China Wanted to Test NORAD’s Response Capability With Its Spy Balloon: Professor

The Chinese spy balloon drifts to the ocean after being shot down off the coast in Surfside Beach, S.C., on Feb. 4, 2023. (Randall Hill/Reuters)

The Chinese spy balloon that was found trespassing North American airspace last month was meant to test the response capability of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), says Christian Leuprecht, a political science professor at the Royal Military College of Canada.

“Beijing’s espionage and interference are now the single greatest threat to Canada’s democratic way of life,” Leuprecht told the House Canada–China committee on March 20.

“The PRC is intent on gaining control of Canadian critical minerals and is actively running influence campaigns over resource development. Balloons and election interference are merely the latest episode in a long list of hostile hybrid warfare efforts perpetrated by the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] against Canada.”

The Chinese balloon was believed to have been launched from China’s southernmost province of Hainan and was first identified on Jan. 28, over the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, and entered Canadian airspace over the Yukon and the Northwest Territories on Jan. 30. It re-entered U.S. territory the next day and subsequently travelled across the country until it was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4.

Leuprecht said that the Chinese balloon and other flying objects detected subsequently were “effectively a test of the NORAD’s response system to objects in our airspace.” When Liberal MP Robert Oliphant questioned him about the proof, Leuprecht pointed to previous testimonies heard by the House national defence committee.

NORAD Lieutenant-General Alain Pelletier told MPs on the national defence committee on Feb. 17 that he believed the balloon could be China’s attempt to test the capability of the binational aerospace defence alliance.

“This could be one of the options, especially as it relates to the high-altitude surveillance balloon,” he said.

Leuprecht also made reference to a commentary he published in the Globe and Mail, in which he noted that if Beijing is really challenging NORAD, it indicates that the regime is seeking to bring geopolitical competition to the Western Hemisphere, and showing that it could do so without resorting to “overt military means.”

“China may be signalling that two can play at the game of moving into each other’s neighbourhoods,” he wrote. “Yet Beijing may be going a step further: As more balloons are detected and intercepted, it may be demonstrating its ability to violate North American sovereignty, and to do so repeatedly, with relative impunity.”

When asked by Conservative MP Garnett Genuis whether its allies see Canada as a vulnerable segment in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, which contributes to its being left out of the trilateral security pact AUKUS, Leuprecht said he will provide the committee with a U.S.-sourced intelligence assessment that “expresses precisely this concern about Canada as a national security problem to the United States.”

“I believe a public inquiry in Canada peeling back the onion would reveal this to a point where I think even the current government would not have an interest in actually having this out in public,” he said.