Associated Press\u00a0|\u00a0By Stephen Groves<\/p>\n\n\n\n
WASHINGTON \u2014 As the only current U.S. senator to have visited space, Mark Kelly knows something about unexplained objects in the skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Back in his aviator days, Kelly saw Mylar party balloons fly by his cockpit. And once when he was piloting a NASA aircraft, he spotted an object at roughly 45,000 feet (13,700 meters) \u2014 much higher than commercial airplanes fly \u2014 that he couldn\u2019t identify by sight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He\u2019s not sure he would want to see American missiles flying at those objects, either.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we want to get into the business of launching AIM-9Xs \u2014 at $400,000 a pop \u2014 at weather balloons,\u201d Kelly told The Associated Press, referring to the heat-seeking, air-to-air missiles used in recent weeks to shoot down a series of aerial objects, including a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Biden administration’s unprecedented peacetime downing of\u00a0the Chinese balloon<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0three other objects<\/a>\u00a0has raised new and troubling questions about the security of American airspace, alarming lawmakers who fear the episode has exposed a vulnerability that could be exploited by other foreign adversaries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While the House and the Senate both voted unanimously to condemn China\u2019s ruling political party for the incursion and largely supported the Biden administration\u2019s decision to shoot down the balloon, they have questions about what\u2019s next.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat who has been tasked with heading up an investigation into how the suspected Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to pass over crucial U.S. missile sites, said that he would ensure the Defense Department has funds for a protocol to assess the threat of unidentified flying objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe’re going to get to the bottom of what happened and make sure we have a plan going forward to detect and then find out what potential problems this balloon may cause and then a way to bring it down that doesn\u2019t cost us a $400,000 missile,\u201d Tester, who chairs the Defense subcommittee on appropriations, told Fox News Channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Concerns over China, which has criticized the U.S. for \u201can obvious overreaction,” and worries about interference with civilian aircraft are shared by members of both political parties, creating the potential in Congress to mount a robust bipartisan response. But lawmakers are also mindful of adding yet more military costs \u2014 the U.S. already spends more than $800 billion yearly on defense programs \u2014 and are wary of expensive shooting sprees for every random object that appears in America’s skies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Kelly, an Arizona Democrat, is working on legislation that would require weather balloons to carry transponders that could communicate with air traffic control systems to separate research balloons from mysterious objects where \u201cwe don\u2019t know what that is. We don\u2019t know where it came from.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt would really help the Defense Department to be able to sort out what is civilian science payload, what\u2019s a weather balloon, what\u2019s a NASA balloon, what\u2019s a private company in the United States doing, what might be even a U.S. military,\u201d said Kelly, who logged 54 days in space as an astronaut before jumping into politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Other lawmakers have launched a flurry of proposals aimed at the skies including a comprehensive examination of encounters with unidentified aerial objects as well as an investigation into how the military is tracking objects floating over the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n President Joe Biden has said the military is developing \u201csharper rules\u201d<\/a> to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects. He has justified the downings by saying the objects presented a remote risk to civilian planes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the four missile attacks were the first known peacetime shootdowns of unauthorized objects in U.S. airspace. Officials now say the three later objects shot down likely had a \u201cbenign purpose” and were detected after the U.S. military set its radar systems to detect slow-moving balloons.<\/p>\n\n\n\n China’s alleged practice of using balloons for surveillance exploits a potential oversight in air traffic control systems, Kelly said. The systems aren\u2019t designed to track the thousands of objects that move in on high-altitude winds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The National Weather Service alone launches roughly 60,000 balloons every year to monitor for extreme weather. Universities, government organizations and even ham radio hobbyists send up thousands of others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThis is about whether an adversary has developed a capability that they know we\u2019re not looking for because our systems are set up to see missiles and airplanes. They\u2019re not set up to see smaller objects at lower altitudes,\u201d said Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, who is pushing for the recent encounters to be included in a wider government study of \u201cunidentified aerial phenomena\u201d<\/a> \u2014 better known as UFOs, short for unidentified flying objects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rubio, along with Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, also jumped on the opportunity to renew a proposal to create the Space National Guard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cChina has fused its commercial, military and technological applications in ways no other nation ever has,\u201d Rubio told reporters. \u201cSo it\u2019s a multifaceted challenge and one that will require a comprehensive, long-term and committed response.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the bills face uncertain paths to becoming law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As senators were clued in to the origins of the objects shot down this month, some appeared ready to move on. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, quipped about aliens and said \u201cthere\u2019s just a bunch of junk up there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Associated Press\u00a0|\u00a0By Stephen Groves WASHINGTON \u2014 As the only current U.S. senator to have visited space, Mark Kelly knows something about unexplained objects in the skies. Back in his aviator days, Kelly saw Mylar party balloons fly by his cockpit. And once when he was piloting a NASA aircraft, he spotted an object at roughly … Read More “Congress Floats Ways to Secure Skies After Chinese Balloon”<\/span> »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":207,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-china","category-military"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t