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They’re everywhere, they’re everywhere!
And by “they,” I mean social media is awash with obsession over the numerous (“unidentified”) “flying objects” that have been floating over the United States and Canada and their respective territorial waters for more than a week. As is usually the case with obsession, this thing is rife with more than enough baseless conjectures and conspiracy theories, coupled with scant news from the Biden White House.
Let’s put it this way: I gotta admit I never thought I’d see seemingly otherwise intelligent people seriously suggesting we’re being invaded by space aliens.
But I digress. Let’s move on to a far more important issue.
Floating ChiCom surveillance balloons aside— including smaller metallic balloons tethered with payloads (formerly “UFOs,” as it were) — there’s a more critical issue at play, here, as House Intelligence Chairman Mike Turner (R-Ohio) told CNN’s “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper on Sunday: the recent incursions of foreign objects into U.S. airspace reveal critical holes in America’s homeland defense infrastructure.
What’s become clear in the public discussion is that we don’t really have adequate radar systems. We certainly don’t have an integrated missile defense system.
We’re going to have to begin to look at United States airspace ( a jab at Biden’s recent “gift” to protect Ukraine’s airspace) as one that we need to defend and that we need to have appropriate sensors to do so.
Could this be the primary reason the first downed ChiCom balloon carried equipment carried high-tech equipment capable of collecting communications signals and other sensitive information?
Information, no doubt, that was sent back to China on a real-time basis, further exposing the inexplicable lack of reaction by woefully incompetent Joe Biden for at least a week before he finally succumbed to public pressure and shot down the first balloon only after it had traversed the entire U.S. mainland and headed out over the Atlantic Ocean.
Turner also took a well-deserved shot directly at Biden, telling Tapper he believed Joe has turned “trigger-happy” for the reasons I described, above:
I would prefer them to be trigger-happy than to be permissive. But we’re going to have to see whether or not this is just the administration trying to change headlines.
But what I think this shows, which is probably more important to our policy discussion here, is that we really have to declare that we’re going to defend our airspace.
Amen. And who among us (conservatives) believes Biden would’ve shot down the first balloon if the criticism and pressure hadn’t been bipartisan? Zero.
Turner then emphasized that the recent incidents have exposed “problems and gaps that we have” that need to be fixed “as soon as possible because we certainly now ascertain there is a threat.”
“I would prefer [the Biden administration] to be trigger happy than to be permissive.”
Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) speaks to @jaketapper about US fighter jets shooting down a third flying object in just over a week. @CNNSotu #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/sG3F78DVyZ
— CNN (@CNN) February 12, 2023
The Bottom Line
While the current hysteria continues, or perhaps after it dies a natural death, it’s incumbent on House Democrats to push the issue of funding closing the gaps in the U.S. air defense infrastructure system, ASAP, to the max — and dare Senate Democrats and Joe Biden to oppose it.
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