Intelligence officials have revealed a Chinese spy balloon that flew across the US for a week in February used an American internet service provider to communicate.
The balloon had drifted east and entered US airspace over Alaska on 28 January and was tracked as it flew over Malmstrom Air Force base in Montana, where nuclear assets are stored.
On 4 February, the Air Force sent an F-22 fighter jet armed with an AIM-9X Sidewinder missile to take the balloon down over water.
In a new report from NBC, the outlet cited two current and one former U.S. official familiar with the report as its source.
The report stated that the balloon was connected to a US-based company and communicating with China about its navigation.
The spy balloon is seen drifting above the Atlantic Ocean, just off the coast of South Carolina, on Saturday – with a fighter jet and its contrail seen below it
The Chinese spy balloon after it was shot down by an F-22 on Saturday over South Carolina’s coastline
It further stated that the connection ‘allowed the balloon to send burst transmissions or high-bandwidth collections of data over short periods of time’ to its home base in China.
The channel has not released the name of the company.
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, said it was a weather balloon that accidentally drifted into American airspace.
They told NBC in a statement: ‘As we had made it clear before, the airship, used for meteorological research, unintentionally drifted into US because of the westerlies and its limited self-steering capability. The facts are clear.’
The unidentified internet service provider company has denied all such claims.
This comes days after it was revealed that officials in the Biden administration had planned to keep the Chinese spy balloon secret, with a top Air Force commander admitting the balloon exposed gaps in their intelligence gathering.
A source told NBC: ‘Before it was spotted publicly, there was the intention to study it and let it pass over and not ever tell anyone about it.’
Biden’s administration has been adamant that the balloon Beijing previously denied was a government vessel did not collect and transmit data.
The F-22 Raptor is seen taking off from Joint Base Langley-Eustis to take down the balloon
President Joe Biden downplayed the recent Chinese spy balloon that drifted across the US, saying he thinks Chinese leaders may have been unaware of it
A U.S. Air Force U-2 pilot looks down at the Chinese surveillance balloon as it hovers over central America
A senior Biden administration official denied that there was an attempt to keep the balloon secret to the outlet.
They said: ‘To the extent any of this was kept quiet at all, that was in large part to protect intel equities related to finding and tracking. There was no intention to keep this from Congress at any point.’
NBC also revealed that during a phone call on January 27, General Mark Milley and NORAD Chief Gen. Glen VanHerck said the Pentagon planned to send up 5-22 jets to gauge its characteristics.
Soon after that call, jets used targeting pods to determine that the object was indeed a balloon that was roughly the size of three school buses and equipped with a surveillance payload.
President Biden was not briefed on the balloon until February 1, with the public later hearing about it after NBC broke the story.
VanHerck has since said that the balloon exposed gaps in the intelligence agencies and warned the Chinese balloon program remains ongoing.