Why? I can assure you the Ballon was not a surprise
China ChiCom News Thread
- Thread starter LordsFire
- Start date
I get that is the popular opinion.
But I can assure you it is definitely possible that we can take it down with ease. If we want too.
We are keeping it up for a reason
DarthOne
☦️
My Lord man, how much Copium have you been taking?!
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Can you elaborate on what you mean here a bit?
I mean, I don't want to strawman and I try to give you the benefit of the doubt, but this doesn't seem reasonable.
We're not concealing that we were able to see the balloon, obviously. Otherwise, it wouldn't be all over the news, so that bit of defense isn't being hidden.
It doesn't seem credible to me that we're trying to conceal that the US military has enough firepower to pop* a balloon. Frankly, the idea that a balloon can beat the US military's air defenses feels about as credible as the idea that we could lose a Marine Expeditionary Unit to a Greek Phalanx because we didn't have any defenses prepared to deal with bronze spears.
*I'm a bit of a fan of LTA vehicles and I do know this kind of balloon doesn't pop like the one you got from a clown, it won't be under high pressure that will make it tear its own envelope and probably has baffles inside. Putting a couple of bullets through it won't do anything, we'd need to either punch a lot of holes or hit it with something that would burst and tear the envelope with shrapnel. However, I also fail to believe that the military is that limited in ability, that something like a machine gun or small explosive device is beyond our abilities fails to impress me and I also fail to believe that the Chinese or Russians would believe it either.
DarthOne
☦️
#ChineseSpyBalloon Similar high-altitude surveillance balloons and airships have previously been spotted over Hawaii, Japan, India, and the Phillipines.
2) @TuckerCarlson: "The Pentagon is tracking a very high altitude Chinese spy balloon over the northern US. The Pentagon has decided to not shoot down the balloon even though it's flying over 'sensitive sites.' There are intercontinental ballistic missile silos in that area."
3) The same type of reconnaissance balloon was spotted over Sendai, Japan, on June 17, 2020.
Japanese officials said:
"We have absolutely no idea what it is. It may be some kind of weather monitoring equipment, but it definitely isn't ours."
4) Japanese officials confirmed that the balloon was "equipped with a cross part hanging beneath it as well as two propellers," but were unable to determine the purpose or owner of the balloon.
https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200704/p2a/00m/0na/002000c…
5) The same type of reconnaissance balloon was spotted over Port Blair, India, on Jan. 6, 2022.
Indian officials were unaware of its origins.
"Zoomed photograph showed some eight dark panel-shaped equipment/objects attached to the flying object."
http://andamansheekha.com/101331/
6) The Air Force scrambled F-22s to investigate the same type of reconnaissance balloon off the coast of Hawaii on Feb. 16, 2022.
An Air Canada flight spotted the balloon on approach to Honolulu.
https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44352/f-22s-scrambled-to-investigate-suspicious-high-altitude-balloon-off-the-coast-of-hawaii…
7) Indo-Pacific Command visually confirmed that it was "an unmanned balloon without observable identification markings" floating in the air near the island of Kauai.
Quote Tweet
Kenneth S Hara
@HawaiiTAG
·
Feb 16, 2022
In regards to aerial activity over Kauai on 2-14:U.S. Indo-Pacific Command detected a high-altitude object floating in air in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands. In accordance with homeland defense procedures, Pacific Air Forces launched tactical aircraft to intercept and -1 /3
8) The Pacific Missile Range Facility on Kauai's west coast is one of the US military's most advanced testing sites.
The Navy describes it as "the world's largest instrumented multi-environmental range capable of supporting surface, subsurface, air, and space operations."
9) The USAF F-22s intercepted the "high altitude unmanned balloon" floating north of Kauai's Pacific Missile Range Facility.
https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/44352/f-22s-scrambled-to-investigate-suspicious-high-altitude-balloon-off-the-coast-of-hawaii…
11) Hawaii news reported:
"Kauai residents said it looked like jets shot it down, and some heard loud booms. But, the military said it did not fire at the balloon."
https://hawaiinewsnow.com/2022/02/19/residents-spot-mysterious-object-floating-above-kauai-military-responds-with-jets/…
12) A high-altitude surveillance airship was spotted over Pangasinan, Phillippines, on Dec. 18, 2022.
Images of the airship – taken about 62 miles from Subic Bay in the northern Philippines – were first posted on Facebook, then Reddit.
https://reddit.com/r/LessCredibleDefence/comments/zqt435/high_altitude_balloon_photographed_in_pangasinan/…
13) Chinese state media reported:
"There is no evidence the airship was from China, though its design appears similar to types on display at the Zhuhai air show."
14) Brazilian media reported that the airship seemed to turn "transparent" and had broad similarities to high-altitude airships that Chinese companies are known to have been working on.
The US and other nations have also developed similar airships.
https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/was-a-high-altitude-airship-spotted-recently-near-the-south-china-sea…
15) A Chinese-language poster depicting the Yuang Meng airship.
China's domestically developed floating airship Jimu-1.
A satellite image showing a Chinese airship in the Spratly islands in the South China Sea in 2019.
A US military airship in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2014.
16) The current Chinese spy balloon flying over the US is flying over "sensitive sites," like the Malmstrom Air Force Base, which holds well over 100 nuclear-tipped ICBM silos.
Red symbolizes active missile fields.
Black is deactivated.
https://thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinas-spy-balloon-over-montana-is-part-of-a-larger-more-troubling-pattern…
17) Meteorologist Dan Satterfield (@wildweatherdan), backtracked the balloon's course and traced it to central China.
18) Reporter: "Why not take it down?"
DOD: "Considering the size of the payload, looking at the potential for debris and the impact on civilians... We assessed that it does not pose a risk to people on the ground as it traverses the United States."
19) China does not need to fly a spy balloon over the USA when President Joe Biden's son admitted to working for the "spy chief of China."
The balloon is merely symbolic of China's control over the POTUS.
Seems this isn't the first time that China has pulled this crap in recent years.
How convenient that the gun on F-22 is a Vulcan firing 100 rounds per second.
Let's put it this way.
If I send a spycraft into your airspace. Would you want to know what it does before you destroy it so you can look at it and study it.
Or shoot it down and hope enough survives so you can hopefully get something.
Also, jamming exists.
And we can shoot it down. Easily. VERY easily.
But why let our adversaries know how NORAD operates and let them find ways around jt?
That's for trying to analyze it remotely.
Shooting it down? Even North Korea could do that, with an old ass Mig-23, there are no capabilities to hide here. Just send some old National Guard F-15C if you don't want them having a look at a F-22.
Again. Seeing what it can do while also making sure it can't do anything is what I think is going on.
Because yeah.
Though I have been monitoring it for work.
We will see what happens and if it ever makes it out of the US
Lord Sovereign
The resident Britbong
Nah, the USAF should have just blasted it out of the sky and left it at that. A short, sharp lesson to China of what happens if you enter American airspace without permission.
UberIguana
Well-known member
Given there are zero technical reasons it hasn't been shot down yet, clearly something else is in play. Collateral damage (seems unlikely given how much space there is), observing its behaviour while still transmitting, waiting for it to crash so whatever's on board can be recovered in better condition, etc.
I'm going to make a wild guess and say they've come up with a threadbare excuse to not shoot it down because while it's still up they can beat the drum over it's presence and possibly distract from other things.
I'm going to make a wild guess and say they've come up with a threadbare excuse to not shoot it down because while it's still up they can beat the drum over it's presence and possibly distract from other things.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
That doesn't make any sense. It's a balloon, it's going to move wherever the wind blows it, you're not going to gain any secret information from what direction it travels. If you're jamming it, it's not receiving any instructions so even if it does have some limited ability for self-direction (that shape is not conducive to maneuvering), it won't do so, and you won't be able to tell what its masters want from it without recovering it first. If you're not jamming it, it's potentially sending sensitive information home.
If you don't already know "what it does" how do you know it's safe? How do you know it doesn't have half a dozen incendiary devices it might gift as soon as it sees a city, or just to cause general destruction? If you do know, how can you not already know what it does and need to study it?
If you're jamming it how are your adversaries going to get a message from it to find out you shot it down? And are you seriously suggesting your adversaries are so incompetent they're not sure if the US has the firepower to destroy a balloon?
As far as destroying it, and I keep having to repeat this, it's a balloon. Even if you somehow chop its envelope in half, those million square yards of lightweight fabric are still going to act like a giant airbrake and give it a soft landing. For any actual reasonable shoot-down that doesn't involve lighting it on fire or hitting it with a massive explosion, it won't fall at all, it will just lose lift as it slowly leaks gas from bullet holes and it will gradually drift to the ground at a sedate "woman pushing a stroller" pace. The risk of debris or breaking is so tiny as to be easily ignored.
DarthOne
☦️
If you look at the previous post I made, we've already made it clear that we can shoot it down from a previous incident around Hawaii.
While I share your skepticism in this situation, considering some of the shenanigans they pulled with Trump who can honestly say?So they finally shot it down ... after it had completely passed over the US and was over the Atlantic. Biden claims to have ordered its destruction when it was over Montana and that he, the Commander-in-Chief, was overruled by the military.
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