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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

#811

Post by esolyt »

blamazon wrote: post #99
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

The US state apparatus did not make a big deal of this. The media and the public did, and the US state apparatus answered to the media and the public, as is their duty.

> the US state apparatus answered to the media and the public, as is their duty.

No, the state feeds the media what it wants to see reported. They can share what they want and they can hide what they want from the media.

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

#812

Post by moomoo11 »

bbor wrote: post #804
moomoo11 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must be nice being so privileged to talk down the very thing that maintains global trade channels (diplomacy) and keeps most of the world in check. Most of the world is backwater nations who oppress the shit out of their population making whatever faults you find in the US seem trivial. And yes the world isn’t fair and entropy exists. EU is basically a forced alliance after thousand years of constant fighting that le…

Hmmm… I wonder why the country with the biggest military (and their Allies) is the only place rich enough not to be a backwater? I implore you to think how you might answer that question if you were born in such a backwater. Especially if it was a backwater where the US had recently used that military to significantly influence the government, such as Iran, 1953 Guatemala, 1954, Congo, 1960, Laos, 1960, Iraq, 1963, B…

My backwater nation was previously a British colony. Today people who look like me do their best to put other people who like me down. Massacres happen, people live like insects in awful conditions just trying to survive while govt and industrialists operate without any loyalty or care for the country. No wonder people try to immigrate out.

The Americans kicked British empire back to their island in the 1700s and imo historically speaking makes me side with them. Especially considering they were successful in 1700s… and on their own with a strategic naval help from Marquis de Lafayette.

Again in a world with awful horrible people at least America maintains the order for a far more important role - diplomacy through global trade. The only reason the world has gotten better for so many people all around the world is the last 70 years that America has completely dominated the world stage. Global trade, capitalism, and opening up has made the world objectively better. Even the communists practice capitalism. Or in America they work for Meta/Google/hi tech while pretending to be comrade.

And it’s not like those countries were some hippie communes. They were extremely brutal to their own people in some cases, I mean go read about Asian or African histories from just this past 100 years. They did awful shit to their own people and with America nowhere in sight til WW2

Again the world isn’t perfect. You have to place your bets, and mine is that I don’t trust most of the other countries in the world to do better than what the USA has accomplished thus far. It’s why I personally choose to live in the USA when I have like 150+ choices to potentially choose.

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

#813

Post by _w9pt »

cm2187 wrote: post #708
dendrite9 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this link earlier but it was tracked. Here is a flight path of Canadian fighters checking the balloon out as it crossed towards Montana. https://twitter.com/steffanwatkins/status/162136299808111001... The link was in this longer, and good article: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinas-spy-balloon-ove...

CF18 seem to have a service ceiling of 15km. This thing was about 20km high. Could they shoot it if they wanted?

Yes, if they had standard medium range missiles like the AMRAAM.

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

#815

Post by prox »

aragonite wrote: post #680
KennyBlanken wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like the large size is mostly just solar panels (I'm assuming that's what they were; they could have been 'sails' to help steer it) and their scaffolding. From some of the available photos there's two wings, each with eight panels. There's a tradeoff between the weight of the solar panels vs simply using batteries (though batteries don't like the cold, and solar panels do), so I think maybe they were hoping…

> I don't particularly like the precedent we just set especially in view of the fact that the upper limit of sovereign airspace is not defined by international law. In fact there are proposals to treat the 18-160km zone as a transitional region of reduced sovereignty akin to EEZs. https://iaass.space-safety.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/24/2... > Legally however, it is an indistinct region where it is not clear whethe…

While that’s an admirable goal, in practice this is an operation above or in US airspace, which seemed to be unannounced by another nation state. There is little wiggle room for an honest blunder. China could have send out a press release their balloon was out of control or whatever.

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

#816

Post by cm2187 »

_w9pt wrote: post #813
cm2187 wrote: post #708

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CF18 seem to have a service ceiling of 15km. This thing was about 20km high. Could they shoot it if they wanted?

Yes, if they had standard medium range missiles like the AMRAAM.

But can missiles hit a balloon? I assumed they were designed to target large hot metallic objects.

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

#817

Post by inglor_cz »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #645
riku_iki wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

electronics is damaged by water likely, it could have more chance to survive if hit the ground.

You can always dry things out. Hitting the ground is harder than hitting water, and it really depends on how they took out the balloon (if they were able to hit it with a small puncture, the balloon would come down more softly, but guns don’t really go to 60k, so it was probably a missile right?

You can dry things out, but seawater is really corrosive. After several hours or days spent in such environment, I wouldn't bet on any normal electronics working.

SpaceX experimented with catching spent fairings above water precisely because they wanted to avoid any contact between seawater and internal electronics of the fairing. At the end of the day, they reinforced the fairings electronics against water intrusion (AFAIK?) and this proved to be more economical than catching the fairings with a net, but Chinese airborne spying devices are unlikely to be as hardened against seawater intrusion as SpaceX fairings.

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

#818

Post by giantrobot »

jeffbee wrote: post #340
ascotan wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't the first balloon with equipment on it that has overflown US territory (which should also put to rest the 'rogue weather balloon' theory). China has been doing this ever since Trump started levying import taxes on Chinese goods. This particular balloon was brazen enough to be loitering over military targets for some time. It makes sense to do a shoot down over the ocean so you can have a better chance to r…

Since you appear to believe this balloon had a surveillance mission, please explain what data it could conceivably have collected that isn't much easier to collect some other way. The military targets over which you suggest this aircraft intentionally loitered do not even have restricted airspaces. Anyone could get in a plane and fly right over them at whatever altitude they choose and nobody would even notice. You c…

SIGINT, ELINT, and MASINT. Putting a bunch of radars on a balloon platform is relatively cheap, much cheaper than a satellite. It's also got better plausible deniability than a similarly equipped airplane.

Ground penetrating radar over military bases can yield useful intelligence. So can gauging the response times and radio characteristics of air defense radars. Then there's good ol' photo reconnaissance. Such a huge platform could easily have stabilized mounts for high resolution cameras. Being an order of magnitude closer to the targets makes for better photos.

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

#820

Post by prox »

SpicyP wrote: post #735
sandworm101 wrote: post #472

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turnaround/prototyping. Getting a sensor onto a spy sat is a multi-year process of testing and validating. But a new balloon can probably be built and flown in a matter of weeks. So any country trying to learn how to spy from above might want to build up the relevant corporate knowledge using balloons.

Why did they need to test it over the United States though? If the purpose was prototyping you’d think they could have done that locally

Who is to say they already have? And they felt it was time to put the thing to use.
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