# The Pentagon is tracking a Chinese spy balloon **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 3, 2023, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228 "2023-02-03T01:32:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 17
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/321 "2023-02-05T21:38:06Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > Who makes up call names? You are usually given a nickname by your squadron mates. “Maverick” was not **at all** complimentary. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/322 "2023-02-05T22:10:00Z")
Tell that to James Garner. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/323 "2023-02-05T22:20:01Z")
The flying Navy was (is?) big on nicknames. Which names are bestowed on fliers by their peers & superiors early in their careers and are by and large not complimentary. Often they commemorate some newbie screwup. Historically those nicknames were termed “callsigns”, but that was just slang terminology. I understand that sometimes on some radios some USN types use their nicknames as radio calls too. But any flight mission has an assigned callsign from the Big Book which has nothing to do with the people performing that mission. In USAF in my era, nicknames for flight crewmen were not as universal a thing. Some folks had them, many more did not. And a personal nickname would never be used seriously over a radio. In the tactical community, each squadron was issued a list of a few simple distinct east-to-say words for use as their radio callsigns. To which word more or less sequential numbers would be added for each formation / mission and for each member of that formation / mission. Between the words and the numbers you could make up far more unique identities / callsigns you could fly today. And you could / would reuse them all tomorrow for different people flying different jets on different missions to accomplish different tasks. ---
**Author:** ![Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/elmer_j.fudd/32/1211_2.png) [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elmer_J.Fudd)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/324 "2023-02-05T22:25:49Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > In the tactical community, each squadron was issued a list of a few simple distinct east-to-say words for use as their radio callsigns. To which word more or less sequential numbers would be added for each formation / mission and for each member of that formation / mission. Just say “Star Wars style”. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 10:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/325 "2023-02-05T22:36:17Z")
When trying to sell Star Wars, there was film of WWII style dogfights. Perhaps that’s where the “Blue Leader” stuff came from. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 10:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/326 "2023-02-05T22:45:13Z")
Yeah. The space battle scenes and radio chatter in the original Star Wars movie reminded me a lot more of WWII movies than anything that was then current USAF practice. Which I think was quite deliberate. Lucas was making an epic that touched on tropes of Hollywood Westerns & WWII movies of his own youth just a few years before mine. ---
**Author:** ![Tripler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripler/32/21807_2.png) [@Tripler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tripler)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 11:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/327 "2023-02-05T23:03:29Z")
There’s SIGINT/ELINT value in “watching the watcher.” I did something similar to this overseas using radio-direction finding intelligence to note key observation points (where cellphones & radios were used) along routes frequently hit by IEDs. Based on the intel, a few days prior to a major convoy, security teams would sweep and secure certain ridges and hills, taking away the Taliban’s ability to see, report on, and target our people. The point is, given enough warning, we can turn off or reduce our transmissions under/near the balloon’s path, and _we_ can listen to both the structure and content of any telemetry or transmissions from this ‘weather balloon.’ If _we_ can find out what the enemy is collecting and reporting on, we can exploit that. Similar games happen when random ‘fishing trawlers’ of Chinese or ~~Soviet~~ Russian make shows up around the time we launch from Cape Canaveral. > [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > What are the chances the Pentagon and NSA don’t already know everything about that package before examining it? Good point. Probably quite a bit based on SIGINT, but there may be some passive recording or technology intended to be retrieved later that we would snag first. Besides, the iteration of new sensors can be way faster for balloons if they don’t have to be designed/tested for spaceflight–we’d want to find out how far they’ve come to analyze against the _next one_. I’m not surprised the balloon can ‘maneuver’–hot air balloons do it all the time at the [ABQ Balloon Fiesta](https://balloonfiesta.com/). One benefit of balloons though, is that they can loiter longer than satellites, thus potentially soaking in more data at a given location. Nor am I surprised at an over-water shootdown: much easier to keep it out of the public media’s view, so the Commies are kept guessing at what we recover. Tripler I could go down the cat-and-mouse theories all day. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [February 5, 2023, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/328 "2023-02-05T23:53:55Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > I’m curious why the Chinese didn’t program the balloon to stay above 100,000 feet at all times. Might not have prevented the fighter shoot-down but might have made it a lot tougher to pull off. You can’t program a helium balloon to not leak helium. But if it was descended deliberately, that would be so it got a closer view of whatever it was trying to view. And, as this had happened at least three times under the previous administration without them being shot down, why would the Chinese have thought it necessary to take precautions against that happening this time? ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/329 "2023-02-06T00:09:20Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > > [@Velocity](#): > > > > I’m curious why the Chinese didn’t program the balloon to stay above 100,000 feet at all times. Might not have prevented the fighter shoot-down but might have made it a lot tougher to pull off. > > You can’t program a helium balloon to not leak helium. But if it was descended deliberately, that would be so it got a closer view of whatever it was trying to view. > > And, as this had happened at least three times under the previous administration without them being shot down, why would the Chinese have thought it necessary to take precautions against that happening this time? From what I’m seeing this did not happen three times during the last administration or any administration. It’s hard to say for certain since specific details have not been released. All that was said was something about brief incursions into US airspace. I saw mention of possibly Hawaii once. Most likely they are talking about transit near Hawaii and/or Alaska. There certainly wasn’t a flight across the continental United States. Lots of people outside of the government would have noticed. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 1:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/330 "2023-02-06T01:14:45Z")
At least one of those balloons overflew Texas and Florida. > **[Chinese spy balloon crashed off Hawaii coast 4 months ago, US officials say](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chinese-spy-balloon-crashed-off-coast-of-hawaii-4-months-ago)** > > A Chinese spy balloon crashed off the coast of Hawaii four months ago, and at least one Chinese spy balloon flew over portions of Texas and Florida during the Trump administration. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/331 "2023-02-06T01:58:05Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > You provide no analogous characteristics that would differentiate spy balloon to weather balloon. Here’s one: Weather balloons exist. Spy balloons don’t. This thing exists, and in that regard, it’s a lot more like a weather balloon than a spy balloon. Unless I’ve missed it, nobody who’s calling this thing a “spy balloon” has yet to offer any possibility of what it could actually be spying on. ---
**Author:** ![Loach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/loach/32/350_2.png) [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/333 "2023-02-06T02:04:16Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > At least one of those balloons overflew Texas and Florida. > > [Chinese spy balloon crashed off Hawaii coast 4 months ago, US officials say | Fox News](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chinese-spy-balloon-crashed-off-coast-of-hawaii-4-months-ago) Hard to fly over just portions of Texas going west to east unless you are talking about just the tip. That doesn’t invalidate what I said. Any previous incursions were along the sidelines not straight down the middle between the hashmarks. It’s a matter of degree but it’s an important distinction. Does anyone doubt Trump would have had it shot down over downtown Chicago rather than let it cross the entire country? I’m not saying it would have been the correct action but he wouldn’t have taken the same action. I also wouldnt find it hard to believe that the military didn’t tell him about the brushes against our airspace or maybe it was in one of his daily briefings that he didn’t go to. ---
**Author:** ![carnivorousplant](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnivorousplant/32/3563_2.png) [@carnivorousplant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/carnivorousplant)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 2:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/334 "2023-02-06T02:43:11Z")
I apologize for getting off topic lest a moderator jump on us. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/335 "2023-02-06T02:54:10Z")
300+ posts into what’s now a semi-silly MPSIMS I don’t think we’ve got much to fear. But your point is valid. Sidebar over. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/336 "2023-02-06T03:02:57Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > There is some speculation that this may be the highest-altitude air-to-air kill ever yet recorded, let’s hope it’s true. I’ve been puzzled by this statement, but nobody else seems to have questioned it. Why? Like why does it matter either way, such that one would hope it is the record? I seriously have no idea. ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/337 "2023-02-06T03:09:13Z")
I asked you what characteristics a spy balloon would have that a weather balloon wouldn’t and your answer is “it doesn’t matter, I will accept nothing.” Cool. The Straight Dope is obviously the right place for you. /s ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/338 "2023-02-06T03:10:59Z")
> [@Loach](#): > > Does anyone doubt Trump would have had it shot down over downtown Chicago rather than let it cross the entire country? I can’t imagine Loser Donald lifting a finger to do anything about anything in a state that didn’t vote for him. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 3:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/339 "2023-02-06T03:12:59Z")
I would hope that one characteristic we would agree that a spy balloon must have would be a capability for spying, right? So, tell me what capability a balloon would have for spying. I mean, at this point, you might as well ask me how I know it’s not a unicorn. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/340 "2023-02-06T03:17:20Z")
[![](https://i.redd.it/5d9p4zz1cgga1.jpg) ](https://i.redd.it/5d9p4zz1cgga1.jpg) ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/341 "2023-02-06T03:26:16Z")
> [@Smapti](#): > > > [@Loach](#): > > > > Does anyone doubt Trump would have had it shot down over downtown Chicago rather than let it cross the entire country? > > I can’t imagine Loser Donald lifting a finger to do anything about anything in a state that didn’t vote for him. If it was a Russian balloon he’d probably have complimented Putin on his spy agency’s excellent navigation skills. And asked for an autographed pic of the Trump building downtown. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228.md?page=16) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228.md?page=18)