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RFI interviewed the Lieutenant Colonel of the active reserve in the Colombian army, Luis Alberto Villamarín, an expert in geopolitics, strategy and defense, about the Chinese balloon that has flown over the territory of at least three Latin American countries. Why was the order not also given to shoot it down as it passed through Colombia as the United States did?
After the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon in the North American sky, the Pentagon has revealed that another balloon continues to fly over South American territory.
Experts analyze the purpose of this new Chinese provocation that has further strained bilateral relations between the two great world powers.
“Commercial airplanes fly between 30,000 and 40,000 feet high and these balloons, according to the intelligence established by the United States, were at 55,000 feet high, which suggests that they were looking to go unnoticed and work more specifically on spotlights with sockets. of images and detection of messages,” Luis Alberto Villamarín, Lieutenant Colonel of the active reserve in the Colombian army, told RFI.
Why not do it through the many satellites that operate from space?
“What happens is that the satellites are not in the atmosphere, but in the stratosphere, the conditions are different. In addition, because the image taken by the satellite is not as precise as that of the balloon, it can remain static and that it’s more easily manageable,” he says.
Meanwhile, Beijing, which admitted to being the owner of these balloons, thanked Colombia, Venezuela and Costa Rica because they did not perceive it as a threat, as was the case, on the contrary, with the United States, which ended up shooting it down.
“Colombia is, of these three countries, the one with the best capacity to detect one of those balloons. But (the order to shoot it down) is a government decision and Mr. Petro leans more on the side of China and Russia. For For example, last week he said that he was not going to send any Russian-made weapons (present in Colombia) in support of Ukraine. It is believed that Petro instructed the Air Force not to do anything. Also, because it is a target at such a level, the Air Force had to consult him. But the Air Force is not going to come out and say that it was Petro who stopped his incursion, nor is Petro going to recognize it. And from Venezuela, since it is presumed that there (China) has the complicity to do so.
While the second balloon wanders freely through the Latin American sky, vigilance continues to be extreme and everything seems to indicate that the flying object will follow the direction of the Silk Road towards Beijing.
“If you look at the Silk Road, or ‘the belt’ as they call it, it already includes Eurasia and Africa, and Latin America and the United States are missing. And you are going to do the tour. I suppose that will pass through southern Europe and he is going to tour North Africa, because China is not so geopolitically busy in that part. So they go looking for [el globo] go through there because they are doing an intelligence reconnaissance superior to what they have with the satellites’, concludes Villamarín.
The Chinese authorities continue to deny the espionage version at all times and defend that the balloons have scientific purposes, mainly for meteorological research.
