Chinese spy balloon floating over the US

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U.S. DOD : "We allow the balloon to continue to float above the United States, rather than attempt to shoot is down."
https://www.defense.gov/News/Releas...tement-on-high-altitude-surveillance-balloon/https://www.defense.gov/News/News-S...-tracking-high-altitude-surveillance-balloon/
An intelligence-gathering balloon, most certainly launched by the People's Republic of China, is currently floating above the United States, the Defense Department announced Thursday evening.

"The United States government has detected and is tracking a high-altitude surveillance balloon that is over the continental United States right now," Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said during an impromptu briefing Thursday evening. "The U.S. government, to include NORAD, continues to track and monitor it closely."
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Keep seeing "high-altitude" balloon in all these (breathless) articles. Has anyone mentioned what altitude it's actually at?

Also:
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Wondering why the leap to "spy balloon"?
(Especially when, as the US admin has already pointed out, intel gathered from these devices wouldn't be significantly better than satellite intel).
 
Montana is interesting as I’ve heard that Billings and Bozeman in particular is spook central.
 
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jeffb said:
intel gathered from these devices wouldn't be significantly better than satellite intel).
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Loiter time. Satellites zip by, or are thousands of miles away; this thing is close to hovering. With luck, every yahoo with a transmitter is beaming spam at it. It's trying to collect missile silo data, but all it's getting is "We've been trying to reach you about your auto coverage..."
 
Orionblamblam said:
jeffb said:
intel gathered from these devices wouldn't be significantly better than satellite intel).
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Loiter time.
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YEs. You can also use them to get in between the satellites above and the facilities below and intercept transmissions. Sat transmissions in- or outbound, potentially cell phone data, emails, ship-to-shore and other radio, radar frequencies in use after you tweak the right noses, etc.
 
_Del_ said:
Orionblamblam said:
jeffb said:
intel gathered from these devices wouldn't be significantly better than satellite intel).
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Loiter time.
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YEs. You can also use them to get in between the satellites above and the facilities below and intercept transmissions. Sat transmissions in- or outbound, potentially cell phone data, emails, ship-to-shore and other radio, radar frequencies in use after you tweak the right noses, etc.
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Seems like a lot of trouble for a few hours of coverage per site, at most. And since balloons are not steerable, you get coverage of random sites instead of being able to target.
 
Hobbes said:
Seems like a lot of trouble for a few hours of coverage per site, at most. And since balloons are not steerable, you get coverage of random sites instead of being able to target.
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As opposed to the trouble of a few hundred million dollar satellites and their launch vehicles which give very brief minutes of coverage in rather predictable orbits, or..?
 
It's unusual to use a Balloon, if you got satellites who do the job.
The USA had in 1940s/50s Project Mogul for Spy balloon.
And it was a fiasco: off target, Photograph Siberia woods or cloud cover.
in one case landed entire camera system in russia and not in neutral land.
This let to development of U-2 spyplane

That Chinese would use this kind Ballon to spy on USA make no sense
Special to use WHITE ballon that say here i'm in sky
They would have same problems like Project Mogul arriving over the Target !
I think this is science balloon study the Jetsream.
Chinese ? could be Mongolia or Kazakhstan even Iran, were some university launch it...
 
As with anti-drone systems, the issue with taking out a high altitude balloon is that you don't really want a missile to be a lot more expensive than the balloon. Otherwise the Chinese will launch ten balloons a day, 95% of which will be just cheap inert decoys meant to soak up million-dollar missiles. Additionally, since you are almost by definition launching from within your own territory, you don't want that missile or its various stages to come crashing down onto your own people.

This would seem a fantastic opportunity to blast the crap out of something with a laser. The payload is by definition built light; it's in something akin to a vacuum. With a laser mounted on a U-2R or a C-130, there'll be no clouds between laser and target. It's almost the perfect target for a laser.
 
Perhaps, it's one of WW2 Japanese balloons, that made several round-the-world trips and now again flyover USA? :cool:
 
Michel Van said:
That Chinese would use this kind Ballon to spy on USA make no sense
Special to use WHITE ballon that say here i'm in sky
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That could well be the point. "We can penetrate your airspace. We're hovering over you. We're watching you. We're making you look weak and ineffectual."
 
Michel Van said:
And it was a fiasco: off target, Photograph Siberia woods or cloud cover.
in one case landed entire camera system in russia and not in neutral land.
This let to development of U-2 spyplane

That Chinese would use this kind Ballon to spy on USA make no sense
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Being a fiasco in 1950s doesn't mean that spy baloons could not have advantages in 2020s. Technology improved quite a lot.
 
My personal IMHO, is that the main function of such spy baloons is signal gathering and analysis. Drifting in atmosphere, they have much better capability to intercept satellite communications, military radar beams, ect. than satellites.

P.S. Also it is possible, that baloon itself is just a carrier & communication relay for something more controllable. For example, spy glider drone. Released from high enough altitude, a lightweight radar-opaque plastic glider could fly for hundreds of miles, reaching classified object, making low-altitude passes.
 
Dilandu said:
My personal IMHO, is that the main function of such spy baloons is signal gathering and analysis. Drifting in atmosphere, they have much better capability to intercept satellite communications, military radar beams, ect. than satellites.

P.S. Also it is possible, that baloon itself is just a carrier & communication relay for something more controllable. For example, spy glider drone. Released from high enough altitude, a lightweight radar-opaque plastic glider could fly for hundreds of miles, reaching classified object, making low-altitude passes.
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Really interesting idea, signal delay might be a problem though depending on the target.

Orionblamblam said:
Michel Van said:
That Chinese would use this kind Ballon to spy on USA make no sense
Special to use WHITE ballon that say here i'm in sky
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That could well be the point. "We can penetrate your airspace. We're hovering over you. We're watching you. We're making you look weak and ineffectual."
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It's a pretty lame point. Look, I can send party balloons to your address, tremble in fear.
 
Soon it will be over the Atlantic so take it out then. Just be sure to inform the commercial operators in the area first.
 
jeffb said:
Dilandu said:
My personal IMHO, is that the main function of such spy baloons is signal gathering and analysis. Drifting in atmosphere, they have much better capability to intercept satellite communications, military radar beams, ect. than satellites.

P.S. Also it is possible, that baloon itself is just a carrier & communication relay for something more controllable. For example, spy glider drone. Released from high enough altitude, a lightweight radar-opaque plastic glider could fly for hundreds of miles, reaching classified object, making low-altitude passes.
Click to expand...
Really interesting idea, signal delay might be a problem though depending on the target.

Orionblamblam said:
Michel Van said:
That Chinese would use this kind Ballon to spy on USA make no sense
Special to use WHITE ballon that say here i'm in sky
Click to expand...
That could well be the point. "We can penetrate your airspace. We're hovering over you. We're watching you. We're making you look weak and ineffectual."
Click to expand...
It's a pretty lame point. Look, I can send party balloons to your address, tremble in fear.
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Did you see the picture? It's got an atmospheric "satellite" hanging off the bottom. It's not some escapee from The Prisoner.
 
sferrin said:
A Tentative Fleet Plan said:
sferrin said:
CJGibson said:
View attachment 692577
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Balloons fly higher. Those aircraft would be easy pickin's. A balloon at 130,000 feet not so much.
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That Myasishchev M-17 was originally designed expressly for shooting down high-altitude reconnaissance balloons.
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With what? Because the plane definitely wasn't getting up there. The word record it set was only 71,000 feet.
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In it's balloon-killer guise there would've been a dorsal turret if I remember correctly.
 
sferrin said:
Did you see the picture? It's got an atmospheric "satellite" hanging off the bottom. It's not some escapee from The Prisoner.
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"We want information."
"You won't get it."
"Information."

Be hilarious if you could snip the cables and detach the payload.

Solar powered too, neat way to solve the problem of carrying around heavy batteries. Probably an indication that whatever it is, it's power hungry and transmitting all the time.

sferrin said:
With what? Because the plane definitely wasn't getting up there. The word record it set was only 71,000 feet.
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A couple of IR-guided AAMs and a dorsal GSh-23 cannon turret.
The S34 ended its days clipping a snowbank in taxiing trials so it never got much above 2ft....
 
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