Page 880 - Capabilities News Today

It was a successful operation according to the defense department. and now all of this shifts to a recovery operation as we heard diane laying out. this is going to move now once they recover all of this equipment, to an fbi lab in quantico where they are doing analysis on the equipment that is in this balloon. but u.s. officials are saying this is a success for all intents and purposes because now we get to peek inside of chinese capabilities. >> thank you so much. also a cnn white house reco...

You for being with us, i want to pick up where janice left off. this was probably not an accident, you cant really generally get a balloon to hover over montana, above 60,000 feet, where you are actually legally able to be there in the accident. it is not a civilian weather balloon probably, but in the end, there is something here that china does not want to risk and that is the ire of america. so what is your evaluation of where we stand right now? >> well, ali, i think as was mentioned, there ...

Frequency spectra like uhf, vhf, cellphone communications. those are the kind of things that would be important from a military perspective, and they could also be sampling the environment, the signals environment and the terrain. so there are a lot of different things that could be a part of their menu, if you will, of things that they were interested in. and a balloon was perhaps one way in which they could find out what theyre missing, find out what other things they need to augment in terms ...

People and to make clear to china that, again, this is an unacceptable as well as irresponsible action. maria: then the surveillance balloon said to be large enough to hold three massive buses. what was it carrying? did it drop and scatter devices for unlimited data surveillance throughout america? former director of national intelligence john ratcliffe on the potential capabilities of in the so-called stratospheric balloon. was the damage already done? what data did the balloon collect, and wer...

Decline. that is what they believe to be the case, that is what theyre working on. we have to determine whether were going to allow the world to head in that direction or not. theres all sorts of things we need to do, how were postured militarily in the indo-pacific, all the way to what kind of companies do we allow to operate in the united states and spy on us because weve invited them in. theyre in our infrastructure, telecommunications infrastructure because theyre buying land, buying farmlan...

Was shot down in about 47 feet of water. thats actually great news for us, in that we should be able to recover it rather quickly. im not talking about 48 hours, but in a matter of a week or so. and i do think because it went down over water versus land, it served as a bit of a cushion for our landing, and that really could be an intelligence boon for us. because now we have a payload out of this, and we can maybe see perhaps what chinas intelligence capabilities were against us. and that actual...

Have been bhalloons like these that have passed across the united states in the past. there was one last year and three during the trump presidency. nobody thought to do anything about it. so why this time? well perhaps because it could be seen by cameras so it really is the optics of it. there is -- the chinese have about 600 military satellites hovering around the world. they have photographs every square inch of the united states. there are other means by which you could get this stuff. of co...

Sensitive information and transmit it back to the chinese government? >> the u.s. has stated that steps were taken to prevent any problems in terms of intelligence collection. remember, we are talking about a country that has a space program. so i dont know all the ins and outs of what this balloon was doing or what its capabilities were. i do know when the president gave the order to have this handled, the military gauged the different risks and the different benefits of different approaches. m...

I dont think it will win the many points out of their country. >> there are so many questions but the use of this balloon, tracey. some experts suggest the china satellites in the sky than collect intelligence far better than any type of balloon. what is your take on this? what a use is a balloon like this? and is it your thought or expertise on if china was able to remotely control it until the very end? >> so, given my background, i do not believe that this balloon was taking pictures. i think...

Try and see what type of technical equipment had in terms of technical collection capabilities, as far as signals intelligence, imagery. and so i think we are learning a lot more, but it is clear that the chinese rhetoric, in terms of its push back against the shoot back, was very typical unexpected. and now the big question is how we are going to deal with the situation going forward, because i dont think that the united states certainly doesnt want to have the situation escalate, there are a l...