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Chinese balloon/airship over USA

Is it possible that the reason USA hasn’t destroyed or disabled this is to show, or pretend to show that they don’t care about it & don’t see ( or want to be seen admitting) it’s a threat?
I would have thought that under normal circumstances anything they perceive to be a threat to the security of the USA, they feel they have the right to shoot down.
Post 9-11, even an airliner with hijackers on board would be threatened with being shot down rather than let them carry on to another high value target. Regardless of potential collateral damage.
So the excuse that a balloon is seen as a danger due to falling debris doesn’t ring true to me.
 
Cav said:
I don't understand why China would need to use a balloon at all. Satellites would get the same imagery quite easily and undetectably. Perhaps it was intended to provoke a response?
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This is what I thought initially, but according to this extract from an article in today's Weekend FT, it ain't necessarily so, which is partly what prompted me start this thread.
Military and intelligence analysts say the balloon's slow speed and high altitude allows them to record in greater detail and over a larger area than satellites in orbit. They are also harder to spot than drones or aircraft using traditional ant-surveillance equipment such as radar. They can remain in the air for weeks, providing lengthy assessments of activity on the ground. In 2019 it was revealed that the Pentagon was having its own spy balloon renaissance launching a pilot scheme of surveillance blimps to provide a persistent surveillance system to locate and deter narcotic trafficking and homeland security threats.
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manicatel said:
Is it possible that the reason USA hasn’t destroyed or disabled this is to show, or pretend to show that they don’t care about it & don’t see ( or want to be seen admitting) it’s a threat?
I would have thought that under normal circumstances anything they perceive to be a threat to the security of the USA, they feel they have the right to shoot down.
Post 9-11, even an airliner with hijackers on board would be threatened with being shot down rather than let them carry on to another high value target. Regardless of potential collateral damage.
So the excuse that a balloon is seen as a danger due to falling debris doesn’t ring true to me.
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It might not be so easy to shoot it down https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidh...hat-chinese-balloon-is-harder-than-you-think/

They might be working out the best way to bring it down and keep it intact, as I'm sure they'll want to examine it very closely rather than destroying it.

PS Or, of course, it might be they are scared it has a nuclear bomb onboard.
 
Being circled now by umpty-million dollars worth of jets and they still can't bring it down.

Classic case of more money than sense.

A drone, a Stanley knife blade and some gaffer tape would get it done in minutes. :rolleyes:
 
Absolutely no need for gaffa tape, a rather more (well two actually) things already exist..
For this job - Hellfire R9X should be up to the task?
 
Cav said:
The essence of spying is that is is covert. A spy in plain sight is not a spy.
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This is clearly not spying but is partly a mission to collect intelligence. Some of that, though, is more about how the US responds to incursion into their airspace and that doesn't need sensors on the balloon to collect. Just watch the news.

Cav said:
There are already a "constellation" of satellites which gather imagery every 90 minutes.
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The best imagery constellation China has is the Superview constellation and that has a two-day revisit time.

https://eos.com/find-satellite/superview-1/

The other thing to consider is dwell time. To achieve the best ground resolution of 50cm per pixel, it has to be at nadir (500 km altitude) of a highly elliptical orbit, which means it's shifting at about 10 km/s or 22000 mph (as described by Kepler's second law) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbital_speed) and can only take snapshots. The balloon (if it has a camera similar to Superview) is at 20km, so, as that is a bit lower than 500km is probably capable of higher resolution real time moving images.

And finally, satellites tend to follow known orbits so their position is predictable, so where they are looking is hardly covert. The only tricky bit is knowing that it is capable of 'seeing' and that is no different, at the moment, to the balloon.

Cav said:
This is a provocation exercise.
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That is the primary mission, for sure, but the fact it remains up and collecting information on the USA is a bit of a bonus for the PRC.
 
Surely this is 1st April material...?
Balloons...spying. ...does anyone seriously believe ..
 
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