WASHINGTON — The Chinese language spy balloon shot down by the U.S. army over the Atlantic Ocean was able to gathering communications alerts and was a part of a fleet of surveillance balloons directed by the Chinese language army that had flown over greater than 40 international locations throughout 5 continents, the State Division stated Thursday.

The USA used excessive decision imagery from U-2 flybys to find out the balloon’s capabilities, the division stated in a written announcement, including that the balloon’s tools “was clearly for intelligence surveillance and inconsistent with the tools onboard climate balloons.”

The company stated the balloon had a number of antennas in an array that was “seemingly able to gathering and geo-locating communications.” Photo voltaic panels on the machine had been giant sufficient to provide energy to function “a number of energetic intelligence assortment sensors,” the division stated.

The company additionally stated the U.S. authorities was “assured” that the corporate that made the balloon had direct industrial ties with the Individuals’s Liberation Military, the Chinese language army, citing an official procurement portal for the military. The division didn’t title the corporate.

“The USA may also discover taking motion in opposition to P.R.C. entities linked to the P.L.A. that supported the balloon’s incursion into U.S. airspace,” the State Division stated, referring to the Individuals’s Republic of China. “We may also take a look at broader efforts to reveal and handle the P.R.C.’s bigger surveillance actions that pose a menace to our nationwide safety, and to our allies and companions.”

The division stated the corporate advertises balloon merchandise on its web site and has posted movies from previous flights that apparently flew over U.S. airspace and the airspace of different nations. The movies present balloons which have related flight patterns because the surveillance balloons that the USA has been discussing this week, the company stated.

American officers have no idea precisely what sorts of communications the satellite tv for pc was making an attempt to gather and haven’t decided what websites the balloon was focusing on, U.S. officers say.

U.S. officers say the Biden administration has declassified data it has gathered on the balloon that traversed the USA final week and the Chinese language army’s broader balloon surveillance operations in an effort to inform the American public and allied and associate nations of China’s espionage actions. The administration is hopeful the intelligence will counter China’s narrative of the balloon and put strain on its authorities to curb a few of its aerial surveillance, the U.S. officers say.

The Chinese language Overseas Ministry stated final Friday, after the Pentagon introduced it had found the spy balloon hovering over Montana, that the balloon was a civilian machine from China primarily used for climate analysis, and that it had regrettably drifted astray. It additionally stated a second balloon, which the Pentagon asserted was a surveillance machine drifting on the time over Latin America, was primarily used for climate analysis.

The presence of the balloon in the USA final week ignited a diplomatic disaster and prompted Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken to cancel a weekend journey to Beijing, the place he had been anticipated to fulfill President Xi Jinping of China. Mr. Blinken stated the balloon had violated U.S. sovereignty and was “an irresponsible act” by China.

After a U.S. fighter jet shot down the balloon on Saturday, the Chinese language authorities stated the USA had overreacted and violated worldwide conference, and that China had “the fitting to reply additional.”

The Chinese language authorities additionally stated the balloon belonged to China and shouldn’t be stored by the USA.

The U.S. authorities says it has found situations of no less than 5 Chinese language spy balloons in American territory — three through the Trump administration and two through the Biden administration. The spy balloons noticed through the Trump administration had been initially labeled as unidentified aerial phenomena, U.S. officers stated. It was not till after 2020 that officers carefully examined the balloon incidents below a broader overview of aerial phenomena and decided that they had been a part of the Chinese language international balloon surveillance effort.

Divers from the U.S. Navy have pulled particles from the downed balloon out of the shallow waters off the South Carolina coast. Investigators from the Pentagon, F.B.I. and different intelligence businesses are analyzing the elements to see if the Chinese language army or enterprises with ties to it are utilizing expertise from American or different Western corporations, U.S. officers stated.

The invention of any such expertise may spur the Biden administration to take harsher actions to make sure that corporations don’t export expertise to China that can be utilized by the nation’s army and safety businesses.

President Biden and his aides have already imposed broad limits on the gross sales of what they name “foundational applied sciences” to China. Most notably, the U.S. authorities introduced final October that it was barring American corporations from promoting superior semiconductor chips and sure chip manufacturing expertise to China. The brand new guidelines are additionally aimed toward stopping international corporations from doing the identical.

The goal of the export controls is to cripple China’s improvement of superior applied sciences, notably instruments utilized by the Chinese language army, the Individuals’s Liberation Military. Mr. Biden has confused the significance of sustaining impartial provide chains in essential sectors, and he highlighted that coverage drive in his State of the Union speech in Congress on Tuesday.

U.S. officers stated they anticipate that the particles from the spy balloon will give them some perception into how Chinese language engineers are placing collectively surveillance expertise.

“There may be an ongoing operation to get better the balloon’s parts,” Mr. Blinken stated at a information convention on Wednesday. “We’re analyzing them to be taught extra in regards to the surveillance program. We’ll pair that with what we be taught from the balloon — what we be taught from the balloon itself — with what we’ve gleaned primarily based on our cautious statement of the system when it was in our airspace, because the president directed his staff to do.”

The New York Instances reported Saturday {that a} labeled intelligence report given to Congress final month highlighted no less than two situations of a international energy utilizing superior expertise for aerial surveillance over American army bases, one contained in the continental United States and the opposite abroad. The analysis prompt China was the international energy, U.S. officers stated. The report additionally mentioned surveillance balloons.

The State Division started a marketing campaign this week to tell different international locations of China’s balloon surveillance program. It has despatched data on this system to its embassies and directed diplomats overseas to fulfill with officers of their host international locations. U.S. diplomats in Washington are additionally speaking to international counterparts in that metropolis.

U.S. intelligence businesses have assessed that China’s spy balloon program is a part of a worldwide surveillance effort designed to gather data on the army capabilities of nations all over the world. With the flights, Chinese language officers are attempting to hone their skill to assemble knowledge about American army bases — wherein it’s most — in addition to these of different nations within the occasion of a battle or rising tensions, U.S. officers say. They add that this system has operated out of a number of places in China.

China’s Nationwide College of Protection Expertise has a staff of researchers finding out advances in balloons. And as early as 2020, Individuals’s Liberation Military Every day, the principle newspaper of the Chinese language army, printed an article describing how close to house “has develop into a brand new battleground in fashionable warfare.” Lately, the paper has been telling its officer readers in typically hyperbolic language to take balloons critically.

The balloons have some benefits over the intelligence-gathering satellites that orbit the earth in common patterns, U.S. officers say.

They fly nearer to earth and drift with wind patterns, which aren’t as predictable to militaries and intelligence businesses because the mounted orbits of satellites, they usually can evade radar. They’ll additionally hover over areas, whereas satellites are usually in fixed movement. Easy cameras on balloons can produce clearer pictures than these on orbital satellites, and different surveillance tools can decide up alerts that don’t attain the altitude of satellites.

Julian E. Barnes and Helene Cooper contributed reporting.