinese Spy Balloons Under Trump, Are Briefing Trump Officials

On Monday, the U.S. military admitted that it did not detect Chinese spy balloons entering U.S. airspace during Trump’s administration.

This news comes after an F-22 Raptor was used by the U.S. military to destroy a Chinese spy plane over the Atlantic Ocean. It used a single A9X sidewinder missile fired from an altitude of 58,000 feet. After President Joe Biden had allowed the spy balloon to fly thousands of miles above the United States, the decision was made to shoot it down.

After the balloon was brought down, reports emerged that similar incursions had occurred under the Trump administration. However, these incidents were not detected. Fox News reported Late last year, a Chinese spy ball crashed in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

VanHerck, Commander North American Aerospace Defense Command – NORAD and United States Northern Command – told reporters: “Every day as a NORAD commander, it’s my responsibility to detect threats to North America.”

“I will tell you that we did not detect those threats,” VanHerck. “And that’s a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out, but I don’t want to go into further detail.”

Biden’s administration reached out to Trump administration officials and gave them briefings about how they discovered that spy balloons were operating in U.S. Airspace without being detected. The Biden administration wants to inform former Trump officials about similar Chinese operations in East Asia, South Asia, and Europe.

Bloomberg News reported Some Trump-era officials learned that the balloons were part of Chinese surveillance, but they would only discover it weeks later because the balloons had jamming devices. The report Trump was never able to fire them down.

According to the report, the incidents under Trump and the earlier incident in Biden’s administration were much smaller than the incidents last week because the balloons had been flying over U.S. Airspace for shorter periods of times.

Politico reported U.S. officials found similar intrusions by smaller Chinese spy ballades in recent years. This included a radar-jamming device just off the coast Virginia.