Spy Balloon

[ChevyReb]

I'm sure they will try to recover the remains. Hopefully didn't contaminate the water there I visit there 3 or 4 times a year

 

[Patstuff28]

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www.npr.org

 

[ssupercoolss]

i have a hard time believing a balloon is the only way the Chinese have to spy on us.

 

[ULTM8Z]

Shot it down, too little too late. Chinese already have the information.

Most likely our government was hoping it was just pass through without anyone noticing in order to avoid having to make the "hard decisions"...

Then it got into the media and became a political embarrassment. Now they get to run around and act tough "yeah man, we shot it down".

We easily knew where that thing was before it even got out of Chinas airspace.

 

[Bandit723]

I could think of a more cynical scenario. I better get my blood sugar up.

 

[mrfleet12]

 

[chevyJeff1]

Th

i have a hard time believing a balloon is the only way the Chinese have to spy on us.

The Chinese have been stealing American tech for decades. This ‘balloon’ was only a test to see how far they can push us. Check out how many thousands of them are being educated here. Nothing to see there lol.

 

[Lowend]

I would assume that if the Pentagon has known the ballon was up there for that long, they probably knew exactly what it was doing and either determined that to be unimportant, or were feeding it bad data.
Being able to spend months feeding a spy agency manipulated information is worth its weight in gold.


Also - no way this is the only balloon.
Don't forget that both China and Russia (and likely every other major power) have plenty of spy satellites that have been staring at the US since at least the 70's. Just like we've been doing to them. I do wonder what the ballon was looking for that a satellite couldn't detect.

 

[danbrennan]

I read it might have ground penetrating radar, or be recording cell phone signals; supposedly neither can be picked up by satellites.

I have to think our military had detected this before the civilians spotted it, and photographed the the equipment down to millimeters. So they knew what it was detecting.

I read an interesting speculation that a balloon could be armed with a small nuclear device, and detonating it that high up could create a very disruptive EMP.

 

[ChevyReb]

And I read doing it somewhere over the rockies would cause the most wide spread damage.