Chinese Spy Balloon over Montana

[Coal Dragger]

We probably ended up giving the ChiComs their most useful data getting a good read on F-22 Raptor active search radar signature and air to air missile performance envelope at that altitude.

[camoman]

Are we seriously still on this “spy balloon” propaganda? As if China has no spy satellites, and balloons were the preferred spying method.
I’m gonna call bullshit right now!
What this actually was, was a very clear message, and dry run on China’s EMP delivery system.

[Wake27]

Even the Chinese are sophisticated enough to remote burn a drive once all the data has been sent to cloud.

If that really was the plan of the administration, it was a f'ing retarded one.

There was one correct move, drop the damn thing in the pacific and confirm it was a data collection device.

The point being that everyone is so anti-Biden that all kinds of ridiculous shit is being thrown out here. No one has suggested that maybe he just couldn’t make a decision and it literally took the balloon traversing the entire country for him to finally pick an option.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[jsbhike]

The point being that everyone is so anti-Biden that all kinds of ridiculous shit is being thrown out here. No one has suggested that maybe he just couldn’t make a decision and it literally took the balloon traversing the entire country for him to finally pick an option.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

I think the point was waiting till it had done whatever it was doing before knocking it down.

[mack7.62]

The balloon flew all the way across Alaska, that is where it should have been shot down not the East coast, likely it took that long to get Chinese permission to bring it down. The Bee nails it again.

U.S. Shoots Down Spy Balloon As It Was Getting Too Close To Ukraine

https://babylonbee.com/news/us-vows-...s-into-ukraine

U.S. — The Pentagon officially went ahead with their plan to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon as it was getting too close to Ukraine's borders, sources confirmed Saturday.

"We sent a strong message to China," said Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. "So long as the spy balloon stayed over America, we had peace. But the moment that spy balloon got a little too close to Ukraine - boom! We had to take it out."

General Austin proudly reported that the most high-tech missile defense systems in the world had been waiting to blow up the balloon for days. "Trust me, the Chinese are going to regret floating that balloon within thousands of miles of the Ukraine border. They should have kept that balloon where it was safe, floating over the U.S. and spying on American citizens."

[TMS951]

We probably ended up giving the ChiComs their most useful data getting a good read on F-22 Raptor active search radar signature and air to air missile performance envelope at that altitude.

Imagine if they just hung a broken satellite off a weather balloon and sent it, just to see what we’d do next.

And also a very effective means of a dry run for EMP delivery, and associated saber rattling.

Biggest message is things are getting spicy with China. I don’t think it’s something to be scoffed at and I don’t think it had anything to do with spying, satellites do that just fine.

[1168]

I know everyone hates this administration and will believe anything other than them doing something logical, but there is the possibility that it was determined early on that no significant intel could be transmitted from it, so they let intentionally it run to collect whatever it can to then shoot it down and salvage that data. As in, we can literally see what the Chinese wanted to see, from their perspective.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

It would be very easy to determine if its transmitting or receiving, and block both. If it can’t transmit, then it had little intel value until recovered. If it was receiving, but jammed, then we would be collecting intel from those transmissions. Its likely that we knew exactly what was being sent and/or received and factored that into the calculus.

Even the Chinese are sophisticated enough to remote burn a drive once all the data has been sent to cloud.

see above, no they’re not. Remote burn on a timer, perhaps. Upload to AWS? Nah.

Do the Chinese spy on us? Absolutely. A lot. With this contraption? Maybe, but not effectively, unless just to gauge our reaction.

[WillBrink]

We don't know it it's a spy balloon (although it probably is...) and I wonder if it would have been a better idea to use low(er) tech to take it out as to not give the CCP any info as to capabilities of the best tech we have to send for a balloon.

[Harpoon]

I wonder how many US aircraft were scrambled because of this one single balloon?

[Slater]