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U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

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

#391

Post by Dalewyn »

daguava wrote: post #370
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…

[flagged]

You can't even throw aerial devices over /friendly/ states without people taking that insanely seriously.

Intentionally entering sovereign space without prior notice and mutual agreement is a big no-no.

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

#392

Post by bamboozled »

gharman wrote: post #85
bamboozled wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact there would be no point ?

Cost differential is an interesting thing to consider if this were done at scale. That single missile cost ~$500K (plus flight time for the F22 isn't cheap). How much would each balloon be, especially if some were decoys without any real payload? That said, drones vs ships seems like a starker cost differential than this.

On the other hand, I’ll ask again, what’s the point ? We have balloons flying around ? Cool ?

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

#393

Post by acdha »

InTheArena wrote: post #335
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…

China just very successfully overflew the continental us with a military payload, and now knows, unequivocally that F-22's can operate at 60k feet. Both have significant propaganda and military value. There is a reason we learned in the cold war that overflights have to be governed by treaty. It led to the near destruction of the world. China, apparently, just deliberately American Airspace. In the above post, you co…

> China just very successfully overflew the continental us with a military payload, and now knows, unequivocally that F-22's can operate at 60k feet.

This is something they already knew, even if their sole intelligence gathering exercise was opening Wikipedia, which lists the service ceiling at 65k feet. Since they reportedly got the plans for several advanced aircraft via espionage, I’m quite skeptical that this got them any significant new intelligence.

(I should note that I consider the Chinese government reprehensible from a civil rights perspective - perhaps this could be a PR stunt or trying to test U.S. response times, but I highly doubt it got them any useful technical data.)

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

#394

Post by qwezxcrty »

yongjik wrote: post #229
yohanshi wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a taiwanese who lurks on hacker news for many years but when I saw this post I had to make an account. You are dead wrong, China is an enemy of the free world, pure and simple. South Koreans and Ukrainians would agree with me here. Especially since China has declared no limit friendship with russia

As a South Korean, well, I don't like the Chinese government either, but these aggressive rhetorics don't help. My own country was under decades of pro-American dictators, all the while conveniently enjoying the membership of the Free World(TM): at that point, what does "free" even mean? I'm not saying America is the force of evil; it has done some nice things, and some other pretty horrible things. What I'm trying t…

To my knowledge, Taiwan had a similar situation before the end of White Terror in early 90s. The US apparently had no problem with pro-American dictators.

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

#395

Post by moomoo11 »

404mm wrote: post #382

I feel like the balloon takedown was seriously mishandled. Imo it should have been shot down right after it crossed our borders and before it started move over populated areas. That way there would be no surveillance and you could examine the payload. Now that it’s in the water, you may not even find it.

Do you really believe the USAF and rest of the military and 3 letter agencies had not already intercepted/jammed/hacked the comms link?

By letting it saunter all the way across they also probably got a lot of good info on its capabilities.

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

#396

Post by IAmGraydon »

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?

It really is a shame that snarky posts that add nothing of value like this seem to be on the rise on HN. This used to be one of the few places on the internet you could go to avoid brain dead commentary from people who think they're clever and really belong with the children on Reddit.

I really hope that the core group here gets a grip on this. In case you haven't read it in a while:

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#397

Post by Dalewyn »

jemmyw wrote: post #360
rhaway84773 wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. hasn’t done anything to any country even close to being the equivalent of what China did in Tibet. Or is doing to the Uighurs in its own country. And that’s a China that has had economic and military power at an international level for less than 2 decades. All that being said, there’s no real point in comparing which one has been historically worse to determine who is destabilizing the world more in any give…

Well arguably what America / Europe did to the native Americans was worse. And it's a shame in these current times when America could do with being the stand up ethical superpower there hasn't been a nationwide recognition of that. This is a partial and partly formed view of mine. I don't have great knowledge of the history.

Native American Indians today enjoy sovereignty within their tribal lands as a consequence of the US doing horrible acts upon them, they are countries unto themselves in modern terms with the US representing them internationally in their stead for brevity's sake. Culturally they are revered as courageous natives of the land who deserve our respect (see: AH-64 Apache, et al.).

So please, educate yourself before making a fool of yourself.

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

#398

Post by AnimalMuppet »

bradleyjg wrote: post #202
qqtt wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world should also be very concerned about the current leader in China, who is currently re-writing the democratic traditions of China to remain in power indefinitely, which echoes the moves certain other leaders have made. This is, time and time again, a precursor to using military adventurism to justify and consolidate their grip on power. If anything, people aren't worried enough. Being overly sensitive about a…

Uh, what democratic traditions of China?

Well, at least the term limits in the top spot. It's not much, but in terms of a limit on the power of one person, it was about all they had. And now it's gone.

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

#399

Post by eddsh1994 »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #367

How does a surveillance balloon get the collected data back to where it is analyzed and used? I suspect the data is relayed by satellite (unless there are collection sites within the US). Which Chinese satellites are able to cover the US?

I assume China has global coverage, as the US does?

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

#400

Post by rendang »

ajross wrote: post #217
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…

> politicians making a contest of who is really 'tough on China' I know you're deliberately wording this to avoid a partisan angle, but I genuinely think that it's hurting your point here. There is no "contest" at play here. There are no "both sides". All this rhetoric is coming from one side of the aisle. And I agree it's bad, and hurtful, and quite frankly probably doing more to help the Chinese position on the wor…

On the contrary, Biden has been very tough on China, and what about Pelosi's Taiwan visit, maybe the most significant provocation in the bilateral relationship in the past decade
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