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U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

cnbc.com

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Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#71

Post by breck »

chitowneats wrote: post #46
credit_guy wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That can't be the message. You saw how easy it was to down the balloon.

It was easy to down one balloon during peace-time. You're right. Please see my comment further below for why that might not work in aggregate during a real military conflict. Edit: I'll paste it here in case it gets buried: I really do wonder if this is them testing that they can reliably and cheaply get high-altitude balloons to the U.S. mainland. In the event of a military conflict, I can imagine them swarming us w…

I thought the whole thing was blown out of proportion and was almost certainly a weather balloon mistake, but I forgot about that WWII anecdote, and you are absolutely right. The odds of it actually being related to military just went up a lot in my calculations.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#72

Post by MisterBastahrd »

chitowneats wrote: post #20
neuralRiot wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not in the defense industry neither know how the Chinese spy agency works but I guess there are more covert ways to spy than sending a 20ft ballon half way around the world.

One theory is that the Chinese know that. This could be them sending a message: "If you defend Taiwan, we can get over your heads cheaply and easily". The only casualties on the U.S. mainland during WW2 were Japanese balloons dropping bombs on the west coast. I doubt that symbolism was lost on the military or the Biden administration.

Then they're going to be shocked when they realize how satellites work

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#73

Post by mushbino »

sumoboy wrote: post #66

F22 shooting this down is definitely a sign of strength. If this were a James bond movie, a predator drone would have just hooked that balloon and brought it back intact. What prevents China or anyone else to just launch dozens or hundreds of these?

To get better weather info?

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#76

Post by jghn »

anigbrowl wrote: post #67
gruez wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Given that it was visible to the naked eye But why did this garner so much attention compared to the weather ballons that the US launches on a regular basis?

Probably because it was quite a bit larger than usual, going by initial reports. What do you want the government to do, lie and pretend it's one of theirs?

It also helps that one side of the political spectrum were able to use it to cast doubt and blame at the other side of the spectrum

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#78

Post by mlindner »

mushbino wrote: post #73
sumoboy wrote: post #66

F22 shooting this down is definitely a sign of strength. If this were a James bond movie, a predator drone would have just hooked that balloon and brought it back intact. What prevents China or anyone else to just launch dozens or hundreds of these?

To get better weather info?

It wasn't a weather balloon.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#79

Post by noodlesUK »

tenpies wrote: post #60
noodlesUK wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they want to, but exactly how high is probably valuable intelligence). Weather balloons on the other hand fly much higher. This would have been likely (I don’t know) between 60,000 and 120,000 feet. You certainly couldn’t just do a gun run at that altitude. Clippi…

I was actually surprised there wasn't some energy-based laser that could be shot at it, even if from an aircraft, but I agree with your assessment. Which brings up an interesting question: would launching thousands of balloons at the US be a good strategy to completely drain the A2A missile stockpile? It seems like a balloon would also be absurdly cheaper than the missile, not to mention having to get a plane out to…

There quite possibly are energy weapons that could shoot it down, perhaps some kind of spooky ship based anti missile systems (edit: I’ve looked into this and there’s definitely not anything public that can shoot that far). I suspect that if this were really a Chinese spy balloon, getting detailed data on such a weapon would be an amazing added bonus (think wavelength, energy output, etc). An AAMRAM is pretty well known tech at this point. On the other hand, it might have been a fun show of force to use something spooky. It’s hard to speculate.

As far as swamping air defences with balloons, yeah that’s a thing that’s pretty concerning. If you add swarm drones into the equation, it gets very scary.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#80

Post by mc32 »

nocsi wrote: post #47

In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected

It seems more likely that the balloon being visible forced the gov to acknowledge the balloon. It's unclear if that had any effect on the decision of when to shoot it down. Apparently they had been tracking it over the Aleutians, so they could have downed it over the Pacific, if they hadn't pussyfooted it.
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