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Say Hello to a Chinese Reconnaissance Balloon
A Chinese reconnaissance balloon has been hovering over Alaska, Canada, and Montana. The Pentagon says it has stayed for longer than “normal.” Normal? Is it normal for Chinese reconnaissance balloons to stay for any amount of time over the US? Apparently so.
But the Pentagon is not concerned. They don’t believe these balloons can collect much information that China can’t get from other means anyway. Plus, it might be dangerous to shoot it down.
What in the actual hell? The Pentagon can’t figure out why the Chinese keep sending these “useless” balloons to fly near military installations? Maybe, just maybe, they are not useless.
General Milley should be required to wear a dress to work until that thing is shot down.
Published in Foreign Policy
Could it be captured? It must be a formidable piece to hover in the stratosphere for days on end.
The Chinese get better intelligence from members of the Senate and House . That’s what the guy from the Pentagon was trying to say without saying it .
I’m sure we crafted an especially harshly worded communique. That’ll show’em!
You assume that would be a punishment.
We were flying balloons over them in the late 1940s, but I suspect today’s sensors are a lot more sophisticated. Unless this is just a distraction.
What’s the point of the US military budget? To have woke trans and gay trash while they can’t shoot down a spy device over our own territory? The military needs to be made to do a lot more with a lot less.
We absolutely could make sharp cuts to a lot of trash in the military budget, and it would improve warfighting capabilities because they wouldn’t be able to waste their time on all kinds of foolishness. Right now we’re struggling to put 75 surface combatants to sea at one time, but we’re really good at DIE.
Fang Fang!
You stole my comment, Flicker!
Oh, good! Each balloon provides “…limited additive value…”
It might be dangerous to shoot down a balloon over Alaska or Montana? Are they afraid the debris would litter the nearly totally unpopulated landscape?
Maybe it would release greenhouse gases and accelerate climate catastrophe.
If Hunter says so it must be true.
Lots of things in the universe are limited. For example, Bill Gates’ financial resources are limited.
The Turtle ! He has Chinese interests.
They say they don’t want to shoot the balloon down because the debris might cause damage on the ground. I guess they don’t have any rocket scientists in the Pentagon.
20 years ago the Space Shuttle Orbiter Columbia broke up over Texas. It weighed about 180,000 pounds. Debris was scattered from the DFW area to the Louisiana border. That included a town I had been living in the year before, Palestine, TX. (You could see tiles scattered over the main highway from Palestine to Tyler, TX.) The damage done on the ground was trivial.
I doubt this balloon weighs as much as an Orbiter.
Speaking of weight, could the balloon carry the weight of something that could go “BOOM!?”
Almost certainly. It likely contains a demolition charge linked to an accelerometer to destroy sensitive equipment. That’s standard for that type of equipment. (Military satellites, too.) But you are talking 10kg or so of explosive, not 1000kg.
He would have some familiar company . . .
Made it to Montana? I guess the border in the North and West is as secure as the one in the South.
Gee, the Chinese forced one of our spy planes down early in the Bush administration. Either shoot down this balloon, or capture it for the intel . . .
Update: I also forgot about Gary Powers.
I saw this story this morning as a front page headline! It is shocking, along with your post saying they may leave it alone and it’s not a concern????? There’s no words……………..!
What could the balloon find out that Chinese hackers, traitorous federal employees or Hunter Biden have not already told them? One consolation is that the Chinese have had to spend a fortune on data storage for all the info they have stolen.
Maybe the Chinese have just climbed aboard the Global Warming hoakum?!
They are happily financing it because (a) it weakens us and (b) the greenies will never call them out for their hypocrisy.
I always get a kick out of the idiots who claim that China is way ahead of us on renewable energy because they manufacture so many windmills and solar panels. But the Chicoms only do that so they can sell them to gullible Western morons who believe in Global Warming!
Ladies and Gentlemen! The Pentagon is on this. They are holding a briefing.
But when are they going to hold a shooting?
We need a thorough housecleaning of the military. The balloon and DIE are just symptoms. We can only keep a small part of our Navy at sea. We’ve discovered that the defense industrial base will take years to replace the stockpiles of ammunition that we are giving to Ukraine. We’re too chicken to shoot down a balloon because it might provoke the Chinese.
Did they play real football or powderpuff football?