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American intelligence services say that a balloon shot down over South Carolina last week was unmistakably used by China to spy on the US. China continues to insist that the balloon was used to monitor the weather. So how is the US so certain? �鶹�� Newsday asked US Rear Admiral Mark Montgomery, now retired and a senior fellow at the American think tank the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The way it flew, where it was sitting, how it was communicating... were all the precursor information that had them confident before they destroyed the balloon that that it was in fact a surveillance balloon not a weather balloon. Dirigibles are making a comeback. The irony is that this balloon event revealed that we have a pretty serious gap in our air defence detection capabilities on the east and west coasts of the United States." "What was a little disturbing was the Chinese decision-making that led to them to run something across the United States in what is widely considered to be US sovereign airspace - below 100,000 feet - and that caught us by surprise. I think if anyone thinks they know what China wants, they’re mistaken. We don't need another authoritarian leader who we are unable to predict their thinking.” (Pic: US Navy recover Chinese surveillance balloon debris in the Atlantic; Credit: US Navy)