Chinese balloon. Threat or menace?

[UnseenParticipant]

This is not a weather balloon that simply wandered into American airspace by natural wind currents. That initial Chinese explanation is simply absurd. Rather, it is the size of 2 or 3 buses, so it is full of Chinese technology, and it is steerable. It has been flown over several military sites. It hasn’t been shot down because much can be learned by simply observing its activities and decoding and  moderating its signaling. Perhaps one purpose is to test our response to a Chinese military incursion into American airspace.

 

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

I would not be surprised at all if the Reds in China were using it to gauge our response in order to plan the next move. Media in Red China has chatter laughing at us for being floundered by a balloon.

If we had any kind of valid National Defense, we would have scrambled, shot down, and recovered this thing the moment it reached the airspace over Territorial Waters of The Aleutian Islands. Then, I’d announce to Emperor Xi and the PLA that we had enough of the Wu Flu he released on the world and we are aren’t putting up with this shit here.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Grammar

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco et al

Did we even have the right to shoot down the balloon under international law? The answer is murkier than you might expect even if it is a spy balloon. Under the Open Skies Agreement, signatories have the RIGHT to overfly each other with unarmed aircraft for purposes of intelligence gathering. Now, China wasn’t a signatory, but if they try to invoke it, then it gives us the right to overfly their sovereign airspace.

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

They certainly never identified the purpose of the balloon. So, if they are going to be inscrutable, then our Armed Forces have every reason to “scrute” that something could prove hostile, certainly from a Totalitarian State that just recently released a deadly virus on the world, that violently clamped down on it’s own people in Hong Kong and Xinjaing, that conducts missile maneuvers in The South China Sea, and desires “reunification” of Taiwan with the Mainland.

Treaty or no, that thing had to go down.

• This reply was modified 1 month, 2 weeks ago by  TheEncogitationer. Reason: Addendum

[UnseenParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

Unseen, They certainly never identified the purpose of the balloon. So, if they are going to be inscrutable, then our Armed Forces have every reason to “scrute” that something could prove hostile, certainly from a Totalitarian State that just recently released a deadly virus on the world, that violently clamped down on it’s own people in Hong Kong and Xinjaing, that conducts missile maneuvers in The South China Sea, and desires “reunification” of Taiwan with the Mainland. Treaty or no, that thing had to go down.

You are aware of the hypocrisy, though, because we spy on China in every way imaginable, probably including overflying China with the SR-71 Blackbird or whatever the latest version of such an aircraft happens to be.

Obviously, a country’s airspace doesn’t go on forever. It certainly doesn’t go as high as the region where satellites reside. In general, the space between where commercial aircraft fly and satellites is regarded as the aerial equivalent of international waters, so it’s not even clear that the balloon was doing anything illegal under international law even if it was spying.

We spy, they spy, everybody spies, and in the spy game it’s all about what you can get away with, isn’t it?

[TheEncogitationerParticipant]

Unseen,

You just posted the same video twice.

Yes, it is common knowledge that everybody spies on everybody. Allies spy on each other and that is a good thing, because it helps uncover security weaknesses to patch up and it encourages better security procedure and devices. Also, a friendly regime can turn hostile at a moment’s notice, so any knowledge that can undo the damage that results is useful too.

Also, it is true that Red China could just as easily get data via spy satellites and operatives within the U.S.

The danger of the balloon is that it gives Emperor Xi and the PLA an idea of just how much how far they can go without consequence.

And again, if we had a valid National Defense and didn’t have Sloppy Joe as CEO, that balloon would have been deflated and captured right over the Aleutian Islands airspace and it never would have made it across the North American Continent.

And it most likely wouldn’t even need an F-22. A high-flying version of a Piper Cub with a blowgun shooter riding shotgun probably could have taken the balloon down, with minimal damage to any electronics and mechanical equipment inside the balloon.

[UnseenParticipant]

@Enco

Yeah, I noticed the double post too late to fix it. Que sera sera, I guess.

I notice you didn’t actually refute anything I said, but opinions are always welcome here.

[UnseenParticipant]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

I would not be surprised at all if the Reds in China were using it to gauge our response in order to plan the next move. Media in Red China has chatter laughing at us for being floundered by a balloon.

Last night, on Curiosity Stream, I watched a segment of a series about WW2 spying.

One thing that was made clear to me is that you usually don’t want the other side to know what you know about their activities. It’s also useful to let them continue to believe a false assessment.

The Nazis had an unbelievably large complement of spies reporting on England’s preparations for the attack on their armies in France. Only all of them were double agents feeding Hitler and his generals exactly what the English generals wanted them to think. As a result, the Nazis were caught flatfooted when the expected invasion at Calais turned into an invasion at the Normandy beachhead. This disinformation was so successful that Hitler kept his forces at Calais for nearly a month and a half after the Normandy invasion. The invasion likely would have been a disastrous failure had Hitler not been flimflammed.

We may eventually find out that we were monitoring the balloon’s communications, learning things about their codes, finding out what they wanted to find out, and even making sure they were fed with regular doses of misinformation.

Things are not always as simple as simpletons (dummies?) want them to be.

What I’m saying is that if they didn’t act to down the balloon, don’t assume there couldn’t be a very good reason for doing so. If ignoring it makes us look weak, it may be to our advantage to let them think that.

[UnseenParticipant]

An interesting analysis of the possible real reason for the balloon:

BTW, the cost, all things considered, to shoot the balloon down was about $2 million.

 

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