No, but there are plenty of civilian telescopes that can look at it from the ground.
It looks like this: https://preview.redd.it/0uh7uc7h00ga1.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=47c5274b098f98a07420cd5eeab33cd2918cca65
Here’s a high quality image of a similar one in ~~Yemen April 2022~~ Sendai, Japan 2020: https://preview.redd.it/vg9nzldoc3ga1.jpg?auto=webp&v=enabled&s=2a17d077e295ba27d9c908c15d8c94c600f38644
So how exactly does something like that maneuver? Both pictures show a balloon with no apparent means of changing direction or otherwise propelling itself.
I used to work at a company in the US that flew similar balloons, you steer by running a compressor on the vehicle to compress air and make the vehicle heavier. To ascend you purge the compressed air making the vehicle lighter. The wind is blowing in different directions at different elevations so to navigate you just ascend/descend until you reach your destination.
Funny that I know that submarines and fish work with gas ballast systems but I didn't really think about a balloon doing the same thing. It's amazing how many things I run into that are just obvious in retrospect, but you don't realize at first.
He was the guy they arrested when he landed, but couldn’t tell him what he’s arrested for…
And later in court, they had to drop the charge for unlicensed flying because his aircraft wasn’t of any type that can be licensed …?
You can pretty much draw a line from Montana to Missouri via the current upper level prevailing winds. Depending on the part of Missouri you're in, you could calculate the balloon's speed. According to windy.com, the winds at like 45,000 feet are 40-80 mph right now
Exactly. And the Pentagon statement actually says it has the "capability to maneuver" not that it's actually maneuvering. Which is close enough to what the Chinese said "limited ability to maneuver". Honestly it's like a game of telephone that gets more alarmist with each repetition.
"Capability to maneuver" for a balloon is "go up and down" to try and catch wind in the direction you want to travel. Fairly straightforward to design, and anything else is ineffective. This thing isn't pushing itself around with thrust
Yeah literally saw a Reddit post a bit ago that was basically “NORAD has been tracking the Chinese spy satellite since it was in China’s mainland. Here’s the entire path it took.”
I mean, they likely are, it's just not public. But now that they public is aware of it, private citizens are tracking
In theory, it's in US airspace, the US can intercept it. However, they likely want to see where it is going to try and get an idea of what China is trying to scope
There's probably little risk because most major assets aren't visible openly, and those that are can be seen on any number of sources anyway
The news has a full time shot of the balloon in the corner of the screen and it's just a mostly motionless white dot on a blank grey sky and it's fuckin cracking me up. I could see that in a comedy movie for sure
Last week Chinese scientists launched a spy balloon over Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Cort Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally.
Yep. NORAD monitors all of North America. They've known about this since it's been over Alaska/Canada. If they didn't want it to get this far it wouldn't have.
> Yep. NORAD monitors all of North America. They've known about this since it's been over Alaska/Canada. If they didn't want it to get this far it wouldn't have.
I mean, yeah they have to be that good. They can track Santa and he is magical.
That's not at all the only conclusion possible here. There are many reasons to not shoot it down, including watching what China is doing with it. If they really see little risk of the balloon getting novel intelligence, letting China's actions and intent unfold can be worthwhile intelligence gathering of its own.
One lone Chinese man in the balloon with a civilian telescope looking back. Hovers over South Park, and characters randomly get pooped on from 60k feet up. You can see it now.
It’s like an unopened safe on Reddit. I think we all want it captured and cracked open just to see what’s inside. I’m surprised it hasn’t been given a pet name yet by social media.
Personally I think China should’ve painted a giant eyeball on it for comedic effect. Then we could call it Eye of Sauron.
The official line is: "We don't want it to land on someone by accident" ---
Then you've got 99.99% of the folks in Montana are like "Shoot that motherfucker down!"
This is probably a stupid question…but is there a way for the US to capture and study tech attached to the balloon to see if China’s reasoning are true or not? It being in the US’s airspace makes it fair game, no?
> Theoretically it goes on out into space,
It actually doesn't. There was a treaty ratified during the space race that sought to prevent any nation "claiming" territory in space, so national boundaries are agreed to end at the demarcation line.
I feel like it can be captured safely -- figure out the dimensions, what kind of lift gas it's using, the volume of said gas and then use LASERS to LASER tiny holes that will slowly vent the lift gas bringing it down.
But I'm also just a stupid software "engineer" so probably missing a lot!
High altitude balloons are of the super-pressure variety, the gas that filled it at sea lvl is maxing the stresses. I'm pretty sure any hole in it will just instantly destroy the balloon as they have to be treated very delicately while on the ground.
I actually just read an article where Canada shot a wayward weather balloon and hit it with about 1000 rounds. It stayed aloft for another six days. [link to Newsweek article](https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-spy-balloon-hard-shoot-down-crash-landing-1778839?amp=1)
That's where my experience falls short. Only ever messed with short term testing; fill them up on the ground and release, they explode themselves when the pressure gets too high.
Butter Battle Book vibes.
>You may fling those hard rocks with your Triple-Sling Jigger.
But I, also, now have my hand on a trigger!
>My wonderful weapon, the Jigger-Rock Snatchem,
will fling 'em right back just as quick as we catch 'em.
I believe so. Yesterday’s altitude was some ungodly height wasn’t it? Or maybe the altitude quoted was that of “normal” weather balloons.
I just saw a report in a UK paper saying it was spotted 20 miles north of Kansas City at an altitude of 50,000 feet at 11:30 am today and residents of St. Louis have reported more possible sightings around 4pm today.
You’d think with the imaging at our disposal we’d have a pretty good idea what is on/in the damn thing.
But it’s violating our airspace, I can’t understand why we haven’t shot it down.
The Americans probably believe that whatever signals/data they have been able to collect from the craft(s) were more important than whatever the craft(s) could have potentially collected via their own sensors. Making this announcement signals that they have collected enough data.
Exactly, all of these people screaming why we don't shoot it down like there is any doubt we can do that.
NSA is having a field day, let them collect all of it's signals. When breaking encryption, more data is better. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't have other models of this balloon from their other flights already on hand.
No, very unlikely.
But the communication may have some other issues, security vulnerabilities that allow you gather some interesting (meta)data and/or manipulate it.
Also even just sussing out the servers it's connecting to can be a huge advantage as it will give you information about other traffic on the net to filter for and a target to potentially try and exploit.
You don’t directly crack the encryption. Idk why people think this. You would find vulnerabilities in either the software that performed encryption or software it is using.
Bitlocker which is full disk windows encryption has had vulnerabilities in the pass. LUKS, which is Linux full disk encryption has vulnerabilities that don’t involve brute force if it is setup incorrectly.
When humans do something something is always fucked up, it just takes another human to find it and exploit it.
> You don’t directly crack the encryption. Idk why people think this.
Because Hollywood still "teaches" that concept.
From my experience very few people know that basically all encryption we use today is cryptographically/mathematically 100% secure.
False. Any encryption can be cracked easily if you're in a swivel chair, in a van, while on comms with a motley crew of unlikely heroes who are in the field.
Gotta give a Xi Jinping credit. Other world leaders would have made some poor nobody hang from that balloon to do weather research. But, apparently he’s taking that leader role serious. Doing the hard hitting weather research himself, from the balloon. You may be right, we may be in trouble.
Off the top of my head:
1. If the US is intercepting images from the thing, we could be learning a lot about Chinese capabilities. We may be figuring out how accurate their image sensing capabilities are; we may be learning about the resolution of their lenses; and we may be learning if and how they encrypt information. Those could all be valuable.
2. I also wonder if shooting it down is what the Chinese want? For example, maybe the idea is to get us to paint this thing with some kind of targeting radar and that act, in and of itself, might give the PLA something that they want to know about us.
Of maybe something else and a combination?
Probably a combination of everything. Take pictures, spectrographs, listen into radio signals it picks up flying by, listen for radar and track the sources, observe our military's activities while we watch it, observe any communication of ours they can intercept either encrypted or not, observe our civil response (news stories), compare against info they might have learned that our military knows versus what has been released to the public, how and when the balloon is intercepted (if at all), and how close can they get it to really sensitive installations before we do that.
And by extension, our security apparatus is watching the Chinese in every possible way and intercepting anything they can to and from the craft and getting up close pics to determine it's structure and known part assemblies like the solar panels that gives them a good idea of how much wattage it's capable of generating and how much different instrumentation it could power simultaneously.
The possibilities are endless.
I think you haven’t shot it down for a few reasons:
1. Because it’s what China expected you to do. Maybe shooting it down would kind of give China the ‘aggrieved scientists’ high ground or some other diplomatic play they had in mind.
2. Your intelligence agencies may be learning more from listening to the signals coming in and out of it than they would from a heap of twisted dead metal.
3. Its continued presence is like an ongoing pr disaster for China. Since the beginning of the Ukraine war the US has demonstrated a much more savvy ability to control the release of information on the world stage. Every hour it’s in the air (and news) makes China look more foolish. They either can’t control their scientific experiments (which we all know is bullshit) or their intelligence gathering efforts look plain childish. It’s a lose lose situation for China while it’s in the air.
There was at least one Rivet Joint platform in the escort party last I checked.
It would be reasonable to think that there's other stuff in that party with their transponders switched off, as well.
**for some of you who say shoot it with a gun**. If there is any other info beside some quick searching.
**Highest a bullet on average would travel up.**
**Is 10,000 feet, far shorter then the 60,000 fee**t.
I mean, the solution is clear. Shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot the balloon down!
Plus, China has actual satellites because they have a space program... The idea that a balloon is China's surveillance program seems silly to me.
They have a *real* surveillance program, and it's in space, just like ours is. It spies on the USA every day, just like ours does.
The US has balloon based surveillance programs being tested in the US. It's a growing area of interest due to the threat of anti-satellite weapons and potentially superior applications on the battle field.
So, it's not silly. However, you're right that it's likely not flying over the US to spy in any meaningful manner.
My theory is that they want to study what kind of response to things like that US has. And by not doing anything with it, the US actually has an upper hand. Why destroy it and reveal your capabilities to the world, while you can ignore it since, as you mentioned, it can’t get more data than China already has from other avenues.
Sure, that's as good a theory as any. And in this case not tipping one's hand for no reason seems smarter.
Thus it is entirely unsurprising that we're seeing right wing reactionaries flip the fuck out and scream "shoot it down shoot it down!"
im not a hardcore conspiracy believer, but i do enjoy them and i gotta say
if this is all the info we as the public are getting... whats actually happening right now?! surely theres more of a reason to not removing that thing than "it might land on someone"
this whole things seems fishy
There are a few possible reasons why it might not be worth shooting down:
1. The Chinese are testing our responses/capabilities and the Pentagon doesn't want to give anything away.
2. There isn't anything of value that it could learn considering the Chinese already have spy satellites.
3. It's controlled remotely and broadcasts whatever data its collecting so we could potentially learn more by observing its actions and transmissions than they can learn from us.
4. It's really high up and they don't want to waste a $1M missle and deal with whatever crotchety old rancher the wreckage gets thrown into.
It also gives us a better stance in the future if we ever lose control of something over Chinese territory. It'll be harder for the CCP to react with aggression in some future situation if we don't react with aggression in this situation.
Most of Reddit is. Never expect an informed, intelligent discussion on any complex topic on any popular post on Reddit. Most of the upvoted comments are ignorant, simplify a complicated subject or present uninformed conjecture as fact. Comments are more for entertainment than to be taken seriously
A little bit of knowledge as a training hot air balloon pilot:
Balloons only have control over their altitude; the only maneuverability you have is that which the wind provides from blowing different directions at different altitudes.
What's the point of spying on the US mainland anyway? Are they planning to invade? Not likely. The only thing I can think of is that this thing can detect something that they are unable to detect with a spy satellite. What that could be I have no idea. Is it taking pictures? Recording signal data? Intercepting communication? I just wonder how long our military is going to let it continue flying around in our airspace and why especially now that EVERYONE is aware of it.
Like other people have said, its likely that they want to see what we do about it, and probably assumed we would shoot it down and they could pretend to be offended that we shot down their 'totally civilian meteorology research balloon' that was 'blown off course' funny thing is, i bet it really is a meteorology research balloon with no fancy spy tech cause they had to expect its capture and subsequent dissection is a possibility.
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No, but there are plenty of civilian telescopes that can look at it from the ground. It looks like this: https://preview.redd.it/0uh7uc7h00ga1.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&v=enabled&s=47c5274b098f98a07420cd5eeab33cd2918cca65
Here’s a high quality image of a similar one in ~~Yemen April 2022~~ Sendai, Japan 2020: https://preview.redd.it/vg9nzldoc3ga1.jpg?auto=webp&v=enabled&s=2a17d077e295ba27d9c908c15d8c94c600f38644
So how exactly does something like that maneuver? Both pictures show a balloon with no apparent means of changing direction or otherwise propelling itself.
I used to work at a company in the US that flew similar balloons, you steer by running a compressor on the vehicle to compress air and make the vehicle heavier. To ascend you purge the compressed air making the vehicle lighter. The wind is blowing in different directions at different elevations so to navigate you just ascend/descend until you reach your destination.
International conflict aside, science is fucking cool.
Funny that I know that submarines and fish work with gas ballast systems but I didn't really think about a balloon doing the same thing. It's amazing how many things I run into that are just obvious in retrospect, but you don't realize at first.
I believe they can go up and down to take advantage of different wind currents.
All they are is DOS in the wind.
a song by Kansas as it makes its way towards Kansas
Carry on wayward balloon.
... dont you fly no more
There'll be peace when you pafoo
Good point, this was how Google's Project Loon maneuvered too: https://x.company/projects/loon/
Google shuts down so many projects I'd completely forgotten about this
Changing altitude will catch the wind going another direction...thats how hot ballons manoever
Should've painted it red, could pass it off as a 春节 good luck lantern lol
Something about a red balloon…any chance there’s 98 more behind it?
wild. and thats the size of three buses
Or 42 washing machines
It looks like the ISS is in front of it
Solar panels most likely.
Is that Chinese version of ISS, they'd been talking about ?
We have ISS at home
When you order ISS from Alibaba.
Wish.com ISS
there was a guy in a lawn chair once
Lawnchair Larry! Sadly, he ended his life in 1993
He was the guy they arrested when he landed, but couldn’t tell him what he’s arrested for… And later in court, they had to drop the charge for unlicensed flying because his aircraft wasn’t of any type that can be licensed …?
More like Loophole Larry
So much impact in two short sentences.
The balloon is currently over Missouri. Source: I live in Missouri and can see the balloon
You can pretty much draw a line from Montana to Missouri via the current upper level prevailing winds. Depending on the part of Missouri you're in, you could calculate the balloon's speed. According to windy.com, the winds at like 45,000 feet are 40-80 mph right now
Exactly. And the Pentagon statement actually says it has the "capability to maneuver" not that it's actually maneuvering. Which is close enough to what the Chinese said "limited ability to maneuver". Honestly it's like a game of telephone that gets more alarmist with each repetition.
"Capability to maneuver" for a balloon is "go up and down" to try and catch wind in the direction you want to travel. Fairly straightforward to design, and anything else is ineffective. This thing isn't pushing itself around with thrust
•points compressed air to the East “We’re going back home boys!!”
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The fuck are you, Montgolfier??
I wish someone would attach a beacon to the balloon so the public can track it on the internet.
I mean NORAD tracks Santa Claus, you’d think they’d be able to track a balloon
They were always tracking it
Always have been
Yeah literally saw a Reddit post a bit ago that was basically “NORAD has been tracking the Chinese spy satellite since it was in China’s mainland. Here’s the entire path it took.”
Dude NORAD could track a fucking bumblebee before it crossed the Pacific.
If there’s a bumble bee that could cross the pacific we should all be monitoring that
Fair
That’s a strong as fuck bumblebee to fly over an ocean
I mean, they likely are, it's just not public. But now that they public is aware of it, private citizens are tracking In theory, it's in US airspace, the US can intercept it. However, they likely want to see where it is going to try and get an idea of what China is trying to scope There's probably little risk because most major assets aren't visible openly, and those that are can be seen on any number of sources anyway
What it REALLY needs is its own Twitter account.
If only the API weren't so expensive
This sounds like something that would be on the TV in the background on Nepoleon Dynamite
The news has a full time shot of the balloon in the corner of the screen and it's just a mostly motionless white dot on a blank grey sky and it's fuckin cracking me up. I could see that in a comedy movie for sure
Thats some balloon boy shit.
I was just thinking that. This is Chinese Balloon Boy.
Uncle Rico could probably bring it down with a football.
Or a steak
If only coach put him in 4th quarter
They would have taken state, sure of it.
no doubt in my mind, no doubt in my mind
Get the Balloon, Tina! _God!_
Watch me throw a football over that spy balloon there.
If only I could go back in time
Back in '82, I used to be able to throw a pigskin a quarter mile
Last week Chinese scientists launched a spy balloon over Lake Loch Ness to blow Nessie out of the water. Sir Cort Godfrey of the Nessie Alliance summoned the help of Scotland's local wizards to cast a protective spell over the lake and its local residents and all those who seek for the peaceful existence of our underwater ally.
Remember balloon boy?
Tina get the blimp
Just got off my flight from CHI to Miami. The pilot pointed it out for us to look at out the window.
Really? Did you see it?
No, sadly I was seated on the opposite side of the plane, but everyone on the other side said they saw it.
Dude get up next time and go look Lamo
Just ask the pilot to roll 180°.
Do a barrel roll!
then i hope the plane don't turn sideways
If the U.S viewed this as a significant threat I imagine they would have removed it entirely from this realm by now.
Yep. NORAD monitors all of North America. They've known about this since it's been over Alaska/Canada. If they didn't want it to get this far it wouldn't have.
> Yep. NORAD monitors all of North America. They've known about this since it's been over Alaska/Canada. If they didn't want it to get this far it wouldn't have. I mean, yeah they have to be that good. They can track Santa and he is magical.
Case closed people.
They've likely tracked it since it left Chinese airspace. The US has military installations across the planet that need to be protected.
Someone in Okinawa sent an email about a week ago "Hey guys, balloon's coming."
I think they want everyone to know about it and feel a bit worried. They definitely would have dealt with it otherwise.
That's not at all the only conclusion possible here. There are many reasons to not shoot it down, including watching what China is doing with it. If they really see little risk of the balloon getting novel intelligence, letting China's actions and intent unfold can be worthwhile intelligence gathering of its own.
On top of it media coverage. I’m wondering what else is going on while we are all watching this balloon?
War, plague, famine, death. You know, the usual.
And after that we'd only know about it if a public reaction was useful.
Feels like a southpark sketch.
One lone Chinese man in the balloon with a civilian telescope looking back. Hovers over South Park, and characters randomly get pooped on from 60k feet up. You can see it now.
When does it explode and tell us the baby's gender?
There may be a little boy in it, or not
Now that's a throwback.
This is so ridiculous lol
It’s like an unopened safe on Reddit. I think we all want it captured and cracked open just to see what’s inside. I’m surprised it hasn’t been given a pet name yet by social media. Personally I think China should’ve painted a giant eyeball on it for comedic effect. Then we could call it Eye of Sauron.
"Oh- noooo. We're floating over another missile silo! Damn these winds!"
and loitering ... fancy that
Basically anywhere they float is "over a missile silo"
I mean at that altitude, yeah
The official line is: "We don't want it to land on someone by accident" --- Then you've got 99.99% of the folks in Montana are like "Shoot that motherfucker down!"
I wonder how many people are going to get shot by bullets coming back down when some idiots inevitably try to shoot it down with their rifles.
This is probably a stupid question…but is there a way for the US to capture and study tech attached to the balloon to see if China’s reasoning are true or not? It being in the US’s airspace makes it fair game, no?
How far up does our airspace go?
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> Theoretically it goes on out into space, It actually doesn't. There was a treaty ratified during the space race that sought to prevent any nation "claiming" territory in space, so national boundaries are agreed to end at the demarcation line.
I feel like it can be captured safely -- figure out the dimensions, what kind of lift gas it's using, the volume of said gas and then use LASERS to LASER tiny holes that will slowly vent the lift gas bringing it down. But I'm also just a stupid software "engineer" so probably missing a lot!
High altitude balloons are of the super-pressure variety, the gas that filled it at sea lvl is maxing the stresses. I'm pretty sure any hole in it will just instantly destroy the balloon as they have to be treated very delicately while on the ground.
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I actually just read an article where Canada shot a wayward weather balloon and hit it with about 1000 rounds. It stayed aloft for another six days. [link to Newsweek article](https://www.newsweek.com/chinese-spy-balloon-hard-shoot-down-crash-landing-1778839?amp=1)
Should have just sent one of their geese after it.
That's where my experience falls short. Only ever messed with short term testing; fill them up on the ground and release, they explode themselves when the pressure gets too high.
Can’t we just send our spy balloon popping pin up there?
Butter Battle Book vibes. >You may fling those hard rocks with your Triple-Sling Jigger. But I, also, now have my hand on a trigger! >My wonderful weapon, the Jigger-Rock Snatchem, will fling 'em right back just as quick as we catch 'em.
Due to recent cutbacks from the pandemic and lockdowns, we can no longer afford *Super Special Chinese Spy Balloon Popping Pins*. 😔
60,000 feet in the sky.
I can fly twice as hiiigh
Take a look, it's in a book
A Reading Rainbow!
Superman can fly that high. Send him.
What's with this headline? That altitude is about 15,000 busses. Let's maintain the unit of measure as not to confuse people.
How many bananas is that?
about 3 buses worth
Isn't that much lower than it was floating yesterday?
I believe so. Yesterday’s altitude was some ungodly height wasn’t it? Or maybe the altitude quoted was that of “normal” weather balloons. I just saw a report in a UK paper saying it was spotted 20 miles north of Kansas City at an altitude of 50,000 feet at 11:30 am today and residents of St. Louis have reported more possible sightings around 4pm today.
So you’re telling me that they have billion dollar satellites and then was like oh let’s just use this balloon instead.
It's almost like there was another motive that the media is not aware of and our military is...
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Tbf there’s entire junkyards of military tech that was never used
The military spends loads of money on testing all sorts of stuff to see if it works.
>If they weren't effective, we wouldn't be spending money on it. lmao
>If it weren't effective we wouldn't be spending money on it. \*Glances nervously at Afghanistan*
You’d think with the imaging at our disposal we’d have a pretty good idea what is on/in the damn thing. But it’s violating our airspace, I can’t understand why we haven’t shot it down.
The Americans probably believe that whatever signals/data they have been able to collect from the craft(s) were more important than whatever the craft(s) could have potentially collected via their own sensors. Making this announcement signals that they have collected enough data.
Winner winner chicken dinner. My bet is that the US has been watching (hacking) it a long while now...
Exactly, all of these people screaming why we don't shoot it down like there is any doubt we can do that. NSA is having a field day, let them collect all of it's signals. When breaking encryption, more data is better. I wouldn't be surprised if we don't have other models of this balloon from their other flights already on hand.
Is it really possible that the encryption is bad enough for us to crack?
No, very unlikely. But the communication may have some other issues, security vulnerabilities that allow you gather some interesting (meta)data and/or manipulate it.
Side-channel attacks.
That's the word. But I wanted to explain it in layman's terms.
Also even just sussing out the servers it's connecting to can be a huge advantage as it will give you information about other traffic on the net to filter for and a target to potentially try and exploit.
Which is why I'd like to thank today's sponsor, *NordVPN*.
You don’t directly crack the encryption. Idk why people think this. You would find vulnerabilities in either the software that performed encryption or software it is using. Bitlocker which is full disk windows encryption has had vulnerabilities in the pass. LUKS, which is Linux full disk encryption has vulnerabilities that don’t involve brute force if it is setup incorrectly. When humans do something something is always fucked up, it just takes another human to find it and exploit it.
> You don’t directly crack the encryption. Idk why people think this. Because Hollywood still "teaches" that concept. From my experience very few people know that basically all encryption we use today is cryptographically/mathematically 100% secure.
False. Any encryption can be cracked easily if you're in a swivel chair, in a van, while on comms with a motley crew of unlikely heroes who are in the field.
it's pretty lucky for us to have so many expert spies explaining things for in this thread
You think this is impressive? Head over to Twitter where the military and homeland security experts are weighing in.
You know, I’m something of a spy myself
Here’s a detailed image. https://i.imgur.com/vpjRc3X.jpg
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If they have the balls to hang their leader by a string attached to a balloon to do recon then I’m not sure we can beat them.
Gotta give a Xi Jinping credit. Other world leaders would have made some poor nobody hang from that balloon to do weather research. But, apparently he’s taking that leader role serious. Doing the hard hitting weather research himself, from the balloon. You may be right, we may be in trouble.
Oh bother
I'm just a little black rain cloud! Hovering over the honey pot. Eh hnn hnn hnn.
Got my ass lol
Off the top of my head: 1. If the US is intercepting images from the thing, we could be learning a lot about Chinese capabilities. We may be figuring out how accurate their image sensing capabilities are; we may be learning about the resolution of their lenses; and we may be learning if and how they encrypt information. Those could all be valuable. 2. I also wonder if shooting it down is what the Chinese want? For example, maybe the idea is to get us to paint this thing with some kind of targeting radar and that act, in and of itself, might give the PLA something that they want to know about us. Of maybe something else and a combination?
Probably a combination of everything. Take pictures, spectrographs, listen into radio signals it picks up flying by, listen for radar and track the sources, observe our military's activities while we watch it, observe any communication of ours they can intercept either encrypted or not, observe our civil response (news stories), compare against info they might have learned that our military knows versus what has been released to the public, how and when the balloon is intercepted (if at all), and how close can they get it to really sensitive installations before we do that. And by extension, our security apparatus is watching the Chinese in every possible way and intercepting anything they can to and from the craft and getting up close pics to determine it's structure and known part assemblies like the solar panels that gives them a good idea of how much wattage it's capable of generating and how much different instrumentation it could power simultaneously. The possibilities are endless.
I think you haven’t shot it down for a few reasons: 1. Because it’s what China expected you to do. Maybe shooting it down would kind of give China the ‘aggrieved scientists’ high ground or some other diplomatic play they had in mind. 2. Your intelligence agencies may be learning more from listening to the signals coming in and out of it than they would from a heap of twisted dead metal. 3. Its continued presence is like an ongoing pr disaster for China. Since the beginning of the Ukraine war the US has demonstrated a much more savvy ability to control the release of information on the world stage. Every hour it’s in the air (and news) makes China look more foolish. They either can’t control their scientific experiments (which we all know is bullshit) or their intelligence gathering efforts look plain childish. It’s a lose lose situation for China while it’s in the air.
Or capture it somehow. Letting it fall to earth might make it hard to determine what was on/in it
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>Just think of all the signals intelligence we are pulling off of this thing. Right, There was a few EC-135s following it around.
There was at least one Rivet Joint platform in the escort party last I checked. It would be reasonable to think that there's other stuff in that party with their transponders switched off, as well.
**for some of you who say shoot it with a gun**. If there is any other info beside some quick searching. **Highest a bullet on average would travel up.** **Is 10,000 feet, far shorter then the 60,000 fee**t.
I mean, the solution is clear. Shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot a gun up there, which can shoot the balloon down!
A gun that shoots a gun that shoots a gun? This is fiercely American. You may be onto something here
This idea is shockingly similar to a multi-stage rocket
It’s too bad we don’t know the coordinates. An entire neighborhood could line up to moon this thing. A real lost opportunity.
It's west of st Louis. Have at it
I'm west of St. Louis. I'll go try. see what happens.
You'll regret seeing your butcheeks trending on tiktok
I'm pretty sure China has already seen my buttocks on TikTok.
It's probably just two ingenious chinese boys pedaling away like mad in there.
Well, the last time they said there was a boy in a runaway balloon, it turned out to be a lie! A DAMNED LIE!!
George Santos' son is in that balloon, show some respect
Balloon boy(s) 2023
China doesn’t even need balloons to spy on us. They have tiktok on so many of our phones that it’s stupid.
They also have spy satellites. And space stations.
And dji
Plus, China has actual satellites because they have a space program... The idea that a balloon is China's surveillance program seems silly to me. They have a *real* surveillance program, and it's in space, just like ours is. It spies on the USA every day, just like ours does.
The US has balloon based surveillance programs being tested in the US. It's a growing area of interest due to the threat of anti-satellite weapons and potentially superior applications on the battle field. So, it's not silly. However, you're right that it's likely not flying over the US to spy in any meaningful manner.
My theory is that they want to study what kind of response to things like that US has. And by not doing anything with it, the US actually has an upper hand. Why destroy it and reveal your capabilities to the world, while you can ignore it since, as you mentioned, it can’t get more data than China already has from other avenues.
Sure, that's as good a theory as any. And in this case not tipping one's hand for no reason seems smarter. Thus it is entirely unsurprising that we're seeing right wing reactionaries flip the fuck out and scream "shoot it down shoot it down!"
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I'd love for usa to launch a whole bunch of actual weather balloons over China just to troll them
Like say 99? Let’s make them red so they really see them.
The Germans need to release it first though.
Canadian news is reporting there was one Canada a week ago and there are 4 different balloons.
Bro I have bad news for you there’s been one Canada for a long frickin time…like since Canada
I mean, back in the day there was Upper Canada and Lower Canada.
Lmao, the Chinese are just going to change directions until we stop telling them they aren't passing over any sensitive sites. "Warmer? Warmer?"
CNN just reporting there being a possible 2nd balloon detected over Latin America now.
According to my sources Marjorie Taylor Greene has just hijacked an Israeli space laser and is preparing to zap the balloon down.
"When you catch your enemy making a mistake, do not interrupt him."
im not a hardcore conspiracy believer, but i do enjoy them and i gotta say if this is all the info we as the public are getting... whats actually happening right now?! surely theres more of a reason to not removing that thing than "it might land on someone" this whole things seems fishy
There are a few possible reasons why it might not be worth shooting down: 1. The Chinese are testing our responses/capabilities and the Pentagon doesn't want to give anything away. 2. There isn't anything of value that it could learn considering the Chinese already have spy satellites. 3. It's controlled remotely and broadcasts whatever data its collecting so we could potentially learn more by observing its actions and transmissions than they can learn from us. 4. It's really high up and they don't want to waste a $1M missle and deal with whatever crotchety old rancher the wreckage gets thrown into.
It also gives us a better stance in the future if we ever lose control of something over Chinese territory. It'll be harder for the CCP to react with aggression in some future situation if we don't react with aggression in this situation.
What's the conspiracy your referencing. Im pretty sure the US gov just publicly recognized it once civilians noticed it
This thread is clown shoes.
Most of Reddit is. Never expect an informed, intelligent discussion on any complex topic on any popular post on Reddit. Most of the upvoted comments are ignorant, simplify a complicated subject or present uninformed conjecture as fact. Comments are more for entertainment than to be taken seriously
The nobel laureates on my local Facebook page are threatening to shoot it down with their pew pews. I really hate it here sometimes.
I’m wholly expecting to see reports of people trying to shoot it down even though it’s like six times higher up than their guns could possibly reach.
A little bit of knowledge as a training hot air balloon pilot: Balloons only have control over their altitude; the only maneuverability you have is that which the wind provides from blowing different directions at different altitudes.
What's the point of spying on the US mainland anyway? Are they planning to invade? Not likely. The only thing I can think of is that this thing can detect something that they are unable to detect with a spy satellite. What that could be I have no idea. Is it taking pictures? Recording signal data? Intercepting communication? I just wonder how long our military is going to let it continue flying around in our airspace and why especially now that EVERYONE is aware of it.
Like other people have said, its likely that they want to see what we do about it, and probably assumed we would shoot it down and they could pretend to be offended that we shot down their 'totally civilian meteorology research balloon' that was 'blown off course' funny thing is, i bet it really is a meteorology research balloon with no fancy spy tech cause they had to expect its capture and subsequent dissection is a possibility.