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I feel like the balloon takedown was seriously mishandled. Imo it should have been shot down right after it crossed our borders and before it started move over

• moomoo11 4y ago
  Do you really believe the USAF and rest of the military and 3 letter agencies had not already intercepted/jammed/hacked the comms link? By letting it saunter all the way across they also probably got a lot of good info on its capabilities.
  • ck2 4y ago
    [flagged]
    • moomoo11 4y ago
      Must be nice being so privileged to talk down the very thing that maintains global trade channels (diplomacy) and keeps most of the world in check. Most of the world is backwater nations who oppress the shit out of their population making whatever faults you find in the US seem trivial. And yes the world isn’t fair and entropy exists. EU is basically a forced alliance after thousand years of constant fighting that led to the Nazis and fascists rising to power who had to be put down, then having to maintain an eastern bulwark against the Russians (paid for by USA let’s be honest). Let’s see how well it holds. If anything I think the USA needs to double its military spending and increase the size of its navy and international dominance. North America is safe and will continue, even if the whole world burns or even ICBMs are deployed towards the major cities.
      • ck2 4y ago
        The idea people would still function while the entire east and west coast burns is the same fantasy at massive scale as people who walk around with guns thinking they are going to somehow defeat someone who has planned and already actively shooting at them. I believe great many ICBMs would definitely make it to major cities and that is the end of the world. We've already seen how people handle a pandemic, imagine active fallout but they cannot see the radiation. They'd be dropping like flies. Once the power and water is gone, 99% of American civilization is gone. Why do you think domestic terrorists are going after power stations (successfully so imagine national defense).
        • moomoo11 4y ago
          I don’t believe that deploying the entire nuclear arsenal of the world would wipe humanity off the face of earth. Would it suck and render some places uninhabitable? Yes. Would it affect fresh water and air quality? You bet. But people will find a way like a worm and some will survive. I am in Bay Area so I probably won’t, but others will. What about places in Africa and South East Asia? Probably will be “fine”. Besides, earth has been through worse. Many species went extinct. But many survived. Humans are definitely the best species this planet has ever produced (that we know of). Again, it’s about survival of specific few. As for the power station stuff I will have to read up on it. I wasn’t aware that is going on. Thanks for pointing that out.
          • 10u152 4y ago
            100% agree. The developed world might be deleted but there will be plenty of tribes in Africa/SE Asia etc who will pretty much continue unaffected. Except those bothersome missionaries will stop coming around. The human race will continue though.
            • moomoo11 4y ago
              Yeah. I’d be pretty bummed to go that way though. It makes me sad and I hope it doesn’t happen.
          • yawpitch 4y ago
            > Humans are definitely the best species this planet has ever produced (that we know of). It’s certainly the most solipsistic… and, likely not coincidentally, it’s the only one that has developed the capacity to make the entire planet functionally uninhabitable to its own species. Also tardigrades will definitely outlast the human species… as will rats, cockroaches, and those mouth-less tube worms that cluster around deep sea vents… the only question is how soon will they have outlasted us?
            • moomoo11 4y ago
              I don’t see rats sending devices outside the solar system nor do I see roaches developing modern medicine or heavy industry. We are the best product made on earth and just because some of us are assholes doesn’t mean all of us are. Of all the species so far we have the most potential. Humans surviving would be a way more valuable proposition than some rodents who cannibalize each other because they don’t know any better. We will nuke each other but at least we were able to also develop so much more positive things too. And thankfully there are way more awesome and good people in the world. Just leadership is wack lol.
      • IMTDb 4y ago
        The danger for the US are inside, not outside. The military spending is already far sufficient to guarantee the safety of the country against external state nations. The issue is that it does not spend enough to maintain internal peace. The dudes that took over the capitol aren’t Chinese or Russian. Now of course, you could use your military power to control your population and prevent it from rebelling even if it is unsatisfied by the government. But wouldn’t that turn the US in an oppressive state. Less military spending and more social investments is the way to go if you want to prevent the US from turning into a backwater nation.
        • moomoo11 4y ago
          I agree from an optics pov but even with the capitol thing.. half the country and half the politicians elected by them think it wasn’t a big deal. Meanwhile everyone argues over it while.. Everything is in control, at least in my opinion. I’m just a simple tax payer, and honestly I trust the people who really run the country while laymen argue over dumb shit and our side vs that side etc.
          • cpursley 4y ago
            > I trust the people who really run the country Yikes.
            • moomoo11 4y ago
              Try growing up in a country where corruption is rampant, people die from religious and sectarian violence (sometimes sanctioned by the govt itself), and living without reliable electricity and water because the money was eaten by bribes and gangsters. Moved to the USA and it’s literally night and day. In a world full of dictatorships, corruption, and awful human rights, the USA is way better. Only an intellectually dishonest person who has never experienced hardship (getting laid off from a 400k tc job doesn’t count lmao) would think otherwise.
              • iforgotpassword 4y ago
      • bbor 4y ago
        Hmmm… I wonder why the country with the biggest military (and their Allies) is the only place rich enough not to be a backwater? I implore you to think how you might answer that question if you were born in such a backwater. Especially if it was a backwater where the US had recently used that military to significantly influence the government, such as Iran, 1953 Guatemala, 1954, Congo, 1960, Laos, 1960, Iraq, 1963, Brazil, 1964, British Guiana, 1964, Bolivia, 1964, Dominican Republic, 1965, Indonesia, 1965, Ghana, 1966, Greece, 1967, Cambodia, 1970, Bolivia, 1971, Chile, 1973, Australia, 1975, Portugal, 1976, Argentina, 1976, Jamaica, 1980, Turkey, 1980, Chad, 1982, Fiji, 1987, Nicaragua, 1987, Afghanistan, 1989, Panama, 1989, Bulgaria, 1990, Albania, 1991, Yugoslavia, 2000, Ecuador, 2000, Afghanistan, 2001, Venezuela, 2002, Iraq, 2003, Haiti, 2004, or Libya, 2011. Oo or Israel earlier this week. That said yeah definitely should’ve shot down that ballon over the Aleutians
        • moomoo11 4y ago
          My backwater nation was previously a British colony. Today people who look like me do their best to put other people who like me down. Massacres happen, people live like insects in awful conditions just trying to survive while govt and industrialists operate without any loyalty or care for the country. No wonder people try to immigrate out. The Americans kicked British empire back to their island in the 1700s and imo historically speaking makes me side with them. Especially considering they were successful in 1700s… and on their own with a strategic naval help from Marquis de Lafayette. Again in a world with awful horrible people at least America maintains the order for a far more important role - diplomacy through global trade. The only reason the world has gotten better for so many people all around the world is the last 70 years that America has completely dominated the world stage. Global trade, capitalism, and opening up has made the world objectively better. Even the communists practice capitalism. Or in America they work for Meta/Google/hi tech while pretending to be comrade. And it’s not like those countries were some hippie communes. They were extremely brutal to their own people in some cases, I mean go read about Asian or African histories from just this past 100 years. They did awful shit to their own people and with America nowhere in sight til WW2 Again the world isn’t perfect. You have to place your bets, and mine is that I don’t trust most of the other countries in the world to do better than what the USA has accomplished thus far. It’s why I personally choose to live in the USA when I have like 150+ choices to potentially choose.
  • 404mm 4y ago
    I don’t think they jammed it, considering how high it was. Intercepted .. I mean, China can use strong encryption too.
    • ttul 4y ago
      US military aircraft can remotely destroy electronics aboard other aircraft by aiming a highly focused beam precisely onto it, thus disabling it. They do t have to decrypt anything. They just have to fry it.
      • cma 4y ago
        A great way to study those capabilities then would be to send a trial balloon... We aren't goijg ti necessarily reveal intricate details of our capabilities like that.
      • alanh 4y ago
        maybe but... it seems clear enough they did not do this given that it seems to have been piloted through a very nice high-value course across the US
        • seanmcdirmid 4y ago
          Weather balloons aren’t piloted. I don’t think it had any control planes at all, beyond just floating along atmospheric currents. At best they can control elevation? Ok, googling a bit: > Is it possible to steer or otherwise control a typical high-altitude balloon? It can be controlled, but let me be careful about what I mean by that. Balloons go with the wind. And so the only control that a balloon has is: in some balloons, you can control the altitude—you can make it go higher or lower. To the extent that the wind speed and direction varies with altitude, you can change the altitude, within some limits. And that can give you some measure of control—but not anywhere near the level of control that you have [with an airplane]. You can’t turn around and go the other direction; you can never go upwind in the balloon. You’re always going to be moving with the atmosphere that surrounds it. From https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-balloon-has-unexpected-maneuverability/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... So does that really count as piloting?
  • SergeAx 4y ago
    FWIW, all comms of that balloon would be satellite. I don't think it is easy to jam, let alone intercept.
    • moomoo11 4y ago
      I’m sure in 1970s nobody nobody thought GPS would become a reality within a decade. “They will never be able to pinpoint position that way!” My guy. It’s the United States military. All the shit we use is a by product of their first move. If it seems impossible today they’ve already figured it out. Not to mention they made a nuclear bomb and the Manhattan project was an insane achievement.
      • gptgpp 4y ago
        Weird... Most groundbreaking research, and the consumer tech that eventually comes from it, seems to come out of post-secondary and tech/research companies. Crazy to think it's all a front and it's actually stemming from the US Military. Thank you for your service!
        • jakear 4y ago
          Not that crazy. Public knowledge, even. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_Lincoln_Laboratory
          • gptgpp 4y ago
            Or... hear me out here... It's obviously a web of private R&D, public institutions like NASA, higher education, and yes, the military too. But acting like scientific innovation and technical progress is all, or even a majority due to the military is boot-licking weirdness. You have fun with that. I just don't know how you can look at the heaps of Nobel Prize winners, Turing Award, etc. or groundbreaking papers in almost and field and think "Oh yeah, must be the American Military is behind this."
            • 4y ago
  • sieabahlpark 4y ago
    [dead]
  • fumeux_fume 4y ago
    Had to lol at this one. Yeah, after they hacked the comms link and they were able to gain access to the master program.
    • moomoo11 4y ago
      lol. Ok I’ll go along. And it turns out to be a node version 12 app :’D
    • pageandrew 4y ago
      Its very possible that they could jam the radio frequencies the balloon uses. "Hacking the comms link", not so much, but neutering its ability to phone home... very possible.
      • moomoo11 4y ago
        Yeah and it’s why hacked was the third option aka least likely. Not my fault people pick one thing out of a range of possibilities and fixate on it lol.
      • Justin_K 4y ago
        Ya what if it uses cellular on a US sim? Are you going to jam all the cell spectrums?
        • iforgotpassword 4y ago
          Oh snap right, a US three letter agency telling a US mobile carrier to disable a US SIM sounds like an impossible feat. Well played, China!
          • hutzlibu 4y ago
            Yes, it is a very high profile debate going on around here. That means, there are competent people commenting, but they get drown in other comments. People forget way too often, that you don't need to have an opinion on everything, or worse, share that opinion everywhere.
  • sgtnoodle 4y ago
    I think you're being overly generous in attributing competency/capability. Just thinking about the physics of it, robustly jamming an unknown signal of a transmitter 60KM high seems like a rather impossible task. If the air force were somehow broadcasting several megawatts of broad spectrum noise over a populated area, somebody would have noticed. The authorities in charge have no real idea what's going on or what the payload is. This whole situation is just weird. Maybe it is just some irresponsible private organization. The Baidu equivalent of Project Loon?
    • SoylentYellow 4y ago
      > If the air force were somehow broadcasting several megawatts of broad spectrum noise over a populated area, somebody would have noticed. Interesting that you think modern jamming works that way. It doesn't.
      • sudosysgen 4y ago
        Barrage jamming very much is still used. Sometimes there is nothing else you can use.
      • h0l0cube 4y ago
        Can you describe how it works?
    • moomoo11 4y ago
      I mean TikTok / bytedance is just some irresponsible private organization. That is controlled by the CCP.
    • dr-detroit 4y ago
      [dead]
• SnowHill9902 4y ago
  It was purposefully taken down once it was on shallow waters to preserve the equipment as much as possible.
  • riku_iki 4y ago
    electronics is damaged by water likely, it could have more chance to survive if hit the ground.
    • ttul 4y ago
      They would not be concerned about the electronics being damaged so much as recoverable so the components used can be analyzed and the supply chains traced. They want to know whether any export-restricted gear was used and, if so, who is to blame.
      • 404mm 4y ago
        Don’t they already manufacture all our export restricted tech? /s Jokes aside, I think the analysis will be more angled to proving or disproving the purpose, and identifying intelligence it gathered through some forensic analysis. If it dips into salty water, all circuit boards are immediately shorted. Seems a bit counter productive to me.
        • brokenmachine 4y ago
          Most space and aviation type stuff has conformal coating which should essentially make the boards themselves waterproof. Of course things can still get shorted and damaged at the connectors, but the whole thing wouldn't be destroyed by water.
      • geomark 4y ago
        They may want to analyze the cryptographic comms. Having working electronics might make that easier.
        • deleted 4y ago
• LarryMullins 4y ago
  The US Navy is apparently pretty good at finding missile debris on the ocean floor. Since they know where it hit the water, they can probably find it. They might not even care that much, if they've seen this model of ballooncraft before.
  • 404mm 4y ago
    Yah I believe that. But all the electronics will be shorted and likely damaged by salty water, which is conducive.
    • 13of40 4y ago
      It seems like the electronics should be in an enclosure to protect them from the extreme cold, low air pressure, radiation, etc. they would encounter at 60,000 feet. Whether that would survive the fall is a different question.
      • inglor_cz 4y ago
        "from the extreme cold, low air pressure, radiation" That is a different threat than saltwater and huge pressure (even in relatively shallow waters, the pressure at the bottom will be massively bigger than ambient atmospheric pressure). If I had to bet, I would expect stratospheric devices to crack like eggs in such conditions, unless they were specially developed to be both stratospheric and underwater.
      • jdiez17 4y ago
        You can still learn a lot from broken electronics, even if you cannot power them up. Have you seen what utterly destroyed hard drives data recovery specialists can get data from?
• clashmoore 4y ago
  NYTimes is reporting that this is actually the fifth balloon to cross into our airspace. First four were seemingly ignored, three times under the Trump administration and once before during Biden’s.
  • everybodyknows 4y ago
    The implication of that being the shootdown was a media-initiated event. After civilians saw the balloon from the ground, and it became lead story on every news site, with the MAGA press calling Biden "weak", something had to be done, whether it makes military sense or not. https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-weak-response-chinese-surveillance-balloon-green-light-bad-guys-mike-pompeo https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-weak-response-chinese-su...
    • landemva 4y ago
      McCarthy like Pelosi looks to visit Taiwan because of playground pride. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/china-urges-kevin-mccarthy-not-to-repeat-pelosi-visit-to-taiwan https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-01-30/china-urg... USA is being baited into war on multiple fronts.
      • cuteboy19 4y ago
        I mean it's game theory. Once you start allowing such things you simply have to always allow them. If you allow China to bully you into not visiting Taiwan, they will start bullying you into something else. Neither side will actually do war so it makes sense not to fold
        • hutzlibu 4y ago
          Ah yes, but like others have pointed out, China did in fact allow US ballons over their territory. (googles loon project) "Neither side will actually do war so it makes sense not to fold" And neither side wants war with each other, but if either side is pushed more and more into it from internal and external pressure, than I sadly would not rule out that possibility.
• mattmaroon 4y ago
  Do you think that did not occur to the military? I’m sure that if they blundered, it was not in some way that was so obvious. Either they simply didnt know about it until it was too late, or they had some reason to not shoot it then that you’re not aware of. The idea that they decided not to do so for no good reason is silly.
  • atoav 4y ago
    I'd assume it was politics who delayed the destruction.
  • heartbreak 4y ago
    Yeah DOD has huge office buildings full of trained analysts, yet random people on the internet still think they’d do better.
    • mattmaroon 4y ago
      You could spend a lot of time on HN just reminding people that everyone else isn’t an idiot.
• vineyardmike 4y ago
  The US has great radar capabilities, so we obvious knew it was there. I think that raises the question of why we didn't shoot it down. Maybe we were curious where it was going and we wanted to see how capable at navigating it was? Is it too dangerous to shoot down over land? What was the diplomatic communication with the Chinese? There's many questions that may never be answered in public. It seems more than likely that this had little surveillance abilities that a satellite doesn't already have, so little intelligence risk. Maybe we went as far as to plant a false target for it. Alternatively, if this had weapons on it, dropping it on land seems pretty dangerous compared to off the coast. Additionally, out of diplomacy, we should communicate with the Chinese that we're about to blow their stuff up, especially when they politely pretend it's civilian. Civilized nations need to play political games before we can blow up "civilian" equipment. Beyond all this, some other comments here have claimed that these balloons have been going on for a few presidencies now, without any being shot down. So why is it a concern now? I'd be worried about suddenly war-hawking something that hasn't been a problem. There's enough going on in the world without a degrading US-Chinese relationship. This is probably simply the case that it's a non-issue that got too much attention and needed to be addressed publicly.
  • pifm_guy 4y ago
    Remember that Loon, the USA Google balloon project, sent similar balloons around the world, including over China. They didn't shoot our balloons down.
    • tushar-r 4y ago
      Pretty certain they did not. China controls the Internet a little too seriously and has banned Google for many years to allow them to fly Loon balloons beaming free internet to their population.
      • pifm_guy 4y ago
        They didn't give permission for the internet service to launch there. But they did give overflight permission.
• JimBlackwood 4y ago
  As mentioned in the article, so the order was there the moment it crossed the border. > The high-altitude balloon was initially spotted over Billings, Montana, on Wednesday. > Biden gave authorization on Wednesday to take down the balloon as soon as it could be done “without undue risk to American lives under the balloon’s path,” Lloyd said.
• cm2187 4y ago
  None of it makes sense. They shot it down over the US coast where you are similarly likely to hit a boat or a bather than hitting someone in some empty fields of the midwest (and what about the canadian mountains!). They say it doesn't pose any threat to aviation but nevertheless closed the airports on its path. They say that they are confident it is an intelligence gathering operation by the chinese, but that they don't get anything more than they would get from a satellite (why would they use balloons then, are we suggesting the chinese are stupid?). I have no idea what's the real story here but it is obvious we are being bullshitted.
  • heartbreak 4y ago
    They didn’t issue a ground stop for nearby airports until it got to the Carolina coast. At that point they issued a national security no-fly zone, ground stops at three airports, and issued notices to marine traffic to clear the area.
• mlindner 4y ago
  I disagree. The spy balloon was likely inspected shortly before it entered US territory and the military deemed it as something that was not critical and simply moved anything sensitive out of the way of the a balloon. Meanwhile they likely monitored the emissions of the balloon to do intelligence collecting of Chinese capabilities. The DoD said they were aware of the balloon shortly after it left China and were monitoring it even before it flew over Alaska. The US probably gained more from this than China gained. Meanwhile the general public and US media got very invigorated about it so helped stock public opinion against China in general which helps prevent more stealing of secrets to China but increasing the cautiousness of the general populace.
  • psychphysic 4y ago
    Well China gained a very important piece of information and international agreement. One, that region is considered the countries airspace. Two, we can distroy and keep spy gear. Both are useful rules to bring up in the future. The U-2 and SR-71 both stopped flying due to the risk of being downed and not moral consequences. Similarly the US (probably) stopped spying on allies due to the risk of another whistleblower and not moral reasons. At the same time, similar events have happened to establish that space spy satillites are okay. Finally, this is easy to forget esp. if you're a US citizen. Most of the world considers this incident a bit of a joke. Official responses are along standard narrative lines. But no one really cares, the US reacted like this because it didn't know why China would want to use this balloon to spy and so wants to nip this activity in the bud.