Japan has confirmed Chinese spy balloons have flown over their airspace and are willing to shoot them down in the future.
Japan has confirmed balloons have flown over its airspace and has plans to shoot down any more that would float overhead in the future.
According to the BBC, the Japanese government has provided evidence of China's alleged spy balloon program, including flights to its airspace and into Taiwan's.
China, on the other hand, has not directly addressed the evidence presented by the British public broadcaster.
The information was released when US-China relations were brought to their lowest point after a high-altitude balloon drifted over US airspace last February. It was shot down over the US Atlantic coast a few days later.
China earlier claimed the balloon was a civilian weather airship used for scientific research, and the appearance of such in US airspace was an unintended and isolated event.
But former CIA East Asia analyst John Culver told the BBC the newest information on spy balloons over Japanese airspace proved that the spy balloon incident "had been not just a one-off, but a continuing effort dating back at least five years." He added the Chinese balloons were "specially designed" for long-range missions, with some of them alleging to have "circumnavigated the globe."
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The new open-source intel was presented with the help of Synthetaic, an AI company that sifted through huge amounts of data captured by satellites. The company's founder, Corey Jaskolski, found evidence of one balloon crossing northern Japan as early as September 2021. It was the first time the images were published.
The BBC also gathered similar reports of Chinese balloons detected over Taipei by Taiwan's weather service in late September 2021.
Jaskolski believed the evidence pointed to this balloon being launched from deep inside China, but the BBC could not confirm the speculation independently.
He also cross-referenced the photos taken in Taiwan with their satellite imagery, saying they found the balloon off the coast of Taiwan "[w]ithin 90 seconds".
Japan is an ally of the US, with a sizeable force deployed there than in any other foreign country in the region.
Japanese defense ministry spokesperson Yuko Murakami said the government was "taking all precautions to monitor the situation on a daily basis" and would even be willing to shoot down balloons to protect the country's public interest.
The US State Department believed the Chinese balloons were equipped to gather signals intelligence (SIGINT) after discovering multiple antennae on the downed balloon shot in February. The agency added the balloon was "likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications."
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