There is a tendency, well-documented by historians and military experts, of defending and preparing for the next enemy of the United States with the tools and techniques that worked well in the country’s most recent war.
NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (I know, the acronym doesn’t match … take it up with the Pentagon), was founded by the U.S. and Canada in 1958, relatively early in the Cold War, to both monitor U.S. airspace and particularly to identify fast-moving projectiles or aircraft heading toward the U.S. land mass (including Alaska and Hawaii).
Top mission priorities involved identifying, intercepting and deflecting in early-outer- atmosphere any intercontinental ballistic missile, and meeting unidentified or hostile enemy aircraft flying in formation (like those at Pearl Harbor) before they made U.S. landfall.
NORAD has served us well, but its radar, sonar and multiple early-detection technologies were never intended to detect large, slow-moving craft, particularly at lower altitudes. Balloons, blimps and Zeppelins were long ago reduced in terms of threat analysis, though the Germans continued use of a variety of airships for reconnaissance and submarine surveillance throughout World War II. You may remember ourown U-2 spy planes, first commissioned in 1957 by the U.S. Air Force for high-altitude reconnaissance. Lockheed built 104 U-2s, of which more than 30 remain in service.The most famous U-2 incident came on May 1, 1960, when one of these single-engine jets was shot down over Russia. The USSR’s subsequent imprisonment of pilotFrancis Gary Powers created an international incident. Powers eventually was released in 1962, in exchange for a Russian spy in U.S.custody, and returned stateside, where he eventually became a helicopter pilot for a Los Angeles news station. He was killed in 1977 while flying that craft.
Still later, in 1990 during the first Persian Gulf War, a coalition of nations challenged Iraq after its invasion of neighboring sovereign nation Kuwait.The first night’s bombing of Baghdad by U.S.and allied forces was well documented and covered live by CNN and other news outlets.Departing Baghdaddays later to maintain their safety, CNN anchorBernard Shaw and then-war correspondent John Holliman, left Baghdad in the dark of night for a long dessert drive on the only road available, connecting Baghdadto Damascus, Syria. When the caravan arrived safely in Syria, they received a secure phone call from CNN PresidentTom Johnson,inquiring about their condition and safety, and then asking for a fax number.
The caravan had made at least one pit stop along the 90-plus miles to Damascus. Johnson faxed a U.S. military satellite photo of the top of Holliman’s bald head, clearly visible along with the motorcade in the complete dark of a Syrian desert night, while doing his business facing a small roadside shrub in the pitch black of night.
Now to the surveillance business of the day. True, a Chinese-launched balloon, for whatever purpose, carrying a payload we now understand to be as large as three buses, should NOT have been flying through U.S. airspace without clearance.But other than surveillance and monitoring multiple telecom and broadcast frequencies or potentially looking into buildings at night with infrared technology, that now-burst balloon and three other lesser unidentified flying objects taken down recently don’t terribly concern me.
Our next war will begin more like our 1990 attacks on Iraq.Take out the enemy’s telecommunications infrastructure and knock out power and water supplies as the Russians continue to focus their current efforts in Ukraine.And though the potential of nuclear warfare still looms large as a potential world ender, most of our enemies still seem to prefer global domination over extinction of our species.