A minister has warned that China may have deployed spy balloons across UK airspace.
It comes after Defence Secretary Ben Wallace announced a new security review after the US military shot down a series of objects in western airspace, one of which was suspected to be a Chinese spy balloon. Transport minister Richard Holden appeared on Sky News, where he was asked if it was possible that such balloons were already flown over the UK.
"It is possible," Mr Holden said. "It is also possible, and I would think likely, that there would be people from the Chinese government trying to act as a hostile state.”
He added: “China is a hostile state and we need to be aware of that and the way it acts and behaves. I think there was an era when China could have gone a different way and perhaps opened up.
“But it is quite clear at the moment that it is not going in that direction and we have got to be really robust in our dealings with China.”
On Sunday (February 12) the Defence Secretary said the UK and its allies would "review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security". He added: "This development is another sign of how the global threat picture is changing for the worse."
On February 4, the US military shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after travelling across sensitive military sites. Almost a week later, they shot down an unknown "car-sized" object which flew into US airspace off the coast of Alaska.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chairman of the Commons Defence Select Committee, claimed China was "exploiting the West's weakness" with the balloons. The former defence minister told Times Radio: “I think this is a testament as to where China is going.
“It is interpreting our wobbly international rules-based order to its own benefit. It is exploiting the West’s weakness, it is joining together with Russia, quietly, to try and weaken the West, to weaken the United States in particular so it can thrive itself.
“That is the new economic battlefield that we now see.”
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