Meanwhile in China

[Balcones 317]

23 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

 

Thank you for your service.  My father was a comms officer in the U.S. Navy, maybe you crossed paths at some point.  You can absolutely jam or interfere.  And I didn't say there's a new non-radio frequency these days.  What I am saying is why make this high-profile and very obvious attempt at such a bizarre altitude?  when it can just as easily be gleaned from the ground, from the cargo bays of commercial jetliners at 45,000 feet gliding across our country (they do this shit all the time), or from low-orbit satellites?  The comms are the comms, why take this huge risk at that altitude when it's effectively the same as the other alternatives?  And it was to see about interfering on earth-to-satellite comms or vice-versa, what's the difference in 45,000 versus 60,000 is effectively negligible.  It'd be like telling me it's 35 degrees below zero when it's really 36 degrees below zero.  It makes no difference to the observer.  

You've forgotten more about these frequencies than I'll ever know.  My point is where is the jamming/interfering edge in this observational operation at that particular part of the stratosphere?  We know the warming at the entry back into the troposphere does effect/affect satellite communications.  But your local NPR weather guy can tell you that, you don't to risk an international war using a balloon.  If it was to test jamming capability over the continental United States, why let us know for four days and let us see exactly how your toy works?  This wasn't like a 1940's SS amplified D-Klein wiretap that could by anywhere along hundreds of miles of lines.  If something was detected listening in any of the frequencies you mentioned, I would think some enterprising USAF E-5 may have thought to look up and say, "Couldn't possibly be that giant Chinese balloon over our base, could it?"  Why be so obvious about it when you already effectively have that intel already and could risk us finding your new toys? 

Intel is collected many ways. Open source, human, signals, imagery, etc… it’s collected in parts (compartments) and pieced together.  Access is what is always the constant.
 

It’s not all about how sophisticated a satellite is or who has the best camera lens. A 35mm camera with the right access is way more dangerous. An Office Depot USB memory stick could collect way more sensitive info given the right access. A simple tape recorder in an interview room with the right access is way more dangerous than a $1 billon satellite. A known (tested capability) is better than a hypothesis or something unproven. You can only prove with access.

I have no idea what they are doing with the balloon, but giving them access, doesn’t seem like a good idea.

[YGIFS 19449]

Totally agree.  That's why they did this and at what altitude is perplexing to me.  They've tested our comms at surface, probably even subsurface, at private jet altitude, using devices in cargo bays of commercial/shipping airliners who conveniently had to climb to 45k to avoid weather, and from all manner of low-orbit satellites.  So what's missing?  Observing from bottom of Stratosphere down through Toposphere.  But they also have the same weather changes in streams from Strato to Topo, over China with similar longitudes and parallel long swaths of undulating lands to test their theories.  So they aggregate everything they know from Death Valley to 45,000 feet over the U.S. and everything from the mid-Ionosphere.  They marry that with that they know about how these frequencies change over their own Strato to Topo (and vice-versa) shifts in signal strength and clarity---and all the possibly security vulnerabilities that come with that.  Using a slide rule, they can easily aggregate a very clear idea of what the whole 'food chain vertical' of all frequencies looks like and where holes exist.  Never mind their access to supercomputing, machine learning, and A.I. to come up with the model.  

It just seems like a huge high-profile risk for non-existent payout to add to a model they've already had for years, maybe decades.  For four days, we deployed counter measures on the ground and in the air to see what these devices were doing both digitally and physically.  Listening to the listener, so to speak.  And if the payoff would be worth the risk, why not try harder to mask it better than "Oops, another pesky Guam based Chinese weather balloon got loose).  Only thing that got proven is our air-to-air missile systems work terrifyingly well in the lower stratosphere on very small targets.  And China learned that yes, the warming effect as you re-enter the Toposphere is real and can alter frequency strength and clarity.  But again, most amateur radio and weather guys could have told them that without getting so much egg on their face.  

I really don't see the DoD or NOAA just letting this thing have unfettered access.  Unless it was literally some kinda Trojan Balloon.  The fable, not the condom.   

[drt 638]

My thoughts are the Air Force probably had some 19 year old painting this fucker with a laser to disable its intel gathering systems for the last few days. More of an exercise in boredom than anything else. 

[YGIFS 19449]

4 minutes ago, drt said:

My thoughts are the Air Force probably had some 19 year old painting this fucker with a laser to disable its intel gathering systems for the last few days. More of an exercise in boredom than anything else. 

Most of the time, the simplest explanation is the correct one.  

"Airman, where did you get that counter-jamming device?  I do not see anything checked out from the Comms for this observation post!"

"Sir, we and some of the fellas stopped by Office Depot on the way back to base.  It's got a highlighter on the other end, pretty cool.  We got double points too!"  

[HiggyBaby 2529]

All I know is that some poor fighter jock just got his call sign changed to “Pop.”

I’m laughing a lot harder at this than I should.

[KYHorn 17014]

 

 

[FartingMonk 3606]

You guys got this all wrong.  The Chinese being the innovative and environmental stewards of this great Earth was demonstrating a new method to deliver rubber dog poop out of Hong Kong to the United States.  If Amazon did this y'all would be saying how brilliant Uncle Jeff is.  But because it's the Chinese it's some nefarious bullshit.  That's racist

[YGIFS 19449]

Big deal, I did that with the U.S.S. Flagg aircraft carrier when I was like 9.  Okay, it wasn't mine.  It was Jason Miller's.  Spoiler shitbag never appreciated getting that thing for his birthday!  

I'm guessing something was lost in translation between Mandarin to Portuguese to English.  All three are really fucked up languages in reality.  But the music was a nice touch.  

[Nicole44 22059]

Sorry if already posted but it could have been a mechanism for food delivery. I mean hot air balloon and blimp drivers could find new clarity for their jobs…

 

[YGIFS 19449]

And the little boy trapped up there in that balloon?  You guessed it:

Tanshuai Shitailong  

Turns out it was a sidewinder at 11 miles, not 12.  But the missile of choice when you want to take out just the void "ballony" part of the balloon and leave all the fun shit underneath in fact to fall to the ocean.  Search area is only 7 miles in diameter, they're probably already done picking up debris and started the pissing contest on who gets to check it out first!  Rumors abound the planes and refueling aircraft following this thing were jamming its communications the whole time while trying to "look busy."  But those pesky Chinese, the balloon was using a burner phone!  AHHHHHHHh

[Hate 20106]

2 hours ago, drt said:

My thoughts are the Air Force probably had some 19 year old painting this fucker with a laser to disable its intel gathering systems for the last few days. More of an exercise in boredom than anything else. 

[Nicole44 22059]

Has anyone mentioned ricin yet (pun intended)?

[The Dog 44019]

[berlinerbaer 670]

3 hours ago, Balcones said:

22 years a signal officer in the military. Retired though, so maybe things have changed. What do I know? 

If we don’t use radio frequency to communicate anymore, what do we use, son?  If not HF, VHF, UHF, L band, etc… what is the new medium? These radio waves can’t go past 60,000 ft? When did that change?
 

In my day, we used radio frequency for communicating to satellites. VHF, UHF, L-band, etc.. kinda depended. We even used radio frequency to communicate with GPS satellites. No idea what they use today.

Moving horizontally? No comment, son.

I wasn’t aware you couldn’t jam a frequency anymore. Or interfere at all.. You couldn’t collect information traveling through the air.  Would be interesting to see what a balloon at 60,000 ft could do to a plane at 35,000 ft. But all planes have super secret “secure communications” Right, son? I’m not sure if planes use radio frequency anymore for their systems. They did in my day.
 

Obviously the Chinese would only want to collect information on just military networks. That would be their only reason to be over the US.  The only target to collect on. Probably have no interest in testing/collecting/messing with civilian networks, aviation, commerce, media, etc… 

So, tell me about the new non-radio frequency we have these days.

All sensitive stuff done nowadays should be line-of-sight at microwave frequencies, if not done through fiber optics underground. There isn't much done with omni-directional transmitters anymore.

This thing got a nice listen to police scanners, citizens band, and shitty AM radio.

[Zepol87 9185]

Anything omni being deployed is only in a podunk area that probably doesn't work anyway

Edited February 5, 2023 by Zepol87

[FartingMonk 3606]

They probably picked up AM stations of QAnon guys talking about revolution.  Bug out bags and then testimonials on how bad meth is.  And the NSA folks showed footage of Chinese tourists falling off a cliff from Yellowstone.  After that Intel I wouldn't fuck with Montana.

[YGIFS 19449]

I'd like to think the last thing that went through that balloon's head, besides that AIM-9 Sidewinder, was "I would have liked to have seen Montana..."

[atomheartbevo 89628]

5 hours ago, Balcones said:

Imagery. That’s what they were doing? Oh, ok. I wasn’t aware of that. I guess that is all that it could be, now that you point it out.

No way they could be testing their radio communication, learning about what they can collect on our telecommunications, what they could potentially interfere/jam with at that elevation, etc… they could be doing countless things.

Why make it easy for them? 

They weren’t interfering/jamming our comms, otherwise we would have said something.  Plus, there’s plenty of amateur radio geeks out there that were in the path that would have noticed such attempts.

And that’s not getting into the fact that we knew where it was at all times, which means we could just shut down our comms as they pass through the area.

 If the Chinese were after our comms, tying into what @Balconeswas saying, the Chinese could have slipped somebody into the US (students, tech workers, etc.) into our large Chinese-American population, and amongst any number of Chinese-owned businesses in the US, and with a little bit of gear and the right job/home/vacation, could collect far more a balloon, and we would not know.

5 hours ago, David Dennison said:

It's amazing to me that people don't understand we allowed that balloon to stay in the air exactly as long as it was useful for us to do so.

1234.  We have been extremely aggressive about flying and collecting intelligence over the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and in Eastern Europe, against Russia, who casually talks about throwing nukes our way, and whose soldiers and sailors have been killed by that intelligence we collected, but all of the sudden a Chinese balloon over our own territory was a problem our military couldn’t solve or handle?  GTFO with that nonsense.  

[The Dog 44019]

 

[Nicole44 22059]

5 hours ago, drt said:

My thoughts are the Air Force probably had some 19 year old painting this fucker with a laser to disable its intel gathering systems for the last few days. More of an exercise in boredom than anything else. 

 

[Pods 7551]

Boosted from Reddit

[Burt 4080]

On 2/3/2023 at 6:12 PM, Tex48 said:

 

 

 

Dolly is at it again.

 

In all seriousness, though, there have been a couple of sonic-like booms heard around here the past 24 hours. I heard one Saturday afternoon during the K-St game.

[Bevo 13568]

25 minutes ago, Burt said:

Dolly is at it again.

 

In all seriousness, though, there have been a couple of sonic-like booms heard around here the past 24 hours. I heard one Saturday afternoon during the K-St game.

Well, I think Polly's video is of a firefly so I assume the sonic-like booms are from a bug zapper

[Parliament 14245]

So they shot it down over water. Water that's soft enough to hopefully preserve the 'lecteonics inside for us to take apart and look at.

This is a huge blunder for China.  All they accomplished was sewing discord in America.  And the past few years have proven that America is immune to discord.

[justhookit 4191]

I don’t know why the news articles that mention a second balloon over “Latin America” aren’t being more specific. The damn thing was over my marina Marina Pez Vela in Costa Rica on Thursday morning. I got this picture of it. If they needed to find it they could have just asked me. Clearly the Chinese are trying to steal my fishing secrets. The next 2 days there was a ton of U.S. military helicopter traffic over the Pacific which you don’t see often at all other than an occasional large drug interdiction.

Edited February 5, 2023 by justhookit

[Chad Fuck 17659]

[Captainant 27637]

This guy is a former F14 naval aviator and writes for the USNI and generally is pretty credible - he just put out a pretty good overview of the F22 shoot down

Neato presentation of the info and his speculation of why they used a missile vs a gun run. Also funny that a balloon is the F22s first kill

[Chad Fuck 17659]

15 minutes ago, Captainant said:

This guy is a former F14 naval aviator and writes for the USNI and generally is pretty credible - he just put out a pretty good overview of the F22 shoot down

Neato presentation of the info and his speculation of why they used a missile vs a gun run. Also funny that a balloon is the F22s first kill

The Frank Luke call back is a nice touch.  Great story that one and a highly appropriate use in context.  

[The Dog 44019]

 

[DefinitelyNotHollywoodColt 12301]

18 hours ago, Balcones said:

22 years a signal officer in the military. Retired though, so maybe things have changed. What do I know? 

If we don’t use radio frequency to communicate anymore, what do we use, son?  If not HF, VHF, UHF, L band, etc… what is the new medium? These radio waves can’t go past 60,000 ft? When did that change?
 

In my day, we used radio frequency for communicating to satellites. VHF, UHF, L-band, etc.. kinda depended. We even used radio frequency to communicate with GPS satellites. No idea what they use today.

Moving horizontally? No comment, son.

I wasn’t aware you couldn’t jam a frequency anymore. Or interfere at all.. You couldn’t collect information traveling through the air.  Would be interesting to see what a balloon at 60,000 ft could do to a plane at 35,000 ft. But all planes have super secret “secure communications” Right, son? I’m not sure if planes use radio frequency anymore for their systems. They did in my day.
 

Obviously the Chinese would only want to collect information on just military networks. That would be their only reason to be over the US.  The only target to collect on. Probably have no interest in testing/collecting/messing with civilian networks, aviation, commerce, media, etc… 

So, tell me about the new non-radio frequency we have these days.

Dad?

[Macanudo 12975]

14 hours ago, berlinerbaer said:

 

This thing got a nice listen to police scanners, citizens band, and shitty AM radio.

Hopefully, at some point, it got to hear Soul Finger by the Bar-Kays.

[Chad Fuck 17659]

4 minutes ago, Macanudo said:

Hopefully, at some point, it got to hear Soul Finger by the Bar-Kays.

[ChickenSandwich 9828]

4 hours ago, justhookit said:

I don’t know why the news articles that mention a second balloon over “Latin America” aren’t being more specific. The damn thing was over my marina Marina Pez Vela in Costa Rica on Thursday morning. I got this picture of it. If they needed to find it they could have just asked me. Clearly the Chinese are trying to steal my fishing secrets. The next 2 days there was a ton of U.S. military helicopter traffic over the Pacific which you don’t see often at all other than an occasional large drug interdiction.

You can see it from the ground and video guy says there have been 4 previous balloons to fly over the US and nobody saw it? WTF

Edited February 5, 2023 by ChickenSandwich

[Brian Fantana 6680]

On 2/2/2023 at 7:39 PM, Parliament said:

So the Chinese don't see how our defense tech works?  

 

On 2/3/2023 at 6:47 PM, VirginiaLonghorn said:

That would require borrowing some air defense capability from Ukraine ..

 

On 2/3/2023 at 7:04 PM, VirginiaLonghorn said:

Actually, a potential chemical or biological delivery capability cruising over the heartland was ignored.

 

On 2/3/2023 at 7:20 PM, VirginiaLonghorn said:

Wuhan was just a dream …

 

On 2/3/2023 at 8:03 PM, Nicole44 said:

I hope we just shot their bitch ass balloon down. And any other country should do the same. If there are other balloons (which there are several reports of) out there over other places. To me, this isn’t a Democrat v Republican issue. The Chinese government shouldn’t be trusted PERIOD. If the virus originated from Russia would certain people feel differently!? It shouldn’t be a political issue. It’s an US v them issue and their government hasn’t earned any trust at all from the rest of the world. They ain’t our friend and their government shouldn’t be defended by anyone at this point.  I just don’t understand anyone defending anything their government does or has done and is doing. 

 

On 2/3/2023 at 10:08 PM, Hate said:

I don’t care if it was just a goddamn gender reveal ballon gone astray, if it came from China into our airspace it should be immediately removed. Someone is asleep at the wheel, clearly.

 

22 hours ago, Surly Bevo said:

What if it's not really a spy balloon at all.  What if it is "communicating"?  An actual "trial balloon" if you will.  Main intent being nothing more than simply to see how we respond to their "letter".

 

22 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

They fucked and around and found out. They found out the F-22 can engage at that height. And now we recover their tech and see what it really was.

Best thing is the World saw us shooting it down live on Twitter. Well those that have it. 

 

20 hours ago, Balcones said:

Imagery. That’s what they were doing? Oh, ok. I wasn’t aware of that. I guess that is all that it could be, now that you point it out.

No way they could be testing their radio communication, learning about what they can collect on our telecommunications, what they could potentially interfere/jam with at that elevation, etc… they could be doing countless things.
 

Why make it easy for them? 

 

20 hours ago, InkaUtexas said:

Sometimes you learn from letting your enemies play. Saw some reports that we saw this coming in from a way out. Check out NORAD's scan zone. We announced it when Jim in Montana looked up called a sheriff who called the USAF and the press. 

Shit is above you all the time. I think we played this one well. 

If it was just a weather balloon, well our navy boys got a fun dive exercise, the USAF got to coordinate, and a Pilot can paint a balloon on his F-22. Plus we showed we can hit at that height with accuracy. 

Just ordered a F-22 model. Will keep it for the next winter shitty storm. 

 

17 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

You can see it from the ground and video guy says there have been 4 previous balloons to fly over the US and nobody saw it? WTF

 

Collecting all the bad/dumb/retarded posts. Let me know if I missed any.

[CleverNickname 1308]

No "emerged, it's a dry run for an EMP attack!" Surly, I'm disappointed. 

[wild_turkey 3159]

Maybe a stupid question and my apologies if this has been covered, but if the balloon doesn’t give China any information that they didn’t already have from satellites, then why did they send it over our airspace?

They had to have some goal for doing this. Perhaps they weren’t trying to get aerial photography at all, because I agree that probably already have this. Perhaps they just wanted to do a test run to see how far a balloon with a payload could travel over our country?

It just seems a little naive to say “They already have satellites photos so this balloon is pointless and not worth worrying about.”

[bolverk 29655]

30 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

You can see it from the ground and video guy says there have been 4 previous balloons to fly over the US and nobody saw it? WTF

You're, obviously, free to believe whatever you'd like.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chinese-spy-balloon-crashed-off-coast-of-hawaii-4-months-ago

You can also go back to the previous page and read post #315.

Edited February 5, 2023 by bolverk

[Brian Fantana 6680]

5 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

Maybe a stupid question and my apologies if this has been covered, but if the balloon doesn’t give China any information that they didn’t already have from satellites, then why did they send it over our airspace?

They had to have some goal for doing this. Perhaps they weren’t trying to get aerial photography at all, because I agree that probably already have this. Perhaps they just wanted to do a test run to see how far a balloon with a payload could travel over our country?

It just seems a little naive to say “They already have satellites photos so this balloon is pointless and not worth worrying about.”

China is a highly technologically advanced world superpower. They have HEO and LEO surveillance satellites. It has been public knowledge for years that they have high altitude stealth surveillance drones. I promise you they don't need to send a fucking slow-moving balloon that's completely and obviously visible to any of our tracking systems to gather intel. It blows my mind that people just cannot stop and think even slightly critically about this for a single minute.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

This guy is a former F14 naval aviator and writes for the USNI and generally is pretty credible - he just put out a pretty good overview of the F22 shoot down

Neato presentation of the info and his speculation of why they used a missile vs a gun run. Also funny that a balloon is the F22s first kill

He has a lot of cool videos getting into the history of aerial warfare, naval air, etc.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

37 minutes ago, ChickenSandwich said:

You can see it from the ground and video guy says there have been 4 previous balloons to fly over the US and nobody saw it? WTF

Oh, the military saw it and the one last year, and the three over the previous 2-3 years (I want to say 2017-2020).

10 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

 Perhaps they just wanted to do a test run to see how far a balloon with a payload could travel over our country?

Our military was tracking it before it hit US airspace, and it was easy to track given the size of the payload.  We have ground-based radars that track smaller items in space than that payload.

10 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

It just seems a little naive to say “They already have satellites photos so this balloon is pointless and not worth worrying about.”

[ChickenSandwich 9828]

12 minutes ago, bolverk said:

You're, obviously, free to believe whatever you'd like.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/chinese-spy-balloon-crashed-off-coast-of-hawaii-4-months-ago

You can also go back to the previous page and read post #315.

Gracias. First I've heard about the Chinese balloon invasion. At least its not aliens. 

[Brisketexan 105072]

Enjoyed this wink and nod to US military history:

On Saturday, as F-22 pilots shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon floating near South Carolina, the callsigns of the airmen contained an apparent homage to a WWI hero.

Onlookers cheered as the pilots, identified as "FRANK01" and "FRANK02," circled China's spy balloon near Myrtle Beach as it floated over the Atlantic Ocean, waiting until the object was safely away from civilians on the ground to avoid the risk of falling debris.

Pilots use callsigns in place of their names when communicating, both for security and identification purposes. The "FRANK" callsigns appear to be a reference to a WWI pilot, Frank Luke, the first airman to receive the Medal of Honor after shooting down over a dozen aircraft, including 10 spy balloons, in just eight days during World War I.

"The military jets using the call sign "FRANK" is significant," Marcus Weisgerber, global business editor for the global security news outlet Defense One, tweeted after the callsigns were identified by an airspace monitoring account. "Frank Luke Jr. was an American fighter ace in World War I better known as the 'Arizona Balloon Buster.' He is credited with shooting down 14 German surveillance balloons."

[wild_turkey 3159]

China is a highly technologically advanced world superpower. They have HEO and LEO surveillance satellites. It has been public knowledge for years that they have high altitude stealth surveillance drones. I promise you they don't need to send a fucking slow-moving balloon that's completely and obviously visible to any of our tracking systems to gather intel. It blows my mind that people just cannot stop and think even slightly critically about this for a single minute.

That was kind of the point of my question. Why do so many people assume the purpose of the balloon was surveillance?

It seems to me they have adequate surveillance that goes far beyond whatever a balloon can provide, therefore, the balloon must have a different purpose altogether.

[atomheartbevo 89628]

4 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

It seems to me they have adequate surveillance that goes far beyond whatever a balloon can provide, therefore, the balloon must have a different purpose altogether.

If it was nefarious, they would have to assume that the US military would shoot it down, and glean all kinds of information from the wreckage, and they would have no reason to be outraged over them deliberately sending a military surveillance/whatever balloon over the continental US.

They are publicly acting very pissed off about it, and probably assume that the US will figure out what it it was about.  It could have easily a legitimate civilian purpose and something went wrong and it went off course, but because the Chinese leadership is what it is, they would never admit to a fuckup, and now the US military gets to see what the hoopla was about.

[Nicole44 22059]

29 minutes ago, Brian Fantana said:

China is a highly technologically advanced world superpower. They have HEO and LEO surveillance satellites. It has been public knowledge for years that they have high altitude stealth surveillance drones. I promise you they don't need to send a fucking slow-moving balloon that's completely and obviously visible to any of our tracking systems to gather intel. It blows my mind that people just cannot stop and think even slightly critically about this for a single minute.

It doesn’t matter why the balloon was here and it didn’t just blow off course. China is not our friend. Their government may have all the technology but they are still assholes. Not worth defending any of their actions. There was nothing wrong with shooting down their bitch ass balloon.  
 

During the height of Covid, it simply baffled me to hear so many American people and the media defending China and the origins of Covid and how China did such a great job of closing things off etc…no they didn’t. Fuck them. Period. China is no better than Russia. They are just smarter and have better weapons but they aren’t our friend. Fuck them for unleashing hell on the world with Covid. We should slowly start pulling our resources out of China and moving them to Mexico and Central and South America. And slowly let them bleed out and suffocate. 

[GW Hayduke 1953]

7 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 It could have easily a legitimate civilian purpose and something went wrong and it went off course, but because the Chinese leadership is what it is, they would never admit to a fuckup

China stated it was a civilian scientific balloon that was blown off course. 
 

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/03/china-tells-us-to-remain-cool-headed-over-suspected-spy-balloon.html

[YGIFS 19449]

57 minutes ago, wild_turkey said:

Maybe a stupid question and my apologies if this has been covered, but if the balloon doesn’t give China any information that they didn’t already have from satellites, then why did they send it over our airspace?

They had to have some goal for doing this. Perhaps they weren’t trying to get aerial photography at all, because I agree that probably already have this. Perhaps they just wanted to do a test run to see how far a balloon with a payload could travel over our country?

It just seems a little naive to say “They already have satellites photos so this balloon is pointless and not worth worrying about.”

Read this thread.  Listen to your friends, neighbors, relatives, and co-workers.  Why would China float a literal test balloon for the FOURTH time in the last few years?  

[Nicole44 22059]

11 minutes ago, GW Hayduke said:

China stated it was a civilian scientific balloon that was blown off course. 
 

https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2023/02/03/china-tells-us-to-remain-cool-headed-over-suspected-spy-balloon.html

US officials say the balloon was being used for surveillance; China insists it was a civilian research vessel.
 

Yes let’s trust what China says. Because their civilians can’t do dick without their government knowing about it and approving it. So let’s try again. The pentagon said it didn’t simply blow off course and has sophisticated maneuvering capabilities and wasn’t just following the jet stream.

Still baffling that people are saying, “It’s not a threat. Their government said it wasn’t. There is an innocent explanation for the balloon! China isn’t a threat at all to the world. I want their government here! I think It’s great.  I’m going to keep defending them because I am absolutely delusional! China is so smart and sophisticated. They didn’t spread Covid on purpose!” (Narrator: move there and fuck off then.) 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21875]

According to what I read, the payload was the size of three buses.  Based on that, it could carry a shit load of equipment that couldn't be crammed in a satellite or spy plane.  Hopefully, we can recover the payload and find out what it was.

[bolverk 29655]

8 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

US officials say the balloon was being used for surveillance; China insists it was a civilian research vessel.
 

Yes let’s trust what China says. Because their civilians can’t do dick without their government knowing about it and approving it. So let’s try again. The pentagon said it didn’t simply blow off course and has sophisticated maneuvering capabilities and wasn’t just following the jet stream.

Still baffling that people are saying, “It’s not a threat. Their government said it wasn’t. There is an innocent explanation for the balloon! China isn’t a threat at all to the world. I want their government here! I think It’s great.  I’m going to keep defending them because I am absolutely delusional! China is so smart and sophisticated. They didn’t spread Covid on purpose!” (Narrator: move there and fuck off then.) 

Good grief. No one has been defending the Chinese government in any of this. You just really have a tendency of going off the rails sometimes. Lay off the shrill cable news talking heads and calm the fuck down.

THE PENTAGON, you know, our own military, also said it wasn't a threat:

 

“Right now, we assess that there is no threat, no physical threat or military threat, to people on the ground,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. Later Friday, General Ryder said the military had also assessed another balloon reportedly crossing Latin America as another Chinese surveillance device.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/world/asia/china-spy-balloon.html

If that's paywalled you can also read  it here: https://txtify.it/https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/world/asia/china-spy-balloon.html