Up in the sky…it’s a bird…it’s a plane…it’s a Chinese spy blimp

Excellent. I suspect there was interesting signals intelligence snagged. Would be nice if some of that could be released to the public in the future.

www.thedrive.com

U-2 Spy Planes Snooped On Chinese Surveillance Balloon

U-2 Dragon Ladies had the ability to actually fly above the balloon and gather multiple types of intelligence about it from its perch.
www.thedrive.com www.thedrive.com
 
Eric said:
www.independent.co.uk

Biden offers to brief Trump team on Chinese spy balloons they failed to catch

Biden administration official reveals Trump officials weren’t even aware of China’s surveillance balloons at the time
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk

Biden offers to brief Trump team on Chinese spy balloons they failed to catch​

Biden administration official reveals Trump officials weren’t even aware of China’s surveillance balloons at the time​

Click to expand...

I find this very odd. So the military had evidence balloons were flying over the US but did not recognize it at the time? And then in presumably a very short amount of time were able to look back and discover these objects had existed?

Technologically, that’s pretty interesting. But then one has to ask if whatever sensors existed to detect these craft (ie radar, electronic emissions detection, satellite images, etc), why were they only able to connect the dots now and it years ago?
 
AG_PhamD said:
I find this very odd. So the military had evidence balloons were flying over the US but did not recognize it at the time? And then in presumably a very short amount of time were able to look back and discover these objects had existed?

Technologically, that’s pretty interesting. But then one has to ask if whatever sensors existed to detect these craft (ie radar, electronic emissions detection, satellite images, etc), why were they only able to connect the dots now and it years ago?
Click to expand...

Speculation:
Anything and everything that has to do with potential hostile incursions into the US and jeopardizing the country's security is "caught," with the dots connected, and with the President briefed. Including previous events occurring when trump was President. Perhaps trump blew those events off as not a big deal. And his respect and affinity for dictators (Kim, Putin, Xi) has something to do with that. While apparently trump decided to not act, military/intelligence agencies still keep watch and create records.

What's really puzzling is Biden apparently offering to brief trump. That's just weird. But then I recollect reading somewhere long ago, as a tradition, past US Presidents are often kept in the loop on national security matters as a professional courtesy. I would have thought that would be discretionary.
 
Citysnaps said:
What's really puzzling is Biden apparently offering to brief trump. That's just weird. But then I recollect reading somewhere long ago, as a tradition, past US Presidents are often kept in the loop on national security matters as a professional courtesy. I would have thought that would be discretionary.
Click to expand...
it was making fun of trump for not knowing what's going on and knowing trump would never take the bait.
 
Citysnaps said:
Speculation:
Anything and everything that has to do with potential hostile incursions into the US and jeopardizing the country's security is "caught," with the dots connected, and with the President briefed. Including previous events occurring when trump was President. Perhaps trump blew those events off as not a big deal. And his respect and affinity for dictators (Kim, Putin, Xi) has something to do with that. While apparently trump decided to not act, military/intelligence agencies still keep watch and create records.

What's really puzzling is Biden apparently offering to brief trump. That's just weird. But then I recollect reading somewhere long ago, as a tradition, past US Presidents are often kept in the loop on national security matters as a professional courtesy. I would have thought that would be discretionary.
Click to expand...

Considering Trump’s policy on China, I think that’s very unlikely. And it wasn’t just Trump, it was numerous officials who would be in positions to know this even if Trump brushed it off.

I would think the more likely scenario would be that the military did not detect these incursions until the balloons were through their transit across US territory. The military in their embarrassment not to detect these incursions, kept them under wraps to avoid blowback from Trump- or (with or without immediate detection) to prevent Trump’s potential disproportionate response to China given his unpredictability.

While the latter situation sounds a lot like the Russian army, I suspect it’s a universal issue across militaries because such behaviors, subordinates covering up mistakes or shortcomings, seem to occur in all institutions.

Or such incursions are actually so routine and deemed not a significant enough of a threat that the military stopped reporting them to the President long ago.
 
As one commentator pointed out, the balloon was shot down by an F22 Raptor which is the only mission the military feels it could safely accomplish. :ROFLMAO: Most expensive military development boondoggle in US military history.
 
AG_PhamD said:
I would think the more likely scenario would be that the military did not detect these incursions until the balloons were through their transit across US territory. The military in their embarrassment not to detect these incursions, kept them under wraps to avoid blowback from Trump- or (with or without immediate detection) to prevent Trump’s potential disproportionate response to China given his unpredictability.
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That's plausible. But I just can't see previous incursions not being detected. Or...perhaps those really were weather balloons - without the large boom and surveillance equipment - and thus it was merely noted with minimal concern. But were literally being trial balloons :) for the real deal later on. IMO, detection should have been pretty much automatic from the Cobra Dane phased array radar on Shemya (a small island near the end of the Aleutian Islands).

fooferdoggie said:
it was making fun of trump for not knowing what's going on and knowing trump would never take the bait.
Click to expand...

That makes sense. Guess I'd expect that kind of wit from Borowitz, and less so from Biden. :)
 
fooferdoggie said:
it was making fun of trump for not knowing what's going on and knowing trump would never take the bait.
Click to expand...
Trump shit a MAGA brick with this statement before getting owned by Biden's team.

State of play: "It never happened with us under the Trump administration and if it did, we would have shot it down immediately," Trump told Fox News Digital. "It's disinformation."
  • Trump went on to call the Biden administration "incompetent" and said it had claimed similar incidents had occurred during his presidency because "they look so bad, as usual."
Click to expand...
 
Looking forward to getting my own!
 

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NT1440 said:
That’s a lot of words to say “this was a weather balloon and we have nothing but intelligence officials word, with no details at all, that it was somehow sinister”.

This entire saga has been hugely depressing for me. Propaganda, no matter how utterly ridiculous on its face, is now just lapped up by the public.

It’s a balloon.
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What leads you to such a concrete conclusion? I assume you also believe with the same level of confidence the US doesn't spy on its adversaries, right?

Countries have been spying on each other since the beginning of time.
 
Good episode on the Jon Stewart podcast on this. Ever since WW2 the US ruling class has decided the US should call all the shots and be the global economic top dog. Concocting and exaggerating constant foreign threats is a big part of this. Any country that isn’t subservient to the US dollar or is gaining independent economic power will be advertised as a grave military threat to the US.

Any claiming to care about human rights is a bunch of horse shit as evidenced by which countries we claim as partners and which we don’t. We have no shortage of allies currently giving the finger to human rights out in the open. We pretty much wouldn’t be playing ball with any country in the Middle East including Israel if we actually gave a shit about human rights. If you care about human rights good for you. Our collective government gives zero fucks….until coincidently that country becomes an economic threat. Then they start weaving the propaganda cover story.
 
Citysnaps said:
What leads you to such a concrete conclusion? I assume you also believe with the same level of confidence the US doesn't spy on its adversaries, right?

Countries have been spying on each other since the beginning of time.
Click to expand...
The very fact that we all spy on each other is why this story is nonsense.

There’s no value to a weather balloon given the satellites, corporate/IT espionage, and straight up spies.

This whole thing is to continue the drum up to war because China is going to surpass US economic dominance on the planet and we can’t deal with not being the global hegemon.

I’ve been watching my country drum up wars my entire life. It’s easy to call a spade a spade when you realize that the merger of Capital and unaccountable intelligence agencies are what geopolitics actually centers around.

Again, while the American public are being spoon fed this utter nonsense scare of a balloon, the US has finalized deals to finish its complete encirclement of China with military hardware this week. This balloon thing is the lowest effort distraction to the actual threat, which is a waning empire that won’t give up its death grip on the world peacefully.

johnpilger.com

The Coming War on China - John Pilger

John Pilger’s 60th documentary is both a warning and an inspiring story of resistance. When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance, two-thirds of US naval forces were transferred to Asia...
johnpilger.com johnpilger.com
 
NT1440 said:
You realize that weather patterns are also considered “intelligence” at its most basic levels right?
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You realize? How nice...

I think most people understand the discussion above, and what the US is concerned about, is signals intelligence, and possibly imagery.
 

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