Anybody Else See it?

[21incher]

Apparently it has some sort of heavy technology module they are afraid of hitting something or somebody on the ground if they shoot it down.  I suspect as soon as it is over US controlled ocean I will be ours.

Good Call.   Not only that there is a lot more intact technology after a splash down by Florida than a splat down on the empty plains or in a forest.

I was told if they wanted to recover technology they would not have used a missile with exploding warhead. Would just have punctured slow leaks in different chambers for a slow descent. At that altitude it's thought they had access to 4g networks and could verify tunnels to their equipment were still open.

[newoodguy78]

Didn’t it cross the Pacific? Why wait for it to go all the way across the country to take it down in the Atlantic? 

[Tom King]

Better to study it while we own the airspace it's in.  Pretty cool that we're still flying the U-2's.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/u-2-spy-planes-snooped-on-chinese-surveillance-balloon

We probably intercepted what it was receiving, and had it broadcasting old Three Stoges TV shows.

[Don P]

I think it crossed at the Aleutians, thru Canada and into MT. The 3 that crossed in and out of our airspace previously were detected after the fact. We didn't/ don't have our balloon goggles on.

[Tom King]

I doubt they missed anything before.   He didn't say they didn't see the balloons.  He said they didn't see the threats, and it gets political past that. It was a clever sidestep.  I've heard some first hand stories of what they were able to see up in orbit, and it was a Lot smaller than a balloon, and Many times farther out.  My friend asked them to call him back if they found it.  The person on the phone said he didn't need to call him back because he was looking at it, and their theory of what went wrong was correct.  I won't go into details, but I sleep good at night with what we have looking out for us.  It's a good thing we have people a lot smarter than the politicians and newscasters in important jobs.

[Ianab]

There is probably a lot more balloons up there than we realise. 


Google launched dozens of them a while back experimenting with a communications network. Turned out not to be very practical, so they have shelved the idea. But here's a list of where some of them came down. Their kit had an aircraft ADS-B transmitter, so they showed up on civilian radar, but they ended up all over the place. The NZ launched ones landed in Sth America / Africa and Australia. But there was no mystery about what they were, and you could track them on public aircraft tracking web pages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC#Incidents


And the US Govt testing them for border / drug surveillance. They just didn't loose one and have it drift away over China....
Pentagon testing mass surveillance balloons across the US | US military | The Guardian 


I'm not even sure regular military radar would track them? Something slow moving like that would probably be filtered out by the system as background noise. Same as weather and flocks of birds. 


This one got the headlines because it was big / visible, and a mystery. Until it's confirmed otherwise I'm assuming it was an experimental surveillance / comms balloon system, that escaped. Sending it over the USA on purpose would have been a dumb idea, as the US authorities can now have a look at a somewhat beat up version of the Chinese tech. The Chinese saying it's a "research balloon", probably isn't technically a lie, they just aren't saying exactly what it's "researching". I assume something similar to the Pentagon research linked above? 


Also interesting was using a sidewinder missile to take it down. They did that so the balloon burst completely and came down quick, where they wanted it, for easy recovery. But traditional sidewinders are infra red homing, and go for the hot exhaust of the target. They wouldn't lock onto a balloon any more than they wold lock onto a cloud. There are now radar guided versions, so I assume that's what they used. Even then the fire control could have problems with a practically stationary target. I would guess the first passes the jets made were to confirm they could actually get a weapons lock, and maybe take some closer pics of it undamaged?

[Walnut Beast]

Paranoid much???

You think! Map looks pretty interesting .

[Walnut Beast]

Doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the travel path. A few years back.  Do you remember the Chinese company that provided the computer systems and tower electronics for US cellular companies. Yes they were shut down when several towers were being installed by missile locations in various states

[Walnut Beast]

Fact!! The Pentagon says there was sensitive information transmitted to China until they were aware of it. And you don’t think they had serious surveillance equipment on a balloon that was the size of a 20 story building and payload capacity of a jet. Just a ballon? That’s the reason they used it. Slow moving to evade  radar 

[Southside]

It's amazing how much of an idiot Lloyd Austin really is. Shutting off sensitive systems, and telling the world you did so, is just as bad as having them being intercepted. 

When gathering intelligence it's not what you see and hear, even if you can't understand it, that counts, it's what you suddenly don't see and hear that you pay attention to. "Oh, look they know we are listening and that box over there suddenly went dark", guess what gets focused on from then on.

Hide in plain sight, pretend to be dumb, and the other side will spoon feed you. 

[Walnut Beast]

They said it was to dangerous to pick the debris up in Alaska waters, way to easy to pick up in Montana and wanted it to be somewhat difficult back out in the ocean and real difficult to get the bigger stuff off the ocean floor. What a 🤡 

[JJ]

I just see that US has shot down another one off Alaska, reason given for shooting the new one down was it was at 40,000' in commercial airliner traveling space..



Havent released any pictures.

[Walnut Beast]

President Joe wants to make a splash this time 😂

[Southside]

Before this week when was the last time something was shot down in US airspace? Technically Hawaii was only a territory on Dec 7, 1941. 

[B.C.C. Lapp]

Hide in plain sight, pretend to be dumb, .

Well, that shouldn't be to tough for biden and his crew.

[Mooseherder]

Keep the Balloon Off the Ground 😳🎈ft @Nick Pro - YouTube

[bluthum]

I had a great friend who was a Marine Rifle Platoon leader [Lt.] in Korean war to include the Chosin Campaign. He told me many, many amazing stories and they included some very strange battle tactics employed by the Chinese. Once the Chinese hauled a hand operated noise making device up a cliff in the middle of the night into the U.N. position. When cranked it made a noise like a Soviet tank. Rattle rattle like tank tracks approaching, then Bang, bang, sgt. of the guard put a fairly quick end to the crankers but it maybe did rattle the combatants. Presumably that was the goal. Remember these guys are sacked out in the open snow at brutal below 0 temps to begin with but assumed their position was unassailable for the moment.

My guess, and that's all it is, is the balloons they are lofting are more of that sort of thing over true intelligence gathering. We're told they have flown over dozens of countries lately. If so it's working perfectly as the citizens of the U.S. just become senselessly more divided in our politics over the balloons rather than standing together and trying to figure it out.

One great book about the Korean war and the Chosin campaign is "On desperate Ground" [Hampton Sides]. The tales of mass death and suffering are truly epic but also there is some great history included. It somewhat helps explain the unexplainable about our history with the Koreas and China that are absolutely applicable to today. A large complement of the U.S. command looks pretty inept leading up to the Chosin saga, the Chinese command is incomprehensible. Lots of people died because of that, seems like it was 9 Chinese for each U.N. casualty. It's a great read and helped me comprehend a tiny bit better the Chinese position and also the fact that they have a very different mindset going way, way back. I expect the Chinese have as much trouble understanding the european [in this case U.S.] mindset as we do the Chinese. I sure wish both sides would devote more effort to that.  

[21incher]

Now it's like one of those video games where they keep popping up all over.    

[bigblockyeti]

I expect the Chinese have as much trouble understanding the european [in this case U.S.] mindset as we do the Chinese. I sure wish both sides would devote more effort to that.  

It would be great if that could happen, but there's too much profit left on the table to not fuel division.  Those with the fuel are insensitive to the costs of their actions should something (continue to) go awry.


Whaddya suppose one of those SAMs used to pop the balloon cost?  Seems something akin to a high-tech molotov cocktail would have been sufficient to incinerate the envelope at 1000% (10,000%?) less $$ while leaving the structure more intact, at least until it hit the water.

[Magicman]

Whaddya suppose one of those SAMs used to pop the balloon cost?

Each Sidewinder is about 188 pounds and costs $381,069.

(The above came from a DDGo search.)