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In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite o

by nocsi 4y ago

In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected

anigbrowl 4y ago
Given that it was visible to the naked eye and people were talking about it, it's silly to blame this on the government.
- gruez 4y ago
  >Given that it was visible to the naked eye But why did this garner so much attention compared to the weather ballons that the US launches on a regular basis?
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Probably because it was quite a bit larger than usual, going by initial reports. What do you want the government to do, lie and pretend it's one of theirs?
    - jghn 4y ago
      It also helps that one side of the political spectrum were able to use it to cast doubt and blame at the other side of the spectrum
      - allisdust 4y ago
        There is an enemy balloon flying in your sovereign space and all you could think about is it enables the other side of the politics? Would you say the same thing if its an enemy war plane. And there is no way to to tell which is which just because it looks cute and fluffy floating in the air. I'm not from the US but at this rate your country doesn't need any external enemies.
        geerlingguy 4y ago
        Sadly right now social media bubbles seem to be fostering the whole "if you're not with me, then you're my enemy" mentality that used to be only the realm of extremists.
        jghn 4y ago
        You realize that this isn’t all that novel a situation, right?
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Weather balloons are tiny, we’re comparing a cardboard box with a small house here scalewise.
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    Weather balloons dont hang around, literally. They climb constantly to record data across the altitude bands. This thing was relatively stable, so not a weather balloon.
  - Spooky23 4y ago
    It has a big equipment platform hanging off it, and it allowed the right wing people to blabber about POTUS being soft on China or whatever for a news cycle.
  - tcmart14 4y ago
    Not even just weather balloons. Launching balloons using ham radio by amateurs is also pretty popular thing to do by ham radio operators around the world.
davidu 4y ago
Not sure where your info is from, but this balloon was seen by the naked eye and all over social media. As someone who lives in Montana, many many people could see it. The idea that the USG prompted the publicity is unlikely to be accurate (would suggest a calculated social media psyop). Not impossible, but not likely.
- snozolli 4y ago
  How big was it? I don't mean your well thought out estimate, I mean your gut impression. Smaller than the end of your pinkie at arm's length? I gather that it gave the impression of being somewhat normal sized and much closer than it actually was, gauging by the number of people who thought they could shoot it down with their firearm.
  - heartbreak 4y ago
    Not the commenter, but my gut impression was that it looked a lot lower than normal commercial air traffic that I see around here. The circling fighter jets were very hard to see (other than their vapor trails) but the balloon was extremely visible.
- colinsane 4y ago
  there’s a bit of difference between it being spread as a meme online and then quietly fading into the background v.s. the President of the country ordering it to be shot down by a jet and then announcing said order to the public. just how close/far is this from “business as usual”? if this balloon were no big deal, i wouldn’t expect it to be escalated to the Commander in Chief. which tells me either (a) there’s (suspected to be) some real serious shit aboard that balloon or (b) Whitehouse is making a show of this for political reasons (e.g. to justify upcoming action against China, another surveillance bill, etc) or (c) top officials are clueless and don’t understand the signals they’re giving to the public here. none of those explanations i find reassuring.
  - itake 4y ago
    I pick (b)! There was a negotiations meeting with China coming up that was canceled.
mc32 4y ago
It seems more likely that the balloon being visible forced the gov to acknowledge the balloon. It's unclear if that had any effect on the decision of when to shoot it down. Apparently they had been tracking it over the Aleutians, so they could have downed it over the Pacific, if they hadn't pussyfooted it.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  But would you want to go recover it in the alaskan wilderness, possibly on a mountain, in winter? They waited until it got somewhere more convenient.
  - beedeebeedee 4y ago
    I don't think they are really that interested in recovering it- if you look at the photos, they targeted the payload instead of just the balloon. Only going to be litte bits leftover. https://news.usni.org/2023/02/04/3-navy-warships-fbi-now-hunting-for-wreckage-of-chinese-spy-balloon-off-south-carolina https://news.usni.org/2023/02/04/3-navy-warships-fbi-now-hun...
    - sandworm101 4y ago
      They hit it with a sidewinder, which has a warhead more akin to a shotgun blast. Nothing will be totally destroyed. Enough will remain of its various sensors and antennas to tell exactly what it was doing.
ozarker 4y ago
Bullshit. Had civilians not seen it the government would never have reported it.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  Not even as a purposeful distraction from something more important?
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    this is interesting that it's downvoted, as in the day since multiple articles are showing up that the hype of this balloon is incongruous with the many ignored over the previous 4 years.
blamazon 4y ago
The US state apparatus did not make a big deal of this. The media and the public did, and the US state apparatus answered to the media and the public, as is their duty.
- FpUser 4y ago
  >"The US state apparatus did not make a big deal of this." Cancelling / postponing (whatever it will be) Blinken's visit to China does seem like a big deal.
  - blamazon 4y ago
    Via NPR transcript of a segment today: [1] > SIMON: This trip was supposed to happen this weekend, right? > KELEMEN: Yeah. I mean, we were planning to fly out last night. We had our visas in hand and our bags sort of packed. So this was very last minute. Though Blinken had been raising concerns with the Chinese about this balloon since Wednesday, when pictures started appearing on social media of this thing way far up in the sky over Montana. My interpretation is that this move was likely forced by the public furor, which I posit was organic and driven primarily by the media and the public, rather than driven by the US government as the comment I replied to suggests. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1154473950/u-s-cancels-blinkens-visit-to-china-after-the-appearance-of-a-spy-balloon https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1154473950/u-s-cancels-blinke...
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      That's the way it seems to me as well. The earlier excuse about not shooting it down over Montana because of falling debris didn't make a ton of sense. I think they didn't want to shoot it down because the threat was long ago characterized and the standard operating procedure is to ignore these balloons. But once the public started making a big deal about it, politicians respond to that.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      And I agree this has been largely because of public furor. Now, something that's interesting is 'ufo' videos have been trending on tiktok for some time with lulls and resurgences in their postings. When this large object showed up and people started capturing pictures it is no surprise to me it took off on social media.
onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
What did they use to shoot it down?
- maximinus_thrax 4y ago
  https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3288543/f-22-safely-shoots-down-chinese-spy-balloon-off-south-carolina-coast/ https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32... > An F-22 Raptor fighter from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, fired one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at the balloon.
  - onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
    So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down? How much did that balloon cost to make?
    - sabujp 4y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34660282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34660282
    - LarryMullins 4y ago
      > So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down? Basically free, when you consider they were going to fly planes and shoot missiles anyway for practice.
      - herewulf 4y ago
        Except the military has lots of different pots of money and lots of red tape about how they're spent. No guarantees the cost of this little escapade came out of a training fund.
    - dragonwriter 4y ago
      > So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down? AIM-9X looks to be around $400k, F-22 is $85k per flight hour, so, probably not.
cavisne 4y ago
It went viral in Montana and was not shot down until it left the country in North Carolina. If this was a planned media push it would have been shot down before it entered the united states.
eddsh1994 4y ago
Have a single source?
hackernewds 4y ago
That seems counterintuitive to the political flak that Biden and the military took over the days, seeming incompetent and weak to take down a balloon

by nocsi 4y ago

In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected

anigbrowl 4y ago

Given that it was visible to the naked eye and people were talking about it, it's silly to blame this on the government.

gruez 4y ago
>Given that it was visible to the naked eye But why did this garner so much attention compared to the weather ballons that the US launches on a regular basis?
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Probably because it was quite a bit larger than usual, going by initial reports. What do you want the government to do, lie and pretend it's one of theirs?
  - jghn 4y ago
    It also helps that one side of the political spectrum were able to use it to cast doubt and blame at the other side of the spectrum
    - allisdust 4y ago
      There is an enemy balloon flying in your sovereign space and all you could think about is it enables the other side of the politics? Would you say the same thing if its an enemy war plane. And there is no way to to tell which is which just because it looks cute and fluffy floating in the air. I'm not from the US but at this rate your country doesn't need any external enemies.
      - geerlingguy 4y ago
        Sadly right now social media bubbles seem to be fostering the whole "if you're not with me, then you're my enemy" mentality that used to be only the realm of extremists.
      - jghn 4y ago
        You realize that this isn’t all that novel a situation, right?
- colechristensen 4y ago
  Weather balloons are tiny, we’re comparing a cardboard box with a small house here scalewise.
- sandworm101 4y ago
  Weather balloons dont hang around, literally. They climb constantly to record data across the altitude bands. This thing was relatively stable, so not a weather balloon.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  It has a big equipment platform hanging off it, and it allowed the right wing people to blabber about POTUS being soft on China or whatever for a news cycle.
- tcmart14 4y ago
  Not even just weather balloons. Launching balloons using ham radio by amateurs is also pretty popular thing to do by ham radio operators around the world.

davidu 4y ago

Not sure where your info is from, but this balloon was seen by the naked eye and all over social media. As someone who lives in Montana, many many people could see it. The idea that the USG prompted the publicity is unlikely to be accurate (would suggest a calculated social media psyop). Not impossible, but not likely.

snozolli 4y ago
How big was it? I don't mean your well thought out estimate, I mean your gut impression. Smaller than the end of your pinkie at arm's length? I gather that it gave the impression of being somewhat normal sized and much closer than it actually was, gauging by the number of people who thought they could shoot it down with their firearm.
- heartbreak 4y ago
  Not the commenter, but my gut impression was that it looked a lot lower than normal commercial air traffic that I see around here. The circling fighter jets were very hard to see (other than their vapor trails) but the balloon was extremely visible.
colinsane 4y ago
there’s a bit of difference between it being spread as a meme online and then quietly fading into the background v.s. the President of the country ordering it to be shot down by a jet and then announcing said order to the public. just how close/far is this from “business as usual”? if this balloon were no big deal, i wouldn’t expect it to be escalated to the Commander in Chief. which tells me either (a) there’s (suspected to be) some real serious shit aboard that balloon or (b) Whitehouse is making a show of this for political reasons (e.g. to justify upcoming action against China, another surveillance bill, etc) or (c) top officials are clueless and don’t understand the signals they’re giving to the public here. none of those explanations i find reassuring.
- itake 4y ago
  I pick (b)! There was a negotiations meeting with China coming up that was canceled.

mc32 4y ago

It seems more likely that the balloon being visible forced the gov to acknowledge the balloon. It's unclear if that had any effect on the decision of when to shoot it down. Apparently they had been tracking it over the Aleutians, so they could have downed it over the Pacific, if they hadn't pussyfooted it.

sandworm101 4y ago
But would you want to go recover it in the alaskan wilderness, possibly on a mountain, in winter? They waited until it got somewhere more convenient.
- beedeebeedee 4y ago
  I don't think they are really that interested in recovering it- if you look at the photos, they targeted the payload instead of just the balloon. Only going to be litte bits leftover. https://news.usni.org/2023/02/04/3-navy-warships-fbi-now-hunting-for-wreckage-of-chinese-spy-balloon-off-south-carolina https://news.usni.org/2023/02/04/3-navy-warships-fbi-now-hun...
  - sandworm101 4y ago
    They hit it with a sidewinder, which has a warhead more akin to a shotgun blast. Nothing will be totally destroyed. Enough will remain of its various sensors and antennas to tell exactly what it was doing.

ozarker 4y ago

Bullshit. Had civilians not seen it the government would never have reported it.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
Not even as a purposeful distraction from something more important?
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  this is interesting that it's downvoted, as in the day since multiple articles are showing up that the hype of this balloon is incongruous with the many ignored over the previous 4 years.

blamazon 4y ago

The US state apparatus did not make a big deal of this. The media and the public did, and the US state apparatus answered to the media and the public, as is their duty.

FpUser 4y ago
>"The US state apparatus did not make a big deal of this." Cancelling / postponing (whatever it will be) Blinken's visit to China does seem like a big deal.
- blamazon 4y ago
  Via NPR transcript of a segment today: [1] > SIMON: This trip was supposed to happen this weekend, right? > KELEMEN: Yeah. I mean, we were planning to fly out last night. We had our visas in hand and our bags sort of packed. So this was very last minute. Though Blinken had been raising concerns with the Chinese about this balloon since Wednesday, when pictures started appearing on social media of this thing way far up in the sky over Montana. My interpretation is that this move was likely forced by the public furor, which I posit was organic and driven primarily by the media and the public, rather than driven by the US government as the comment I replied to suggests. [1]: https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1154473950/u-s-cancels-blinkens-visit-to-china-after-the-appearance-of-a-spy-balloon https://www.npr.org/2023/02/04/1154473950/u-s-cancels-blinke...
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    That's the way it seems to me as well. The earlier excuse about not shooting it down over Montana because of falling debris didn't make a ton of sense. I think they didn't want to shoot it down because the threat was long ago characterized and the standard operating procedure is to ignore these balloons. But once the public started making a big deal about it, politicians respond to that.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    And I agree this has been largely because of public furor. Now, something that's interesting is 'ufo' videos have been trending on tiktok for some time with lulls and resurgences in their postings. When this large object showed up and people started capturing pictures it is no surprise to me it took off on social media.

onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago

What did they use to shoot it down?

maximinus_thrax 4y ago
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3288543/f-22-safely-shoots-down-chinese-spy-balloon-off-south-carolina-coast/ https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32... > An F-22 Raptor fighter from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, fired one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at the balloon.
- onlyrealcuzzo 4y ago
  So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down? How much did that balloon cost to make?
  - sabujp 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34660282 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34660282
  - LarryMullins 4y ago
    > So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down? Basically free, when you consider they were going to fly planes and shoot missiles anyway for practice.
    - herewulf 4y ago
      Except the military has lots of different pots of money and lots of red tape about how they're spent. No guarantees the cost of this little escapade came out of a training fund.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > So it probably cost >$1M to shoot it down? AIM-9X looks to be around $400k, F-22 is $85k per flight hour, so, probably not.

cavisne 4y ago

It went viral in Montana and was not shot down until it left the country in North Carolina. If this was a planned media push it would have been shot down before it entered the united states.

eddsh1994 4y ago

Have a single source?

hackernewds 4y ago

That seems counterintuitive to the political flak that Biden and the military took over the days, seeming incompetent and weak to take down a balloon