US tracking ANOTHER mysterious balloon: Military has been following unidentified object that flew over Hawaii and is heading towards Mexico for a week
By Wills Robinson For Dailymail.com
20:23 01 May 2023, updated 23:38 01 May 2023
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Pentagon investigating who objects belongs to and where it came from
It flew over Hawaii and is now said to be heading towards Mexico
Comes three months after Chinese spy balloon was shot down off East Coast
The Pentagon have said it is unlikely to take military action against the object
The U.S. military is tracking another mysterious balloon that’s flown over American soil, three months after shooting down the Chinese surveillance airship.
The Pentagon has been following the unidentified object that has flown over Hawaii and is heading towards Mexico for a week.
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It’s not clear who it or what it belongs, but it hasn’t flown over any sensitive military sites.
U.S. officials do not believe it belongs to China, and the Pentagon said that it won’t be taking military action.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre had no additional information on the unidentified balloon when pressed during the briefing on Monday.
At the end of January, the Pentagon detected a Chinese spy balloon that flew over mainland U.S.
The Biden administration waited until it was off the coast of South Carolina to shoot it down on February 4.
The Chinese spy balloon is shot down off the coast of South Carolina in February. The new mysterious object has been under suspicion for a week
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A spokesman for the Department of Defense told DailyMail.com that the unmanned balloon was detected entering U.S. airspace off the coast of Hawaii on April 28 floating at approximately 36,000 feet.
‘Ownership of the balloon is unknown, but there is no indication that it was maneuvering or being controlled by a foreign or adversarial actor.
‘The balloon did not transit directly over defense critical infrastructure or other U.S. Government sensitive sites, nor did it pose a military or physical threat to people on the ground.
‘Although it was flying at an altitude used by civil aviation, it posed no threat to civil aviation over Hawaii.
‘Based on these observations, the Secretary of Defense concurred with the recommendation of his military commanders that no action need be taken against the balloon. The balloon is now out of Hawaii’s airspace and territorial waters. We will continue to track the balloon with the FAA.’
NBC News first reported the latest unknown flying object.
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The first balloon entered US airspace on 28 January and was shot down on 4 February after passing over US nuclear missile sites, including the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana.
The intel collected was mostly from electronic signals, rather than images, experts said.
China previously claimed that the balloon was a civilian weather balloon that strayed off course. The foreign ministry condemned its shooting down as an ‘overreaction’.
On Monday, satellite pictures were revealed showing a 100ft-long blimp developed by the Chinese military at a secret desert military base.
The images of a base in northwestern China were taken three months before a Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the US coast and could indicate a significant advancement in China’s airship programme, aerospace experts said.
The 100ft-long blimp sitting in the middle of a nearly 0.6mile-long runway could be a ‘more versatile and maneuverable craft than previously seen or known’, CNN reports.
The images, taken by US satellite imaging company BlackSky, were presented to several aerospace experts, who confirmed they show a blimp, a runway, a pivot point to launch airships and a 900ft-long hanger hangar.
Jamey Jacobs, executive director of the Oklahoma Aerospace Institute, said that a blimp like this may be used as a ‘submarine of the skies’, as its propulsion and navigation capabilities could see it hovering over an area for quite some time.
The images of a base in northwestern China were taken three months before a Chinese spy balloon was shot down off the US coast and could indicate a significant advancement in China’s airship programme, aerospace experts said
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A senior Defense Department official said since the blimp was visible via satellite imagery, the Pentagon would be aware and tracking the object, but declined to comment what threat the blimp may pose as part of China’s arsenal.
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The satellite images confirm that China is using all types of airships: blimps, aerostats and free-floating balloons, like the one shot down over the coast of South Carolina on February 4.
Eli Hayes, who has studied the Chinese airship programme for years, said the blimp’s appaearance on a secret military base marks a transition in Chinese blimp technology and research from being civilian to use in the military.
William Kim, a surveillance balloon specialist at The Marathon Initiative, a non-profit military and diplomativ research organisation, said if he had to guess, he would say the blimp was part of ‘some sort of testing’.
Other satellite imagery and analysis suggest that there may be bigger goals for the secret airship site and the Chinese airship programme.
Recently issues patents indicate that a unit has been created to oversee the technology as well as that the new unit holds several patents relating to airship technology and storage.
When the massive hanger was built in 2013, there was little activity around it for years until these recent images show the new blimp near the hangar.
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