US Fighter Jets Shoot Down Spy Balloon With a Single Missile (cnn.com) 396
CNN reports:
The US military used fighter jets from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia to take down the suspected Chinese spy balloon at 2:39 p.m. ET on Saturday, according to a senior US military official. A single missile was used, the official said....
President Joe Biden said the mission to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the East Coast Saturday was successful, and that he had ordered the Pentagon to knock the aircraft out of the sky as soon as it was safe to do so. "On Wednesday when I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down — on Wednesday — as soon as possible," the president told reporters in Hagerstown, Maryland. "They decided, without doing damage to anyone on the ground, they decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water ... within a 12-mile limit. They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it," the president added.
Asked if that was a recommendation from his national security team, Biden reiterated: "I told them to shoot it down. They said to me, 'Let's wait for the safest place to do it....'"
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the balloon was being used by the Chinese government "to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States."
President Joe Biden said the mission to shoot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the East Coast Saturday was successful, and that he had ordered the Pentagon to knock the aircraft out of the sky as soon as it was safe to do so. "On Wednesday when I was briefed on the balloon, I ordered the Pentagon to shoot it down — on Wednesday — as soon as possible," the president told reporters in Hagerstown, Maryland. "They decided, without doing damage to anyone on the ground, they decided that the best time to do that was as it got over water ... within a 12-mile limit. They successfully took it down and I want to compliment our aviators who did it," the president added.
Asked if that was a recommendation from his national security team, Biden reiterated: "I told them to shoot it down. They said to me, 'Let's wait for the safest place to do it....'"
U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said the balloon was being used by the Chinese government "to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States."
With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Informative)
not sure why CNN needs to point this out - you'd like to think it only took one.
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The Fox tabloid mentioned it was a heating seeking missle. Not sure how that works on a balloon.
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Good thing it wasn't a Decapodian balloon... all their tech is cold-blooded.
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That's a good point. One of the reasons for this is that the poster you replied to might be applying their understanding of small balloons to these giant ones that are tens of thousands of times bigger. The first obvious thing is that, with an inflatable party balloon (not the helium filled mylar ones, I mean the elastic ones that you blow up) a hole in the side of the balloon is a big deal because the stretched rubber skin keeps the air inside under pressure, so it gets squeezed out. In the kind of balloon
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The Fox tabloid mentioned it was a heating seeking missle. Not sure how that works on a balloon.
It appears to have been an AIM-9 Sidewinder, but it has been a bunch of years since the Sidewinder was just a heat seeking missile. They can be cued by fighter data-link or fighter radar now. The warhead did not detonate, and it may have been deliberately left unfused.
Re: With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Interesting)
No. It did not explode. What you saw was the flames from the rocket motor burning through it. They didn't want it to explode because somebody hopefully wants to dissect it while it's intact to see what data it was capturing. But you'd think that the Chinese would anticipate that. But you can still learn a lot just by knowing the frequencies it was using.
My guess is that the balloon was using WiFi frequencies and sending back scooped Intel on simple wifi to ground station spies or boxes hidden anywhere. The equipment could be simple generic off the shelf who-cares stuff even.
The Pentagon really can't jam wifi signals without shutting down everyone's internet.
The balloon itself 'moved with purpose' and was steerable as well as able to adjust altitude. It was as low as 35,000 feet and when shot down was at 61,000 feet.
Well, you might say "It doesn't matter there's satellites." That's true, but they're too high up to do what this balloon was trying to do.
Exactly what would that be??? Well here's a possibility for you. Konnech, a company that supplies election management software to municipalities scooped the passwords, SSNs, driver's license numbers, election center floorplans, vote machine storage locations, home addresses, employment address *as well* as the poll worker's family members data. Roughly *2 million* people's detailed information.
Konnech had all that data on a server at a Chinese University in Wuhan. As we all should know China doesn't really have an internet as much as it does a giant WAN so you can be very certain that the CCP was looking at that information. And in fact connections have been established between Konnech CEO Eugene Yu and high level CCP party members.
So here's an idea. Put some of those wifi passwords on a balloon and send it over the continental U.S. *and see what you can scoop up*. Where a ground spy couldn't reach far into a big building to log into certain networks an overhead balloonmay not have the same problem. In fact, the balloon hanging around nuke silos could have been a misdirection to the spy balloon's true purpose. The balloon wouldn't have had enough time to scoop data though, **it would be planting malware and opening back doors** on things already planted around!
Imnsho opinion letting the balloon skate around the country like that was both an intelligence and military failure/disaster. Worse than Afghanistan. Btw, my theory is that Afghanistan happened the way it did so the Chinese could wander in and buy $85 billion dollars of military equipment that the CCP could reverse. But I digress.
The balloon actually entered the U.S. shaped like a dirigible but somewhere along the way "deployed" to the traditional more innocuous shape it had as it entered the U.S." The reason being because the Chinese don't need to fool everybody, they just need to fool certain people. "Ooooopsie it's just a weather balloon!!" China, monitor your own g@d d@mn weather!!
The balloon had a massive solar panel array (the black squares you see in pictures) and had no shortage of power to drive multiple transmitters. The heatsinking missile really didn't because those solar panels would have been blazing hot.
The other disturbing thing - this is coming on the heels of the airport hack that grounded every plane in the U.S.
Don't ask me about elections,,,,,
https://da.lacounty.gov/media/... [lacounty.gov]
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so I can finally get decent internet reception in my attic.
Just get a wifi extender.
Re: With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Does nobody find it odd when people don't bat an eyelash at spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to do some target practice, or billions for a single plane...
But fuck me sideways if universal healthcare and giving people enough food to live aren't just "far too expensive to be practical".
Gtfoh. Our priorities are utterly fucked if you ask me. Buy 20 or so less planes, feed the poor and homeless, OR, shut the fuck up about how much we "value human life" in this country. It's asinine.
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The Fox tabloid mentioned it was a heating seeking missle. Not sure how that works on a balloon.
It's Fox, did they also mention that the balloon was actually launched by Soros to replenish the space lasers with updated 5G energy?
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and/or reflections of the sun
You make sense there especially since the balloon seemed white to me at first glance.
Re: Overkill (Score:4, Informative)
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Assuming the Predator B model, which can achieve 60k altitude. At a cost of $ 14 million vs. AIM-9X Sidewinder at a cost of $800,000. I'd say the missile option seems to be less of an overkill than having a predator drone collide with it.
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Assuming the thing was easy to hit. As I understand it there was some concern because on radar the thing looks like something missile systems would be programmed to avoid, e.g. a cloud floating along stationary relative to the surrounding air.
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There's a bigass scaffolding of crap beneath the balloon (or there was anyway) which is more than sufficient to lock onto.
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a bigass scaffolding of crap beneath the balloon (or there was anyway) which is more than sufficient to lock onto.
Given that they wanted to recover the payload to see what it was, they probably didn't want to hit that part with the missile.
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There's a bigass scaffolding of crap beneath the balloon (or there was anyway) which is more than sufficient to lock onto.
Well, if they wanted to study what was in the middle of the bigass scaffolding now they are going to need a time machine.
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I don't think it's the size that's the problem, I think it's the behavior looks like things the missile would be programmed to ignore which was the concern. In any event, since they successfully used a missile that concern turned out to be unwarranted.
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My concern is that a missile is an awfully expensive way to take down something that could be wiped out with a slingshot.
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Funny)
My concern is that a missile is an awfully expensive way to take down something that could be wiped out with a slingshot.
You can hit something at 60,000 ft. with a slingshot? What a stud!
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Informative)
My concern is that a missile is an awfully expensive way to take down something that could be wiped out with a slingshot.
I'd like to see you take down a large balloon with a slingshot -- Canada once tried to take down a balloon with 1000 rounds of cannon fire and couldn't bring it down until the helium slowly leaked out.
This kind of balloon doesn't pop like a party balloon and are under very low pressure, so a hole just causes a very slow leak.
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This kind of balloon doesn't pop like a party balloon and are under very low pressure, so a hole just causes a very slow leak.
Perhaps with regular bullet holes in something so large, but to me it looks like if you go frame by frame the pressure wave from the missile blast goes up and pops the balloon just like a giant kids toy.
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Thanks for that. I posted a question higher up the thread about using guns (from a plane, obviously) instead of missile, to allow the payload to descend more gradually and prevent damage and help analysis, and this provided a good answer/example of why that probably wasn't done.
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not sure why CNN needs to point this out - you'd like to think it only took one.
I was thinking guns (from the fighter, not ground) would be better as they could just pierce the balloon allowing it to deflate and descend more gradually, lessening the impact damage and assisting later analysis, but perhaps that would have been more difficult. Anyone?
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Following up... Someone noted that Canada tried guns to down a balloon once and it took many, may rounds and the balloon still deflated/descended *very* slowly. Perhaps this would have been too slowly for the circumstances. Someone noted that the F-22 ceiling is around 50k feet but the balloon was at 60k feet making guns impractical.
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:4, Informative)
An A-10 would have been great, but they can't get that high. Their service ceiling is 45,000 feet. The F-35, which they used, is 55,000 feet. Easiest, most efficient way to take the balloon down was with a missile, which worked. Thank goodness they didn't take the advice of all these ATS desk jockeys telling them what they should have done.
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Informative)
"The military official gave some detail of the engagement. The F-22 fired the Sidewinder at the balloon from an altitude of 58,000 feet. The balloon at the time was between 60,000 and 65,000 feet."
-- https://www.defense.gov/News/N... [defense.gov]
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Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:4, Funny)
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I think I saw a video about it titled: "How to shoot down zeppelins with this one wierd trick. Germans hate it."
And You'll Never Believe What Happened!
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:4, Informative)
The trick was incendiary rounds. Zeppelins were filled with hydrogen. Hydrogen vs flaming bullets, I think you see where this goes.
Dollars to donuts that wouldn't have worked on this balloon. First it was way to high to reach with 'bullets.' I don't believe there are any armed aircraft that could have reached it. Second, it was probably full of helium so setting it on fire wouldn't have been an option.
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Re: With a Single Missile.... (Score:3)
Because in 1998 they tried to shoot down a weather balloon and fired over 1000 rounds at it and couldn't bring it down.
Re:With a Single Missile.... (Score:5, Informative)
The service ceiling of an F35 is 55,000 feet. The balloon was 60-80,000 feet. A 20mm cannon doesn't cut it. It's not a dogfight. So it was quite efficient to use a missile. Sorry to disappoint you assumptions.
\Well they couldn't shoot it down over Montana (Score:2)
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Attribution (Score:2)
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The Chinese say it's theirs... they just claim it's an errant weather balloon [time.com].
Re:Attribution (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, with the jetstreams as well-known and consistent as they are, you can calculate with pretty decent accuracy where a balloon will travel across the globe. So presumably, given a balloon's current flight path, it's not hard to tell it likely originated from China. I suppose another explanation is that the US military has seen these sorts of balloons before.
Anyhow, China subsequently confirmed it was Chinese in origin, but said it was a civilian weather observation platform that they lost control of. It's hard to know what to think, but this makes more sense to me than a spy balloon, which everyone claims would be somewhat pointless. I guess we'll know for certain if they have enough debris to analyze.
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Apparently, with the jetstreams as well-known and consistent as they are, you can calculate with pretty decent accuracy where a balloon will travel across the globe. So presumably, given a balloon's current flight path, it's not hard to tell it likely originated from China.
Actually you can far more precisely interpolate a balloon's *past* path than you can project its *future* course. It's the difference in reliability between weather *records* and weather *predictions*. That may be why there's a second Chinese balloon flying over South America right now. Given that, I think it likely that China launched even more balloons than those two. Some of them may have gone far off course like the South American one, some of them may simply not have been noticed.
Why a missle? (Score:2, Interesting)
A couple rounds from the jet fighters guns through the balloon would have had it settle to the ground, probably with it's payload intact. If it was spying I'd think that they'd want it intact for the NSA to examine.
Re:Why a missle? (Score:4, Informative)
First F-22 Kill (Score:4, Funny)
Will they stick a balloon decal on the side of the cockpit?
bit late (Score:3)
If it was a spy balloon, it had already crossed the US and the data it collected was most likely already transmitted back to China.
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This wasn't about preventing data from being transmitted. This was about recovering salvage and determining what the thing was doing in the first place.
Comment removed (Score:5, Funny)
Why wasn't it shot down before / into US airspace (Score:3)
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Presumably, but it did fall a very long way into the ocean so who knows what's left
Re:Will the balloon be recovered and examined? (Score:4, Insightful)
Will the balloon be recovered and examined?
I feel comfortable answering yes, even though I am not American. The Navy will probably get more practice out of it than the Air Force.
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Re:Will the balloon be recovered and examined? (Score:5, Informative)
Will the balloon be recovered and examined?
That seems important.
If you read the article, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships were sent to the area to retrieve the debris as quickly as possible before it sank.
The official told CNN that the Navy had anticipated having to recover debris in deeper water, but it landed at a depth of about 47 feet, which "will make it fairly easy."
The official said "capable Navy divers" will go down as needed into the water to assist in the operation. There are also “unmanned vessels that can go down to get the structure and lift it back up on the recovery ship,” the official added.
The official did not know how long it would take crews to recover any salvageable equipment from the downed aircraft but noted that recovery could take "a relatively short time."
Re:Will the balloon be recovered and examined? (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh good, one of you covid denying anti vaxers found a way to mix their bullshit into a completely unrelated topic.
As small as the Slashdot scene has become we cant seem to get rid of the absurd anti science crowd. I did get a kick out of your nonsensical efforts to try to one up such claims though.
Re:Why even a missile? (Score:5, Insightful)
TFA says an F-22 jet fired an AIM-9X missile. Why even so? The F-22 has a rotary gun that would be sufficient to burst the balloon
It might be hard for the F=22 to shoot at a target several thousand feet higher than its maximum range.
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Re:Why even a missile? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) What steering mechanisms did it have?
2) What communication mechanisms did it have? Was it communicating with a satellite?
3) What tools were aboard? Cameras, thermometers, etc?
4) (Unlikely) Were there any weapons, kinetic, biologic, or chemical?
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It is too bad that they could not have hit the balloon with just a bullet (one bullet) that would have caused the balloon to deflate slowly and perhaps not triggered the self-destruct package that seems to have been included in the balloon's payload. I doubt that any of the payload will be recovered. But I wonder what might be learned from the remnants of the balloon.
If the balloon had a self-destruct then it would have also had satellite communications that would have allowed them to initiate the self-destruct whenever they wanted.
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The F-22 has a 60,000' ceiling but can perform maneuvers at that altitude.
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TFA says an F-22 jet fired an AIM-9X missile. Why even so? The F-22 has a rotary gun that would be sufficient to burst the balloon
It might be hard for the F=22 to shoot at a target several thousand feet higher than its maximum range.
It might be even harder to believe the unclassified maximum range, is the actual maximum range.
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When trying to shoot something that is very high, point your aeroplane up.
Oh really? Is that the wisdom you've gained from your many years in the airforce fighting against balloons?
Re:Why even a missile? (Score:4, Informative)
TFA says an F-22 jet fired an AIM-9X missile. Why even so? The F-22 has a rotary gun that would be sufficient to burst the balloon. There will be dangerous wreckage falling to ground in either case, and bursting the balloon avoids dispersion of the wreckage for later analysis of what it does.
This wasn't a party balloon that you could burst with a pinprick, years ago Canada tried to take down a balloon with 1000 rounds of canon fire and were unsuccessful.
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IIRC, the AIM-9 (sidewinder) is a heat-seeking solid propellant rocket. It would have no problem reaching an extra 10,000 ft altitude after release. Not sure what "heat" it would lock
Re: Why even a missile? (Score:2)
Re: Why even a missile? (Score:2)
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At the extreme altitude it was flying, air pressure (maybe gravity too?) is so low that it doesn't pop the same way a Dollar Tree balloon at ground level does. You can knock a hole in it with a cannon, and it will eventually deflate, but it's going to drift for some time and distance while it's deflating.
Since Biden obviously wanted to do some dick-waving, big explosion makes a better impression, rather than slowly drifting to the ground. They probably have some cool video footage to release now. Maybe it's
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Because it's risky as fuck flying at speed towards something barely moving and the size of a house and engaging it with a short range weapon like a gun when you can instead hit it from 10km away with a missile and leave ample time to manoeuvre out of it's way.
Isn't that what A10s are for?
Why did they send an F22 do to an A10's job?
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'Cuz the A-10's service ceiling is 45,000 feet. F-22 can scoot up to 60,000 feet no problem. Why send a ground attack aircraft to do an interceptor's job ?
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What do YOU think an A10's job is? Hint: it's NOT to target things more than 15000 feet away, above the plane, when the plane is flying at its maximum possible altitude.
Re: Why even a missile? (Score:4, Funny)
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Re: Why even a missile? (Score:2)
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Because it's risky as fuck flying at speed towards something barely moving and the size of a house and engaging it with a short range weapon like a gun when you can instead hit it from 10km away with a missile and leave ample time to manoeuvre out of it's way.
Isn't that what A10s are for?
Why did they send an F22 do to an A10's job?
They need to give the f22 something to do? How can we make the case for needing new billion dollar planes when we keep flying the much cheaper and useful work horse plane?
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Because the A10 is a plane built for fighting targets on the ground. Which means that it is optimized for flying at very low altitudes.
Unless you're an astronaut, 60,000 feet isn't exactly what one would consider a very low altitude.
Re:Allowed over the entire width of the US maiinla (Score:5, Insightful)
Why was it not discovered and dealt with over the Pacific Ocean between Hawaii and the West Coast? Hopefully, they WILL detect and deal with any future balloons BEFORE entering US airspace!
Because shooting down a foreign aircraft over international waters is an act of war, you moron.
W.O.P.R. says lunahc all missies! (Score:2)
W.O.P.R. says launch all missises!
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Because it first went to Canada. Also, the U.S. isn't in the habit of investigating balloons and shooting at them. Stop watching TV...bad for you.
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Damn, you caught us. I work for the government and let me tell you it was pure hell getting 10,000 people on board to tell a consistent set of lies. Now, go back and watch TV....good for you.
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Damn, you caught us. I work for the government and let me tell you it was pure hell getting 10,000 people on board to tell a consistent set of lies. Now, go back and watch TV....good for you.
Nah, you just need to threaten to destroy their homes with that Rothschild's space laser... they fall into line pretty quickly.
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A balloon can get a much more detailed view. From 60k feet. the lowest satellites are a hundred miles up.. so the resolution they can get is much less than could be achieved by surveillance closer to the ground.
So yeah... satellites could do some surveillance, but not everything
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People often think of "surveillance" at the cutting edge of 1960, cameras taking visible-spectrum photos. Satellites are actually quite good at that. It's more likely this was for something elsewhere in the RF spectrum.
The CCP appreciates useful idiots. (Score:2)
$.50 of RMB are in the mail. Thanks for repeating one of their key state sponsored talking points. [youtu.be]
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I don't believe for a second this would be chinese, as it's much easier to just use the satellites they already have to perform the same spying. I even think it's more of a hassle to use this balloon.
If it's not Chinese, why did the Chinese government say it was theirs?
Yes, Chinese (according to the Chinese) (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't believe for a second this would be chinese....
The fact that the Chinese stated that it was theirs (and claimed it was simply a weather balloon) didn't sway you at all?
Your conspiracy theory is that the Chinese and the Americans got together and came up with the cover story that this was a Chinese balloon?
Re:anti-china folks will believe anything (Score:5, Interesting)
Give me a break. A weather balloon, somehow magically steered precisely over strategic missile sites?
If we go to war over this fake pro-war bullshit, I'm sending all of you pro-war assholes first, right over the beach. Have fun!
It'd be pretty hard to traverse the USA in a balloon without flying over *some* military asset.
Re: anti-china folks will believe anything (Score:2)
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A weather balloon, somehow magically steered precisely over strategic missile sites?
What strategic missile sites? There is nothing but trees, snow capped mountains, and a few wild bison/elk roaming around in pretty much all of Montana.
Want to try again [nicap.org]? All that open space with no people has to be used for something.
Re:Glad that's over (Score:5, Insightful)
We sent a strong message to the world that we will not tolerate invasion & spying in our airspace, and will promptly shoot it down after it has completed a mission across the entire USA and exits over the Atlantic,
Or we sent a message that we're not afraid of surveillance balloons, but if we were, we'd have no problem shooting them down.
Re:Glad that's over (Score:5, Insightful)
The military's reasoning on this seems pretty sound, cost-benefit wise. There's not much this thing could have learned that China couldn't learn from satellites, or by simply getting in a car and driving around what is, after all, a free country where you're allowed to do that. Since they're almost certainly not getting much of value you may as well let it complete its mission before splashing it, rather than dropping a load of who-knows-what from ten miles up onto inhabited land.
One thing China may have hoped to learn that could *only* be learned this way is whether we would even notice a stratospheric airship if it entered our airspace riding on the Jetstream at ambient speed.
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There's not much this thing could have learned that China couldn't learn from satellites
Obviously there is. Otherwise they wouldn't have sent it. The question is, what was it that this balloon could learn that couldn't be learned by satellites?
or by simply getting in a car and driving around what is, after all, a free country where you're allowed to do that.
There are large parts of the country that you can't drive around.
Re:Glad that's over (Score:5, Insightful)
There are large parts of the country that you can't drive around.
Sure, but they're not *that* large, and your chance of being able to get a balloon launched in China to fly over them is as good as nil. You can drive pretty close to them, which is how the idiots who tried to storm Area 51 did it. They didn't hike over hundreds of miles of desert, they drove to within a few miles -- certainly as close as you could expect to get with a balloon.
No, I think the thing the Chinese were investigating with this was whether they could fly stratospheric airships into the US without being detected. While it's not exactly true the US and China are planning to go to war, they're certainly contingency planning for that.
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No, I think the thing the Chinese were investigating with this was whether they could fly stratospheric airships into the US without being detected.
And that's why they took a bright white balloon :)
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Re:Glad that's over (Score:5, Informative)
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Or maybe they realized it was just a weather balloon.
As you say, it couldn't learn anything that satellites couldn't, and there would be no way to get that data without revealing its true purpose and a lot about how China operates. Any transmissions would be picked up by US spy satellites and ground stations. It has no stealth capability, it is slow moving. It would make a terrible and unnecessary spying platform.
Even the probability of it flying over areas of interest is low, due to their being no way to r
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Yeah, I feel like the message we sent was... confused.
Either shoot the fucking thing out of the sky as soon as it crosses into our territory (over the pacific) before it reaches the continent.. or just decide it is harmless and ignore it.
Either way, a decision should be made BEFORE it reaches our shores. Make the decision, and stick to it.
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Anyway in case no one figured it out since Russia is no longer a credible threat
Russia is an extremely credible threat unless you think their nuclear arsenal doesn't work. John Mearsheimer's entire point is that we should respect Russia because of the nuclear arsenal.
Anyway I don't know who you are talking to, no one is saying the US should start a war with China or Russia.