Moderating
This is a hostile post and is inappropriate in MPSIMS. Address the content, not the commentator.
ISTM they’re doing more or less the same thing we do. Namely spying using whatever technical means we think most effective. And conducting atmospheric soundings for both weather modelling and military use of the resulting weather modeling.
I’m going to bet these balloon flights have been going on for years. What’s new is somebody on the ground noticed one and now both sides are having to gingerly discuss the topic in public. Without disclosing to the other side how much they know about the other side, and also without saying much about their own actions.
Here’s a fun bit of US spycraft from ~20 years ago. Building highly detailed missile guidance maps of almost all the planet’s land surface using a NASA vehicle. The mission wasn’t secret then, but all the meaty details were for over a decade and some may still be.
I just don’t get the outrage. This, or its equivalent, goes on every single day all around the world. Anyone who can afford to spy on their rivals does so using every means at their disposal.
I hear this in the voice of a young Orson Welles.
Exactly. (LSLGuy agrees with us….though I also agree with his more recent post, that this isn’t a new thing, and that they also serve practical purposes of weather and surveillance data collection. Their whole balloon PROGRAM serves all three purposes: mild intimidation/showing off; weather data collection; security data collection.
That this PARTICULAR balloon took the course it did — and was detected by the public — is probably largely random, which makes the timing with the planned diplomatic meeting an unfortunate coincidence. Maybe.)
Yeah. Balloons are semi-steerable. About in the same way a canoe is steerable in a big river. You’re going to go generally downstream whether you like that or not. You can tweek generally where you’re going within that larger stream, but that’s about it. And sometimes not even much of that.
Well I don’t think you can really steer a balloon like that once it takes off. And from what I’ve read, it’s not likely such a balloon could gather and significant intel (at least not that couldn’t already be gathered by satellites).
Like what would they find out about already well-known missile sites in Montana? That they still exist?
By all accounts, the Pentagon has determined that shooting the balloon down and having it crash into something they don’t want it to crash into is a greater risk than just letting it float over the Midwest.
Because it’s just an off course balloon?
It can only “steer” by ascending or descending, to get into winds of a different direction. Structure-wise, there’s not much there to support whatever the mechanism for that would be. It can release gas to descend only so many times.
I didn’t realize my elderly mother in law had such strategic importance to the Chinese. Although hearing her talk, apparently they’ve been bitter enemies for some time.
You can steer balloons. The balloon is also much closer than a satellite, much cheaper, has significantly longer loiter time, and there might be significant intel gathered from all the planes that are observing the balloon. The balloon can also hit a lot of different targets while it’s hard to change a satellite orbit.
It started out at 60,000 feet, above the height anything but maybe an SR-71 can fly, but it is losing altitude. Last report I read had it at 50,000 and “they” were getting worried about it descending further into airliner territory.
It the first time I can recall a PRC spokesman apologizing about anything.
Not since 1996 or so.
Once it’s over water the Air Force can shoot it down. Cannon fire will put enough holes in the bag that it will drift down rather than eastward. Let the Navy handle it from there.
Presumably it’s over the Atlantic by now if it was spotted in South Carolina over 3 hours ago.
The FAA has ordered a ground stop at some East Coast airports, presumably in preparation for the Air Force to shoot down the balloon over the Atlantic.
The footage of a Chinese Lawn Chair Larry being pulled from the water by the USN might be a tad embarrassing.
Both the F-15 and F-22 fly that high.
My company used to have a Learjet and I flew in it many times. It was nice. It could fly at 51,000 feet, and it was just a little passenger jet.
This suggests to me that it is leaking. There need not be any holes in the balloon; helium is a monatomic gas, and will leak out through the thin walls of the balloon eventually.
This descending flight is another indicator that it probably isn’t under deliberate control; these balloons generally operate at 80,000 feet, and in order to ‘steer’, the balloon would need to have the capacity to go up as well as down into different air currents. Instead we see a gradual descent, eventually reaching the turbulent troposphere and finally the ground. Of course, if we do see it start to rise again, that may mean it is still functioning.
Apparently it’s been shot down