Suspected Chinese spy balloon found over northern U.S.

over a hundred satellites are launched each year and most of them are chinese.

 

from the same story:

“We have F-22s on alert in Alaska,” said David Deptula, the dean of the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies and a retired Air Force three-star general. “I believe that it should have been shot down in U.S. airspace prior to overflying U.S. territory.”​

 

Also things forget how big this was. If it was shot down over ground falling debris from it could do damage on the ground. Imagine if a piece of the balloon had injured people in the US. The outcry would be huge.

The balloon was clearly a provocation but not that big of a threat. The only reason why this balloon was a bigger deal than the ones in the Trump admin was because this one was visible to civilians. Also even besides balloons the PRC is already spying on us through all sorts of other means including cyber. The US is doing the same to the PRC.

 

What? Someone who wasn't involved in the current situation believes that it should have been shot down sooner?

Oh man. What a real wake up call.

 

I've been very critical of Trump but I don't think not publicly acknowledging or shooting down a spy ballon would've been grounds for impeachment.

 

It was reported to be the size of three buses and weigh 1,000 pounds. At an altitude of ~60,000 feet, there is definitely a significant risk involved in bringing it down. However, whatever I, you, and Joe think doesn't matter much. We have a whole department to handle this. The DoD is responsible for handling these situations, and they took care of it. It's sad but not surprising how everything has become so politicized.

The authorities have stated that it does not pose a military or physical threat and has limited intelligence value. Nevertheless, they were taking steps to protect against intelligence gathering. They considered taking it down over sparsely populated areas but decided against it due to the risk of damaging property and harming people. Later on, it was reported that they gained valuable intelligence by monitoring its activities. Sounds like they did their job very well.

https://www.defense.gov/News/Transc...kground-briefing-on-high-altitude-surveillan/

 

The WSJ piece didn't invalidate anything I said.

 

Yes, the DoD is very aware of almost anything that flies within a certain range of our borders, including central and South America and Canada. The idea these balloons have went undetected for years is silly. Its semantics. DoD doesn't release this information for the uninformed population to make policy decisions.

 

I don't think the population is uninformed. I mean just look at how many spy balloon experts we have on this forum alone.

 

These forums are the exception. We have some of the world's best and brightest analytics here like @adoo , @dobro1229 and @astros123

 

not anything, everything.

 

You can't leave Balloon Boy Basso off that list.

 

Swalwell and Feinstein treated their chinese spies better.

 

Are you seriously this effin slow?! That makes it 100X MORE WORST! China was effin spying without the bozos even noticing ! It shows how effin of a joke the entire trump administration was. Pentagon has EVIDENCE that they did it numerous times over Florida.



@basso but but the Maga ask us why we didn't shoot it down?

Why didn't we listen to the far right when it comes to national security? Republicans need to be ignored at every turn. They're useless twitter warriors

It's funny how the low iq trumpers never seem to remember how ivanka trump literally got hundreds of millions of dollars of patents fast tracked the same week the trade deal was signed.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommyb...hina-after-trump-was-elected/?sh=3d448c7f1d60

Trump was literally the most corrupt POS we've ever seen.

 

Yo, they were in this contest
@AroundTheWorld
@Salvy
@Os Trigonum

 

deserves its own thread