By Patrick Smith - NBC News
China's spy balloon that flew over North America earlier this year exposed major gaps in U.S. capabilities to detect aerial threats, and prompted the country to begin developing new surveillance technologies, a senior U.S. official said in an exclusive interview with NBC News, Telemundo's sister network.
Gen. Glen VanHerck, head of U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), told Nightly News with Lester Holt that U.S. surveillance capabilities have been bolstered with new technologies since the object was spotted in late January off the coast of Alaska.
"At that time we weren't looking for a high-altitude, 65,000-foot, very slow balloon. Our radars were able to see it, but we were filtering and leaving that data out," he said recently in a wide-ranging interview from NORAD headquarters in Colorado Springs, which monitors the skies of the United States and Canada and responds to possible threats.
[A subsidiary of a U.S. company sold electronics to a Chinese defense company linked to spy balloons]
The Biden administration was criticized for its handling of the Chinese spy balloon, first reported by NBC News, and there were those who wondered why it was allowed to fly over sensitive military facilities in the continental United States, where it could collect valuable information about American defenses.
The revelation that the Chinese were capable of flying those objects in U.S. airspace without the military detecting them also raised questions about a failure in the intelligence services, prompting calls for greater investment in air defense systems and radar in the country.
FBI special agents process material recovered from the balloon on Feb. 9, 2023.FBI via AP
China initially apologized for the incident, but claimed it was a civilian weather balloon that had deviated from its path.
VanHerck, like other U.S. officials, said they had no doubt the balloon had been used for spying. "We know for sure that it was a spy vehicle," he said.
VanHerck admitted that the incident, which captivated the country and brought U.S.-China relations to high levels of tension, had been a learning experience.
[A Chinese spy balloon collected information from sensitive U.S. military locations]
"We've learned a lot and I've also learned that I have to be able to see beyond, farther into the Pacific, farther into the Arctic and farther into the Atlantic," he said. "And that will be given to us by 'over-the-horizon' radars," he added, referring to systems that detect objects at very long distances.
VanHerck explained that he first learned of the balloon on Jan. 27 and that his forces intercepted it the next day with F-22 and F-16 fighters and determined it was not a hostile threat.
On February 2, NBC News reported that the object was flying over the country. Two days later, he was shot down off the coast of South Carolina on orders from President Joe Biden. The process for identifying and intercepting the balloon worked "exactly as it was supposed to," VanHerck explained.
Despite its efforts, the U.S. failed to prevent the Chinese spy balloon from collecting military information.
April 3, 202300:27
The object managed to obtain information from several sensitive U.S. military points, despite government efforts to prevent it, two senior U.S. officials and a former senior official told NBC News in April.
VanHerck added that while he knew China had a high-altitude balloon program before the incident, he was unaware that several of them flew over the country.
In addition to being the head of NORAD, VanHerck is also responsible for the country's national and maritime defense, including ballistic missile defense, and providing support to civilian authorities in response to natural disasters, such as hurricanes and wildfires.
[Blinken advocates "closing the chapter" of the spy balloon after his meeting with Xi to mend the relationship between the US and China]
Should a ballistic missile be launched at the United States, VanHerck should alert within minutes.
The challenge of the job is not only the vast geography – from the North Pole to Central America – but how the nature of external threats continually evolves into scenarios that did not exist when NORAD was founded in 1958, during the Cold War.
"Hypersonic missiles, for example, or extremely low-speed radar missiles, cross-section cruise missiles, or advanced submarines that are very quiet... Those are the daunting tasks I have," he said.
"Frankly, what I'm most concerned about is the cyber domain and our ability to understand the threats in that domain that affect our power projection," VanHerck said.
Mexico continues to use this spyware to surveil politicians and professionals
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NBC News also visited the nearby Cheyenne Mountain complex, which has been operating since 1966 and is designed to ensure "continuity" of operations by military and civilian authorities in the event of war.
The complex features a series of three-foot-wide blast doors, capable of withstanding a nuclear explosion. The last time the complex was operationally closed occurred during the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Although the facility was built during the Cold War, VanHerck said the current global climate is the most challenging and dynamic he has seen in 36 years of service.
"They are two countries with nuclear weapons competing with each other," he said, describing China and Russia as current enemies of the United States, which he noted are joined by many others: "There are violent extremists out there and an unstable world" and "international norms that have served well since the end of World War II are being challenged every day."