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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

#361

Post by Merad »

zw123456 wrote: post #3
metadat wrote: post #2

Narrator: "A job well done by the US Military" I'm glad we have sufficient technology and capability to shoot down a balloon. What happens next?

The trick is to shoot it down in a way it falls slowly so you can retrieve it and see what is in it, although, I suspect our intelligence agencies have a pretty good idea already. I have no idea of course, but one thing I thought would be a Stingray, at that altitude you could intercept thousands of cell calls. I doubt that's what it is but the other thing is if it has any radio jamming capabilities or other things o…

I’ve seen some unconfirmed claims that they show it with a missile whose warhead fuse was disabled. Normally anti-aircraft missiles are proximity fused and throw out lots of fragments when they explode, kind of like a giant shotgun blast. With the warhead disabled presumably it just punctured the balloon to deflate it and, as you say, hopefully let it come down intact.

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

#362

Post by syngrog66 »

pxc wrote: post #102

I am so tired of China being used to stoke American jingoism, of politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' and, most horrifyingly, of seeing other USians online practically salivate as they fantasize about a war with China. It's some cold war boogieman horseshit. And it's depressing to watch here on Hacker News, too, any comments that question the beating of those war drums go dead. Yesterday I h…

Americans is the plural term for citizens of the USA. not USians

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

#363

Post by IAmGraydon »

mc32 wrote: post #300
pxc wrote: post #102

I am so tired of China being used to stoke American jingoism, of politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' and, most horrifyingly, of seeing other USians online practically salivate as they fantasize about a war with China. It's some cold war boogieman horseshit. And it's depressing to watch here on Hacker News, too, any comments that question the beating of those war drums go dead. Yesterday I h…

I think you're only examining one side of the story. Live in China for some time and see how they look at the rest of the world and people. And look at how we treat other current threats on the world stage at the moment. We do not make a special case for China --if anything the US has wishfully thought that if we treat them like a democracy they'll become a democracy and that has proven incorrect.

How long did you live in China for?

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

#364

Post by darkteflon »

pxc wrote: post #102

I am so tired of China being used to stoke American jingoism, of politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' and, most horrifyingly, of seeing other USians online practically salivate as they fantasize about a war with China. It's some cold war boogieman horseshit. And it's depressing to watch here on Hacker News, too, any comments that question the beating of those war drums go dead. Yesterday I h…

On the flipside, I’m tired that we can’t get two comments into these threads without someone implying that anyone concerned about the threat of China under Xi is a simpleton under the influence of US politicians and media.

You can both be sceptical of the bullshit and also concerned about what’s happened to China under Xi. These aren’t mutually exclusive beliefs.

If you’ve spent any time watching China over the past two decades you’ve seen a hugely troubling transformation. Ask any resident of a state with an interest in the South China Sea.

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

#365

Post by ineedasername »

pixl97 wrote: post #305
snickerbockers wrote: post #282

Im pretty impressed that it made it all the way across the continent in a couple days, i had no idea high altitude balloons could move that fast.

Technically the ballon isn't moving itself in anyway at all, it instead is depending on the wind. As the atmospheric pressure lowers the maximum speed of the wind can increase greatly. For example the speed of the jet stream commonly exceeds 275 miles per hour. It looks like the strongest jet winds were closer to canada, had the jet been in the US it could have made it across the country in a day.

There was mention by the Chinese that is had some motive power of its own, or at least strongly implied when their PR said some the thing like “limited maneuvering capability”. That seems to indicate that it had some. It would a bit surprising if a payload the size of 2-3 school buses wasn’t outfitted with a reasonable amount of controllability, at least some control surfaces even if they inexplicably excluded even minimal and limited propulsion.

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

#366

Post by dmoy »

Vecr wrote: post #256
bradleyjg wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, what democratic traditions of China?

They have some, possibly with Deng Xiaoping and that sort of era. Obviously Taiwan is democratic, but I'm not sure how much of that goes back to when the ROC controlled more of mainland China.

> I'm not sure how much of that goes back to when the ROC controlled more of mainland China.

Basically not at all. There was initially gonna be democracy, but then it was just warlords/generals controlling everything.

I mean ffs chiang kai shek stayed as president until 1975 when he died.

Taiwan didn't really become democratic until maybe 25-ish years ago.

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

#368

Post by mlindner »

calderknight wrote: post #311
strulovich wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of calculations are slightly silly. F22s take off for training flights all the time, having one training flight switch to operational does not affect the cost. It’s similar for using missiles. The opportunity to shoot a real one at a real target is good training. Those things costs this money perhaps, but it’s not a useful way to think of it this way for such a case.

I think the implication is not that the cost in this specific case was very high. I think the point was that there is an assymetry in cost. So, if someone wanted to have balloons over the USA, it would be much cheaper for them to try than it would be for the USA to stop them. By the time someone starts sending 1000's of balloons, the costs to destroy them may add up.

Threats that are few in number and great in number are handled by different sorts of countermeasures. If China really did flood the west in balloons, then alternate measures would be used to handle it, perhaps measures that aren't public.

High altitude balloons are very fragile (you need to wear gloves to avoid getting oils on them because those can dissolve the balloon material causing them to prematurely burst). I'm sure there's many counter measures that could be used if needed.

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

#369

Post by amatecha »

sandworm101 wrote: post #295
inawarminister wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sending balloons i to the airspace of other countries makes china's intention undeniable: they do not care for any rules-based international system https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/american-u-2-spy...

60+ years ago, almost beyond living memory. Comparing the military/intelligence realities of the early cold war to now is tenuous at best. If anything, such historical incidents made everyone realize then the need for rules-based international order.

Weeeeellll, US recon flights are basically continuously skirting the edge of China's airspace. Though there doesn't appear to be evidence of them straight up flying over Chinese airspace (at least by international definitions), this is also only what we know of publicly. U2s were flying over Soviet and Israeli airspace for something like four of five years until they were publicly revealed by the 1960 shootdown of one (read the history of the plane on the wikipedia page[0]).

2018: https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/10/politics/south-china-sea-flyo...

2020: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/26/asia/china-us-u-2-spy-plane-i...

2021: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/39890/did-an-rc-135-sp...

2022: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/air-force-rc-135u-elec...

2022: https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/29/politics/chinese-fighter-jet-...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2

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

#370

Post by daguava »

pxc wrote: post #102

I am so tired of China being used to stoke American jingoism, of politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' and, most horrifyingly, of seeing other USians online practically salivate as they fantasize about a war with China. It's some cold war boogieman horseshit. And it's depressing to watch here on Hacker News, too, any comments that question the beating of those war drums go dead. Yesterday I h…

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