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How much if this is just awareness bias, where the media reports commonplace events that were previously ignored?
Whether these intrusions by unknown objects were commonplace and previously had been ignored, is something I've wondered about myself.
Surely this is not the world's slowest declaration of war? Whoever country is sending whatever these artificial objects are, what can they possibly gain from this?
I was joking in the other thread, that soon people will be buying weather baloons and setting them off "for the lulz" (youtube videos, tiktok, or whatever) :)
I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
The flip side of this is adversarial observer(s) can learn all sorts of things about readiness, detection networks, response times, and tactical doctrine if well-prepared in advance to acquire and integrate that information.
Kinda wish I had a way to bet on the popularity of search terms because I can practically hear the rattle of doctrinal articles being furiously drafted at military institutions of higher learning right now.
I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't see how China would willfully continue send these balloons without expecting a symmetrical escalation. Sure, they managed to send a few relatively undetected until the past recent weeks, but continued attempts would surely produce a physical response from NATO states, whether that's sending balloons of their own or overflying Chinese territory with other aircraft, or increased signals intelligence operations.
>symmetrical escalation So like what, a similar but bigger balloon?
There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to air traffic), people just ignore it... weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time.
But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down, even if it caused an international incident.. and luckily nothing serious happened. So now that the cat is out of the bag, we're going to shoot down every balloon that hasnt filed all of the required paperwork that enters out airspace that's reachable by our aircraft... because 1) the public demands it; 2) it'll become political fodder if the white house doesn't; and 3) the international issue it generates is easier for the white house to handle than the political criticism.
If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.
Edit: bobbyjo pointed out this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...
Since that likely settles the balloons intent… we can add 4) now that we know it’s a spy balloon, we’re going to shoot down all the balloons. Before the large balloon was shot down, no one would have bothered to check. No one is stopping weather balloons at the border. Big mistake on chinas part.
I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
The last two objects shot down were not balloons.
So how long has the CCP been sending these balloons and what caused the USG to start talking about them?