American balloon espionage over China dates back to at least the 1950s.
Project Genetrix was a top-secret US aerial reconnaissance program conducted by America during the Cold War that used high-altitude balloons loaded with surveillance equipment to spy on China and the Soviet Union. When caught, the US said it was part of a meteorological survey.
Project Gentrix launch
US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles - brother of CIA Director Allen Dulles - told reporters in the ‘50s that the balloons were “gathering an extraordinary amount of new and useful information about these jet stream air currents”.
It wasn’t the only US balloon program either. The US Air Force’s Project Flying Cloud - aka Weapons System 124A - was developed with an eye to using balloons to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
Some 70 years after Project Genetrix balloons were sent over the Soviet Union and China in 1956, China told Washington its 2023 balloon was also for meteorological purposes.
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American balloon espionage over China dates back to at least the 1950s.
Project Genetrix was a top-secret US aerial reconnaissance program conducted by America during the Cold War that used high-altitude balloons loaded with surveillance equipment to spy on China and the Soviet Union. When caught, the US said it was part of a meteorological survey.
Project Gentrix launch
US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles - brother of CIA Director Allen Dulles - told reporters in the ‘50s that the balloons were “gathering an extraordinary amount of new and useful information about these jet stream air currents”.
It wasn’t the only US balloon program either. The US Air Force’s Project Flying Cloud - aka Weapons System 124A - was developed with an eye to using balloons to deliver weapons of mass destruction.
Some 70 years after Project Genetrix balloons were sent over the Soviet Union and China in 1956, China told Washington its 2023 balloon was also for meteorological purposes.
America’s Genetrix balloons - some made by General Mills (GM), the company that makes Haagen-Dazs and Cocoa Puffs - were equipped with spy cameras to capture images of the earth's surface including communist countries.
The balloons were about 20 stories tall - 200 feet - the same as the Chinese spy balloons - and could fly up to an altitude of 100,000 feet to gather intel on military installations and strategic targets. GM’s balloons were made through its mechanical division, which also made the Alvin sub that crawled the Titanic wreck.
GM won a contract to supply the balloons to the US Air Force’s secret program, according to a 2012 National Reconnaissance Office book HEXAGON (KH-9) Mapping Camera Program and Evolution. Now declassified, the information was marked ‘Top Secret’.
The first balloon was launched in January 1956 but the program was disbanded on Feb 6, 1956 after a protest from the Soviets. "During this brief period, 512 vehicles were launched and 54 were recovered. Still, it was a success.
Almost 2m square miles of photographic coverage was obtained, although some of that was duplicated. Some 1.12m square miles fell within the “Sino-Soviet area" which included almost 10 percent of the area of the Soviet Union and China combined, according to HEXAGON. The US Army and Navy, CIA, the Royal Air Force, Strategic Air Command, and Far East Air Force analyzed the film, confirming new targets and intel on previously known targets.
Launch of the Moby Dick weather balloon program
Project Genetrix spy balloon program
"Probably the most significant long-term benefit was that the program provided experience in processing data from random reconnaissance over a large area, giving the intelligence community an insight into future data-handling requirements.
Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Union saw Project Genetrix as a violation of its sovereignty and the US stopped the project in the late ‘50s when it moved on to satellites and U-2 spy planes.
The US cover story for the balloons was that Project Genetrix was part of a worldwide meteorological survey in conjunction with the International Geophysical Year. David Haight, in his article Ike and His Eyes in the Sky, said Ike Eisenhower authorized aerial intelligence programs to assess the military capability of the Soviet Union, China, and other communist bloc nations.
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