Pentagon confirms suspected spy balloon over the U.S. 'right now'

[Subduction Zone]

One bullet through the canopy and a slow gas leak would bring it to the ground. It could then be put on display in the Air and Space Museum.

Noöne seems particularly worried about it. Apparently there's not much useful intelligence it could gather that couldn't be obtained from the ground or from satellite surveillance.

Or it could pop and come crashing down. I know of experiments that have been done with that sort of balloon, though they are designed to keep climbing until the do burst. One has to equip any equipment used with it with a parachute so it does not come hurtling down and bonk some unsuspecting farmer on the head. It also makes it easier to recover one's equipment if it does not smash into a thousand pieces on impact.

 

[Stevicus]

Please, We Implore You, Don’t Try to Shoot The Balloon (msn.com)

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Please, We Implore You, Don’t Try to Shoot The Balloon (msn.com)

I swear I just heard some redneck banjo music.

 

[Twilight Hue]

I swear I just heard some redneck banjo music.

Best kind. Bluegrass forever.

 

[Mock Turtle]

Now I want to sing, "99 Red Ballons".

Sing along:

 

[Valjean]

We could argue about it for a week, or we could pierce the balloon with a small caliber projectile from a high altitude plane and examine it after it drifts down

 

[Subduction Zone]

We could argue about it for a week, or we could pierce the balloon with a small caliber projectile from a high altitude plane and examine it after it drifts down

As long as it did not pop. And as long as it does not have some protective explosive devices.

 

[Stevicus]

Now it seems another balloon has been spotted over Latin America.

China balloon: Many questions about suspected spy in the sky | AP News

WASHINGTON (AP) — What in the world is that thing?

The massive white orb drifting across U.S. airspace has triggered a diplomatic maelstrom and is blowing up on social media.

The Pentagon says the balloon, which is carrying sensors and surveillance equipment, is maneuverable and has shown it can change course. It has loitered over sensitive areas of Montana where nuclear warheads are siloed, leading the military to take actions to prevent it from collecting intelligence.

A Pentagon spokesman said it could remain aloft over the U.S. for “a few days,” extending uncertainty about where it will go or if the U.S. will try to safely take it down. And late Friday, the Defense Department acknowledged reports of a balloon flying over Latin America — assessed as “another Chinese surveillance balloon.”

A look at what’s known about the balloon crossing the U.S. — and what isn’t.


IT’S A BIRD, IT’S A PLANE, IT’S A ... SPY BALLOON

The Pentagon and other U.S. officials say it’s a Chinese spy balloon — about the size of three school buses — moving east over America at an altitude of about 60,000 feet (18,600 meters). The U.S. says it is being used for surveillance and intelligence collection, but officials have provided few details.

U.S. officials say the Biden administration was aware of it even before it crossed into American airspace in Alaska early this past week. A number of officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic.

The White House said President Joe Biden was first briefed on the balloon on Tuesday. The State Department said Blinken and Deputy Secretary Wendy Sherman spoke with China’s senior Washington-based official on Wednesday evening about the matter.

Even if the balloon is not armed, it poses a risk to the U.S., said retired Army Gen. John Ferrari, a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. The flight itself, he said, can be used to test America’s ability to detect incoming threats and to find holes in the country’s air defense warning system. It may also allow the Chinese to sense electromagnetic emissions that higher-altitude satellites cannot detect, such as low-power radio frequencies that could help them understand how different U.S. weapons systems communicate.

According to senior administration officials, Biden initially wanted to shoot the balloon down. Some members of Congress have echoed that sentiment.

But Pentagon leaders strongly advised Biden against doing so because of risks to the safety of people on the ground, and Biden agreed.

One official said the sensor package the balloon is carrying weighs as much as 1,000 pounds. The balloon is large enough and high enough in the air that the potential debris field could stretch for miles, with no control over where it would eventually land.

For now, officials said the U.S. will monitor it, using “a variety of methods” including aircraft. The Pentagon has said the balloon isn’t a military threat and doesn’t give China any surveillance capabilities it doesn’t already have with spy satellites.

HOW DID IT GET HERE?

Deliberate or an accident? There’s also disagreement.

As far as wind patterns go, China’s account that global air currents — winds known as the Westerlies — carried the balloon from its territory to the western United States is plausible, said Dan Jaffe, a professor of atmospheric chemistry at the University of Washington. Jaffe has studied the role those same wind patterns play in carrying air pollution from Chinese cities, wildfire smoke from Siberia and dust from Gobi Desert sand storms to the U.S. for two decades.

“It’s entirely consistent with everything we know about the winds,” Jaffe said. “Transit time from China to the United States would be about a week.” “The higher it goes, the faster it goes,” Jaffe said. He said weather and research balloons typically have a range of steering capability depending on their sophistication, from no steering at all to limited steering ability.

The U.S. is largely mum on this issue, but insists the balloon is maneuverable, suggesting that China in some way deliberately moved the balloon toward or into U.S. airspace.

During World War II, Japan launched thousands of hydrogen balloons carrying bombs, and hundreds ended up in the U.S. and Canada. Most were ineffective, but one was lethal. In May 1945, six civilians died when they found one of the balloons on the ground in Oregon, and it exploded.

In the aftermath of the war, America’s own balloon effort ignited the alien stories and lore linked to Roswell, New Mexico.

According to military research documents and studies, the U.S. began using giant trains of balloons and sensors that were strung together and stretched more than 600 feet as part of an early effort to detect Soviet missile launches during the post-World War II era. They called it Project Mogul.

One of the balloon trains crash-landed at the Roswell Army Airfield in 1947, and Air Force personnel who were not aware of the program found debris. The unusual experimental equipment made it difficult to identify, leaving the airmen with unanswered questions that over time — aided by UFO enthusiasts — took on a life of their own. The simple answer, according to the military reports, was just over the Sacramento Mountains at the Project Mogul launch site in Alamogordo.

In 2015, an unmanned Army surveillance blimp broke loose from its mooring at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland and floated over Pennsylvania for hours with two fighter jets on its tail, triggering blackouts as it dragged its tether across power lines. As residents gawked, the 240-foot blimp came down in pieces in the Muncy, Pennsylvania, countryside. It still had helium in its nose when it fell, and state police used shotguns — about 100 shots — to deflate it.

 

[Stevicus]

They shot down the balloon: U.S. reportedly downs Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast : NPR

 

[amorphous_constellation]

@Stevicus You know what I think is kind of weird, is this whole thing about blinken canceling his trip because of this. And I've posted about this before, in different posts, about how the political social atmosphere seems to hinge heavily on a sort of mind-reading, subconscious power game system. Blinken can't meet with Xi, because the balloon made him metaphysically more powerful. What else could it come down to?

He might not even mention the balloon to blinken, that doesn't even matter. But amidst the pleasantries, that the otherwise 'gentle conversation' would have, they'd both know about the balloon. Does anyone understand what I mean? Is this paranoia, technically, or is this a real thing? We, the lay public, our often told not to 'read into' things too much, you can find tons of articles about that. But our high-level leaders do seem to operate on the presumption that minute, non-verbal details of all kinds should be read into

 

[We Never Know]

Pentagon confirms suspected Chinese spy balloon over the U.S. ‘right now’ - UPI.com







It sounds rather ominous - a Chinese surveillance balloon is floating above US soil right now. I wonder why they would send a balloon, though. It seems that if they wanted aerial photographs of US territory, there might be easier and less conspicuous ways of doing so.

Yeah we and they have satellites that can gather more and clearer information than a balloon.
Maybe they were being nostalgic.... Or it really was weather balloon.

 

[Vee]

So much noise over a balloon? Can't they just shut it down and move on?

 

[Mock Turtle]

So much noise over a balloon? Can't they just shut it down and move on?

Perhaps the Chinese are bent on something else - shoot our balloon down and we might shoot a satellite of yours down.

 

[Vee]

Perhaps the Chinese are bent on something else - shoot our balloon down and we might shoot a satellite of yours down.

Hope they sort it all out peacefully then.

 

[Subduction Zone]

So much noise over a balloon? Can't they just shut it down and move on?

They need something to blame Biden for.

 

[Revoltingest]

Perhaps the Chinese are bent on something else - shoot our balloon down and we might shoot a satellite of yours down.

They already attack our surveillance (spy) planes
in international airspace when near China.
Yet they thing they've the right to send their
surveillance (spy) equipment right over our
missile bases?
**** the Chinese.

 

[Vee]

They need something to blame Biden for.

I have no idea what's going on in the political world, but this really makes me want to come up with some stupid joke. Adults fighting over balloons it's just... ridiculous?

 

[Revoltingest]

It's odd.
We shoot down their balloon.
China claims it's a civilian weather research project.
But then they threaten retaliation.
China cares that much about a civilian balloon?

 

[amorphous_constellation]

It's odd.
We shoot down their balloon.
China claims it's a civilian weather research project.
But then they threaten retaliation.
China cares that much about a civilian balloon?

It comes back again to this concept I mentioned earlier, about the presence of 'metaphysical weakness' in politics. It's not about the balloon. It's about a category of the 'gaslighting' effect, where instead of sanity being questioned, it is power.

 

[Stevicus]

It's odd.
We shoot down their balloon.
China claims it's a civilian weather research project.
But then they threaten retaliation.
China cares that much about a civilian balloon?

I guess we could send over that big Trump "baby" balloon that was such a big hit. We can tell them that if they're mad about us shooting down their balloon, we'll let them shoot one of our balloons.