US tracking suspected Chinese surveillance balloon - Feds afraid of popping Xi's big red balloon

"The US has been monitoring a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted in the skies over the northern US this week.

Pentagon officials said in a briefing they are "confident that this high-altitude surveillance balloon" belongs to China.
US military chiefs have for now decided against blowing the alleged spy craft out of the sky, citing safety concerns.
US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the situation, said the Pentagon.
The balloon was over the western state of Montana on Wednesday, according to defence officials.
They added that US military leaders, including Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and General Mark Milley, the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, met on Wednesday to assess the threat. Mr Austin was travelling to the Philippines at the time.

The military commanders advised against taking "kinetic action" against the balloon because of the danger of debris falling to the ground.
A senior defence official speaking on condition of anonymity said there was no "significantly enhanced threat" of US intelligence being compromised because US officials "know exactly where this balloon is and exactly where it's passing over".
He added that there was no threat to civilian aviation either because the balloon is "significantly" above the altitude used by commercial airlines.
The senior defence official said the US has raised the matter with Chinese officials in their embassy in Washington DC and in Beijing.
The object flew over Alaska's Aleutian Islands and through Canada before appearing over the city of Billings, Montana, on Wednesday, officials say.

During Thursday's briefing at the Pentagon, officials declined to disclose the aircraft's current location. They also refused to provide more details of the object, including its size.

"There have been reports of pilots seeing this thing even though it's pretty high up in the sky," the unnamed defence official said.
"So you know, it's, it's sizable."
The official added that similar balloons have appeared in the skies over the US in the past few years.
But the current balloon "is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time" and has been "more persistent" than previous spy crafts.
It is unclear why it was seen in that particular region of the US. Billings is around 250 miles (400km) southwest of the Malmstrom Air Force Base, which is one of three US air bases that house the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile.
Pentagon officials refused to confirm if the base was a surveillance target, but agreed "the current flight path does carry it over a number of sensitive sites".

The alleged spy craft confounded social media users in Montana on Wednesday.
People posted photos of a pale round object in the sky that floated separately from the moon. Others reported seeing US military planes in the area, apparently monitoring the object.
It also led to a two-hour ground stop at Billings Logan International Airport after aviation officials made the decision to close 50 sq miles of air space.
It comes ahead of US Secretary of State Antony Blinken's visit to China.
The top US diplomat will be in Beijing next week to hold talks on a wide range of issues, including security, Taiwan and Covid-19.
He will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping, the Financial Times newspaper reported on Thursday."
 
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Smaug's Smokey Hole 2 said:
You wake up one day and see that someone is dangling their dick through the mail slot on the door. You say "I'll get some scissors and that'll teach them a lesson", the authority figure says "no, we know who the dick belongs to"
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i dunno man I don't think they'd bleed to death on the sidewalk or, y'know, care at all if you pop this dick. It's probably blowing their minds that it hasn't happened yet. It's honestly more like someone putting a balloon through your mail slot and confusing the fuck out of you.

Not that a dick wouldn't be weird but that probably happens slightly more often? Idk I have to downstairs to collect my mail so I'm not an authority on slotcocks
 
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likeacrackado said:
I think we can all agree that they let this thing enter our airspace and didn't shoot it down over the ocean, bumssfuck Alaska, bumfuck Canada, or anywhere else outside the continental US. There has to be a reason for it. I don't have the slightest clue as to why that is.
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Because it's not a threat and the counterintelligence value of shooting it down is much less than the value of observing it.

You can tell a bit about a satellite's purpose from its orbit, but it won't tell you the adversary's specific intelligence requirements. A steerable balloon, however, will tell you exactly what the adversary is interested in (within the performance envelope of a balloon riding the jet stream and the acuity or sensitivity of its sensors, which we might not know yet). By leaving this thing alone, we can see what the Chinese want to know more about, and what they're ignoring. We can observe intentional changes in its course--or we could observe them, before this thing hit the news and they were forced to commit to the off-course weather balloon story--and those changes tell us about changing Chinese priorities. We may also be able to derive some technical characteristics from our observations--how it performs, what kind of sensor package it carries, etc.

And this thing has to report its data to and get instructions from something, which is almost certainly a satellite. We can sneak into the balloon's back lobe or side lobes and listen to it. The satellite will be talking back, and we can listen to that, too. Intercepting their conversation gets us at least the time and length of the transmissions; from that we can tell if the balloon reports on a schedule or if its reports are triggered by specific observations (which we can identify). If we have the encryption keys or a cryptanalytic attack, we're getting the content, too. Finally, we can probably identify which specific satellite is communicating with the balloon, and that tells us all kinds of interesting things. Has this satellite been broadcasting to other regions of the world, are there other satellites like it, and so forth.

Having time to study a technical collection asset in operation, especially when it's only getting fairly benign intelligence like GEOINT and EM emissions, is good for us. The Chinese get better maps, some ELINT, and a lot of low-power AM Christian radio stations. We get to learn everything about their balloon intelligence program. When and if it becomes a danger to aviation, then we can destroy it.
 
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What is the point of a balloon? Genuine e question. There are spy satellites that can get crazy resolution so what could a balloon do that a satellite couldn’t? Could it be doing some kind of LIDAR type stuff?
Sorry if a dumb question.
Also, they missed a trick not writing something on it
 
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Standardized Profile said:
Because it's not a threat and the counterintelligence value of shooting it down is much less than the value of observing it.

You can tell a bit about a satellite's purpose from its orbit, but it won't tell you the adversary's specific intelligence requirements. A steerable balloon, however, will tell you exactly what the adversary is interested in (within the performance envelope of a balloon riding the jet stream and the acuity or sensitivity of its sensors, which we might not know yet). By leaving this thing alone, we can see what the Chinese want to know more about, and what they're ignoring. We can observe intentional changes in its course--or we could observe them, before this thing hit the news and they were forced to commit to the off-course weather balloon story--and those changes tell us about changing Chinese priorities. We may also be able to derive some technical characteristics from our observations--how it performs, what kind of sensor package it carries, etc.

And this thing has to report its data to and get instructions from something, which is almost certainly a satellite. We can sneak into the balloon's back lobe or side lobes and listen to it. The satellite will be talking back, and we can listen to that, too. Intercepting their conversation gets us at least the time and length of the transmissions; from that we can tell if the balloon reports on a schedule or if its reports are triggered by specific observations (which we can identify). If we have the encryption keys or a cryptanalytic attack, we're getting the content, too. Finally, we can probably identify which specific satellite is communicating with the balloon, and that tells us all kinds of interesting things. Has this satellite been broadcasting to other regions of the world, are there other satellites like it, and so forth.

Having time to study a technical collection asset in operation, especially when it's only getting fairly benign intelligence like GEOINT and EM emissions, is good for us. The Chinese get better maps, some ELINT, and a lot of low-power AM Christian radio stations. We get to learn everything about their balloon intelligence program. When and if it becomes a danger to aviation, then we can destroy it.
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Now that the cover is blown, it would be nice if it's possible to capture the balloon to study whatever hardware is on it. It might be rigged to self-destruct in that event, though.
 
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Looks like /pol/ is now owned by the Chinese.


Screenshot 2023-02-04 102234.png
 
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Prester John said:
Now that the cover is blown, it would be nice if it's possible to capture the balloon to study whatever hardware is on it. It might be rigged to self-destruct in that event, though.
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It's probably just a cobbled-together mess of aliexpress electronics, and some reverse-reverse-reverse-engineered 1980s-era russian optics package. Military probably literally doesn't care.

Rei is Shit. said:
If the US gov was smart they would have claimed it was just a weather balloon blown of course.

Instead some state department dumbass thought saying it was a Chinese spy balloon was a good idea - probably because it helps feed into the China = bad narrative the US needs for bull prepping WW3.

Saying it is a spy balloon leads to the very obvious question of "why not shoot it down". Since its now over a populated area and intercepting high alt balloons is pretty difficult the US likely won't be able to intercept it. Normies aren't able to understand this, for example look at some of the replies in this thread.

So now the worlds most expensive military is sitting back and doing nothing while a hostile nations spy balloon floats over it. That looks pretty weak.
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I'm convinced that the entire Biden west wing is made up completely of all the bottom-20% performers from Obama's government - all the people who were not talented or competent enough to get post-government private industry jobs. That's the only explanation for why everything they do looks like a six year old trying to explain how they managed to accidentally tie their own shoelaces together.
 
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Seems like a sign of desperation on the part of the Chinese, something to tout to their people to get their minds off the shitshow China is becoming. Japanese sent balloons over here when they were getting their asses kicked. Don't the Chinese have satellites of their own?

Never know, maybe we'll send an Aurora over Beijing and laugh at any Chinese attempts to intercept it.
 
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Otterly said:
What is the point of a balloon? Genuine e question. There are spy satellites that can get crazy resolution so what could a balloon do that a satellite couldn’t? Could it be doing some kind of LIDAR type stuff?
Sorry if a dumb question.
Also, they missed a trick not writing something on it
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Cheap force projection, even if it is completely ineffectual and the sort of thing that would have been tried in the 1950's when a lot of radio traffic would have been unencrypted.

We (EDIT: Meaning us Burgerlanders) overflew (ineffectually) one of their testing areas in 1971 with a D-21B stealth drone and they never knew it, so there's some sense of their needing to pretend they have comparable capabilities.
 
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