So what’s the deal with these balloons? Provocation? Do they think nobody will notice?
IMO, the balloons are an excuse to raise tensions with China.
US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
181–190 of 864 posts
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#182Cheap balloon vs expensive missile, seems a good way to bankrupt us by sending continuous balloons.
> Cheap balloon I'm surprised this seems to be such a common point. Why is it believed that it was cheap?
There's only so much you can spend on a bag of helium; anything is cheap compared to satellites or stealth long range recon aircraft.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#183Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've read about those but I'm more referring to the cost comment. In eve it is common to hedge a loss as "ISK Positive" if the value of the ammo that blew you up costed more than your ship, as tallied up on the killmail.
I can't not shake my head reading comments like this. Seriously, the concept of weighing the cost of an action vs the cost of inaction was not... exactly invented by Eve Online players. The entire point of warfare is to make waging war more expensive to your opponent than to yourself, whether in terms of men, materiel, dollars, or popular support. And the concept of a Pyrrhic victory is likely as old as war itself –…
Nice, you spent 479 characters to say literally nothing. I'm +80 characters positive now in this thread where I also have said literally nothing.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#184So what’s the deal with these balloons? Provocation? Do they think nobody will notice?
It's boundary-pushing. They're unmanned and ambient, yet are clearly a provocation and give China an information advantage over where it would be without the balloons, and in a geopolitical sense it asserts Chinese ascendency. At the same time, it's hard for the US or other powers to figure out an appropriate response. Very similar to Russian/NK/Chinese/Israeli/American state-sponsored hacking groups--it continually…
It sounds similar in goals to the Regan-era PSYOP described by Peter Schweizer
> "It really got to them," recalls Dr. William Schneider, [former] undersecretary of state for military assistance and technology, who saw classified "after-action reports" that indicated U.S. flight activity. "They didn't know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home."[1]
Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#185It doesn't matter what the object was, it's that America's adversaries know they can do it without consequences, and what makes them believe this is what matters about this story. That is the irreversible change it signifies, imo.
> it's that America's adversaries know they can do it without consequences There was a consequence -- we shot it down. > That is the irreversible change it signifies, imo. It's not irreversible. Additional consequences can be initiated at any time.
You don't need to convince me, convince the people who keep sending the ballons, invading allies, and using NATO countries as rocket flyover paths.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#186I dread to think of all the state-funded technology companies with backdoor-ed firmware/software coming out of China
I don't see much difference between Chinese routers having back-doors and what Cisco has peddled to its customers all these years either willfully or just incompetence.
I'd rather my own government spy on me than China. I'd rather Hannibal fucking Lecter be able to see me through my webcam than China.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#187There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently. The general premise is this: U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps o…
It's like Israel's "Iron Dome" interceptors. $50,000 each to take out what amounts to a $50 Estes model rocket.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#188> Officials said the object was far smaller than the previous balloon, did not appear to be maneuverable and was traveling at a much lower altitude. "Not maneuverable" and "previous balloon" so is it fair to assume that it's a balloon as well?
No, it is just as likely to be a reporter's garbled understanding of an explanation. In mysterious matters wait until you have 2 or 3 datapoints before using a heuristic.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
my speculation is that the main goal of Chinese covid lockdown was to train and simulate mass policing of population in case of upcoming war.
Why would you need to police population in case of war for returning Taiwan? It will be very popular war and you definitely won't need to lock people down.
Look at Russia as an example. The war has been longer and less popular than expected and economic sanctions have hurt the working class the most.
China imports 66%-75% of its oil. That would drop dramatically in a hot war, as oil imports via the South China Sea would likely be blocked. This would require any imports to sail around Australia, which would likely be stopped by the US.
Russia would happily sell China oil, but it doesn't produce nearly enough to cover the gap.
No oil, no military. No oil, no economy.
Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast
#190We need a cheaper way to down these spy balloons. The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon. Send over the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler (HELIOS) to protect the west coast.
> The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon. This seems like conjecture. Is there any reliable data on how much said balloon cost?
>This seems like conjecture.
It's conjecture for me to presume the sky is blue without looking out of my window, but it's a safe bet on days with good weather.
Unless this balloon -- or whatever it was -- was diamond-bedazzled and platinum-plated and filled with alien technology it's a safe bet that it was a fair amount cheaper to produce/launch/maintain than sortieing one of the most expensive and exclusive modern aircraft in the world and shooting off a missile that costs 600k/ea -- and that's not even considering collateral costs associated to the action.