# 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:** 20
**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, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/382 "2023-02-06T19:55:57Z")
I take it that jamming consists of more than transmitting a high power signal on the same frequency the ballooning was transmitting on. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/383 "2023-02-06T20:03:21Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > Speaking as a former electronic warfare professional, this sounds like it might be PR or a degree of deliberate obfuscation. Granted I’m sure the US DOD has some neat stuff, but jamming is generally achieved not by jamming the TRANSMITTER, but by jamming the ability of the receiver to receive the signal; you are, in an electronic sense, shouting louder than the transmitter. My guess is that what they mean is that they are jamming any ELINT receivers on the balloon. Jamming the ability of the balloon to transmit data up to a satellite doesn’t make any sense (for the reasons you outline). I would think that by illuminating any optical sensors and saturating any ELINT receivers you could probably minimize any damage such a surveillance device could do. Along with some good emissions controls anywhere near the device. > [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I take it that jamming consists of more than transmitting a high power signal on the same frequency the ballooning was transmitting on. Yes. An omni-directional jamming signal is unlikely to have a sufficient J/S (jamming-to-signal ratio) _at the receiver_ to be effective. You jam receivers, not transmitters. If you only have the transmitter, you can broadcast a signal at the same frequency, but it’s likely the transmitter is very directional and will have enough gain in the direction it’s transmitting that you will have a hard time effectively jamming it. Now maybe the signal is low enough power that it can be overcome. Or maybe the US had other reasons to be confident that they could jam whatever signal were being sent “home”. Or maybe the “we jammed it” thing is BS to cover up what was really done. Or, perhaps most likely, this was an inactive balloon that either accidentally got away from the Chinese or was intentionally sent not to gather intelligence directly but to gauge our response measures against a potential active device. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/384 "2023-02-06T20:07:48Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > If launched from the US, you’d be lucky to get a balloon within 1000 miles of either of those places. Hell, you’d be lucky to get to go over any part of China. And that’s why I think this was no spy balloon. Untethered balloons are one of the worst ways to try to spy on a particular place. There’s probably a dozen or more ways to be more certain to get results. > > From what I’ve read, they’ve been launching these balloons for years, probably dozens of launches. They’ve been going in all different directions, as balloons are wont to do, but when one happens to go across the US, suddenly it’s a spy. That has to be one of the least effective spy technologies ever. Look at the cone of uncertainty for any hurricane; they don’t know where it’s going a couple of days out. Hurricane Ian was supposed to devastate Tampa Bay a couple of months ago but 24-36 hrs before it took a right turn & leveled an area \< 100 miles south while Tampa area was relatively unscathed. We (the public) don’t know what they were trying to collect & why they couldn’t use other means to do such but the fact that there have been numerous other ones does lend credence to a shotgun approach where if you put enough of 'em up, one will hit the target. > [@dtilque](#): > > So I’m not buying the spy notion. Now if they’d launched from somewhere much closer to the US, say off a ship just outside the territorial waters, then I might give it some credence. Considering its trajectory, it clearly was not launched from such a location. I’m guessing, based upon the other balloon’s spotted locations, that it was launched from mainland China but if they launched it from say, 1000 miles off the west coast, away from known shipping & flying ‘lanes’ I don’t know when the military would start to track it & that would greatly narrow down where it would fly over ---
**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, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/385 "2023-02-06T20:19:10Z")
I would think that if you could get it into the jet stream, you could be sure it would follow. NOAA could tell you where the jet is. How you would get it over a particular place without being able to maneuver, I don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/386 "2023-02-06T20:20:27Z")
> [@eburacum45](#): > > If these Chinese balloons are anything like the Google Loon balloons, they will ‘steer’ by using an on-board reservoir of helium to increase their buoyancy and rise into a suitable airstream later. If you want your balloon to go down into another airstream, you simply let out some helium and down you sink. In theory, you could go back and forth over the same bit of land for an extended period of time. But when the helium reservoir runs out, the balloon goes down towards the troposphere, and loses the ability to steer. Let out gas to descend / maintain altitude as balloon heats (sunlight) Let out ballast to ascend / maintain altitude as balloon cools (night time). In manned gas balloons, ballast is either sand or water (over populated areas) > [@Voyager](#): > > Balloons (tethered, I think) were used by the Union in the Civil War to gather intelligence. Yes, they were used as an aerial platform to see enemy troops further away than you could on the ground ---
**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 6, 2023, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/387 "2023-02-06T20:40:38Z")
> [@carnivorousplant](#): > > I would think that if you could get it into the jet stream, you could be sure it would follow. NOAA could tell you where the jet is. Getting the weather to cooperate isn’t even the hard part. Look at a map. How many sovereign airspaces would the US have to violate to launch a balloon from the US and have it fly over China? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/388 "2023-02-06T20:40:42Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > Yes. An omni-directional jamming signal is unlikely to have a sufficient J/S (jamming-to-signal ratio) _at the receiver_ to be effective. You jam receivers, not transmitters. If you only have the transmitter, you can broadcast a signal at the same frequency, but it’s likely the transmitter is very directional and will have enough gain in the direction it’s transmitting that you will have a hard time effectively jamming it. The Times reported someone in the military as saying that they fed false information to the balloon, so the information it did pick up would be useless. That’s not quite jamming but just as good, maybe better, since the Chinese would be busy trying to sort the wheat from the chaff. ---
**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, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/389 "2023-02-06T20:50:11Z")
I would imagine that the signal would be encoded in some manner. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/390 "2023-02-06T20:51:28Z")
It might be hard to encode raw input to sensors or other measurement equipment. ---
**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, 8:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/391 "2023-02-06T20:51:49Z")
Perhaps that is why we don’t do it. ---
**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, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/392 "2023-02-06T20:53:59Z")
I did a lab in undergraduate school where we ANDed a digital signal with a clocked square wave. You would have to know the frequency of the square wave to decode it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/393 "2023-02-06T21:00:47Z")
That’s my point. If the US fed false data into the balloon, it would be hard to distinguish it from real data. Decoding the data that the balloon sent would be difficult. And they probably wouldn’t admit they could even if they could for fear of revealing how good we are at decryption. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/394 "2023-02-06T21:19:36Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > My guess is that what they mean is that they are jamming any ELINT receivers on the balloon. Jamming the ability of the balloon to transmit data up to a satellite doesn’t make any sense (for the reasons you outline). That makes a lot more sense. It would require either a very broad attack or specific knowledge (or just good guesses) of what the Balloon of Death was intended to pick up, but one suspects the DOD could make some pretty solid estimates. It wouldn’t really make a lot of sense for the 99th Red Balloon to be an optical surveillance system, since satellites do that, but a satellite would be unable to pick up many EM signals. > [@Spiderman](#): > > Look at the cone of uncertainty for any hurricane; Well, this is my other curiosity about why the Chinese would do it, it’s just… stupid. I don’t get it. LOOK AT OUR SPY STUFF, you’re screaming to the world, while engaging in a method of surveillance that is just totally random and unlikely to pick up anything of intelligence value, while also adding in the embarrassment of looking like amateurs. Even if the balloon gets close enough to a source to pick something up, if you’re doing ELINT you don’t want to just drift over the target in a few hours, you want sustained intercept. You’d be approximately a billion times better off, in every respect, just having someone fly to LAX as a tourist and sit a few miles from a known target with a radio receiver. And as Voyager notes, if your receiver is as obvious as a great big goddamned balloon, it’s trivially easy to simply begin broadcasting some plausible horseshit. This is literally World War II counterintel stuff. Maybe it really was just a weather balloon. ---
**Author:** ![Spiderman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spiderman/32/230_2.png) [@Spiderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spiderman)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/395 "2023-02-06T21:44:01Z")
> [@Elmer\_J.Fudd](#): > > Getting the weather to cooperate isn’t even the hard part. Look at a map. How many sovereign airspaces would the US have to violate to launch a balloon from the US and have it fly over China? Steve Fossett’s around the world balloon flight took off from Australia; while the southern hemisphere is more dangerous/more remote oceans there were less sovereign airspaces to deal with; especially ones that might not be so friendly towards a US citizen doing what he was doing. > [@RickJay](#): > > > [@Spiderman](#): > > > > Look at the cone of uncertainty for any hurricane; > > Well, this is my other curiosity about why the Chinese would do it, it’s just… stupid. I don’t get it. LOOK AT OUR SPY STUFF, you’re screaming to the world, while engaging in a method of surveillance that is just totally random and unlikely to pick up anything of intelligence value, while also adding in the embarrassment of looking like amateurs. Without knowing what they were going for, they may consider it wildly successful. If I want to pull off an Ocean’s Eleven style heist of the vault at Ft. Knox, getting stopped by the guard 87 seconds after I hop the fence isn’t necessarily a failure, it could be good planning intel as to how much/little time I have to make it into the building. Maybe this was a some form of a pentest for their new stealth airplane. ---
**Author:** ![Ssounder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d07c76/32.png) [@Ssounder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ssounder)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/396 "2023-02-06T21:47:32Z")
I don’t get the skepticism.The Department of Defense distinctly said it was an intelligence gathering balloon. Quote from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin: _“The balloon, which was being used by the PRC in an **attempt to surveil strategic sites in the continental United States** , was brought down above U.S. territorial waters,” Austin said._ Source (DoD link up-thread). ---
**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/397 "2023-02-06T22:10:55Z")
Many non-pilots may not know that the winds aloft can be at different directions and speeds compared to ground-level. I’ve heard some reports that the balloon was “hovering over” or “slowing down over” some locations, presumably to get a better or longer view. It reminds me of the many times a UFO was said to do exactly that or “it was following our car,” then turned out to be Venus. I guess the moral of this story is balloons and planets can do strange things if you want them to. ---
**Author:** ![Ssounder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d07c76/32.png) [@Ssounder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ssounder)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/398 "2023-02-06T22:21:21Z")
[Statement from NORAD Commander Gen Glen VanHerck:](https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/3289888/gen-glen-vanherck-commander-north-american-aerospace-defense-command-and-united/) _I do think their path was purposely built. And they utilized the winds and it’s a maneuverable platform as well, but their utilize their maneuverability to strategically position themselves to utilize the winds to traverse portions of countries that they want to see for collection purposes._ ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 10:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/399 "2023-02-06T22:25:47Z")
> [@Ssounder](#): > > I don’t get the skepticism.The Department of Defense distinctly said it was an intelligence gathering balloon. Spokespeople for defense departments are well-known for their unfailing veracity. ---
**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, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/400 "2023-02-06T22:34:29Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > According to a Defense Department briefing given by Gen. Ryder on Feb 3, this was absolutely a spy balloon. Gen. Ryder refused to give specifics on most details when asked. > > > [@](#): > > > > First of all, we are aware of the PRC’s statement. However, the fact is we know that it’s a surveillance balloon, and I’m not going to be able to be more specific than that Oh, it’s certainly a surveillance balloon. I think everyone agrees on that. The question is just what it’s surveying. And a balloon is a lot better suited to surveying upper atmosphere temperature, pressure, windspeeds, and the like, than to surveying sensitive national secrets. And yeah, you could theoretically use a balloon to monitor radio transmissions, but it’d be a heck of a lot easier to do that from the ground. It’d be much easier for China to put a spy in the US to do that than to launch a balloon for it: All it’d take would be a tourist visa. > [@OldOlds](#): > > I mean, one possibility is that it’s just a form of trolling. We’ll send an inexpensive “weather balloon” over the US and get some info on how they react and cause a political headache while they’re at it. OK, that’s at least possible. I don’t think it’s something that Xi or his government would bother doing, but if that was their intention, it succeeded. > [@LSLGuy](#): > > The drag associated with trying to push a very lightweight sphere through the air via propellers or whatever is simply ginormous. Impractically un-overcome-ably ginormous. Also, even with propellers, you’re still at the mercy of the winds. The Goodyear Blimp operates fairly close to the ground, where windspeeds are low, and so it’s not hard for the blimp’s engines to overcome the winds. But at the sort of altitude this thing was at, the winds are fast. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [February 6, 2023, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228/401 "2023-02-06T22:41:50Z")
> [@](#): > > “I do think their path was purposely built. And they utilized the winds and it’s a maneuverable platform as well, but their utilize their maneuverability to strategically position themselves to utilize the winds to traverse portions of countries that they want to see for collection purposes.” Oh dear. Is he speaking English? > [@Gorsnak](#): > > Spokespeople for defense departments are well-known for their unfailing veracity. Quite. Some officials in the Pentagon have been strangely credulous about UFO reports recently; anything they say about Chinese balloons needs to be examined closely. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228.md?page=19) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-pentagon-is-tracking-a-chinese-spy-balloon/979228.md?page=21)