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I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. "T

I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. "They shoot down our surveillance balloons, giving us precedent to shoot down their high altitude drone planes or satellites in the future."

dTal 4y ago
This is a very reasonable explanation for the otherwise mysterious question of why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites. It may not be exactly what they have in mind, but I think it's the right way to think about the question - they are engineering scenarios which work to their advantage no matter how the US responds. US shoots them down? Play outraged. US leaves them alone? US looks weak.
- nonethewiser 4y ago
  Presumably if not shooting them down looks weak, then shooting them down looks competent. And playing outraged confers no advantage to China.
  - dTal 4y ago
    Maybe not. But honestly, they're so massive and slow and visible, and visibly loitering over sensitive sites, that they practically scream "shoot me down". There must be some advantage gleaned from it, because they can't reasonably have expected anything else to have happened.
- hughw 4y ago
  Obvious, provocative.... and unsteerable.
  - dTal 4y ago
    The previous balloon was steerable, as it could control its altitude to catch different currents. I don't think we know enough about this "unknown object" to definitively say what it could and couldn't do.
  - Osyris 4y ago
    Not unsteerable if you have altitude control + a good model of wind patterns. This is what Project Loon[1] did and I think it's fair to assume the technology might be similar. [1]: https://x.company/projects/loon/ https://x.company/projects/loon/
- consumer451 4y ago
  > when China has perfectly good satellites. We need to move past this whole "why use spy balloons when we have satellites" thing. Even Scott Manley repeated it. The USA has what are likely the most capable surveillance satellites in the world yet the USA still employs spy planes. For one thing, RF signals suffer from path loss over distance. The difference is >140km in distance. That's a lot of signal loss. Another factor is loiter time.
- jallen_dot_dev 4y ago
  > why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites. The balloon floated about 100x closer to the surface than a satellite in low-Earth orbit and travelled much slower, making it potentially easier to collect signals/images.
yamtaddle 4y ago
That precedent already exists. Trespassing planes were shot down during the cold war, when they could be, and China knocked a US intelligence plane out of the sky over "contested" airspace (way south of China, near some of the islands they're claiming in a move to gain sovereignty over as much of the sea route via the Straight of Malacca, and sea routes to SE Asian states like Vietnam, as they can) in '01 (kinda by accident, probably, but that didn't stop them from claiming it was OK for them to do that and detaining the flight crew until an apology was issued)
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bailoon 4y ago
> I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. It's more likely a coordinated event to get people to talk about something other than covid and the last 3 disastrous years. Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid. Now that the covid era appears to be over, what better way to distract people than "war". They did the same thing with 9/11. Uncomfortable questions about 9/11 was overshadowed by war and iraqi "wmds". Eventually people forget or move on. Call me a cynic, but china ends covid lockdowns and all of a sudden we get "surveillance" balloons. And the entire media apparatus has us talking about silly balloons instead of wondering what the last 3 years of covid was about. My guess was a staged "terrorist" attack somewhere to transition us from the covid news cycle. Turns out we got balloons instead. Whatever works in the end.
- arcticfox 4y ago
  >Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid at least in the US, I don't think anyone is really interested in covid anymore enough to require any distraction. Maybe that argument makes sense in China.
  - bailoon 4y ago
    What? Many want fauci, the pfizer ceo, etc arrested. People want answers to how covid started, the lockdowns, masks, etc. Everyone here is over covid as a pandemic, but that doesn't mean we don't have questions that we want answered.
    - mostlysimilar 4y ago
      What? Who are these "many"? Who is "we"? Source?
    - IAmGraydon 4y ago
      No…you’ve been in a social media echo chamber and convinced yourself there are many others that think like that. The truth is that’s an illusion. Really, 99.99% of people don’t really care.
cpursley 4y ago
This is exactly what Larry Johnson (former CIA) at sonar21.com suggested.
nkurz 4y ago
Or more directly, maybe they intend to start shooting down our balloons. There were stories last year that the US military was planning to deploy surveillance balloons over Russian and China. Have we indeed been doing so? Here's one of the stories: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloons/ https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloo....

dTal 4y ago

This is a very reasonable explanation for the otherwise mysterious question of why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites. It may not be exactly what they have in mind, but I think it's the right way to think about the question - they are engineering scenarios which work to their advantage no matter how the US responds. US shoots them down? Play outraged. US leaves them alone? US looks weak.

nonethewiser 4y ago
Presumably if not shooting them down looks weak, then shooting them down looks competent. And playing outraged confers no advantage to China.
- dTal 4y ago
  Maybe not. But honestly, they're so massive and slow and visible, and visibly loitering over sensitive sites, that they practically scream "shoot me down". There must be some advantage gleaned from it, because they can't reasonably have expected anything else to have happened.
hughw 4y ago
Obvious, provocative.... and unsteerable.
- dTal 4y ago
  The previous balloon was steerable, as it could control its altitude to catch different currents. I don't think we know enough about this "unknown object" to definitively say what it could and couldn't do.
- Osyris 4y ago
  Not unsteerable if you have altitude control + a good model of wind patterns. This is what Project Loon[1] did and I think it's fair to assume the technology might be similar. [1]: https://x.company/projects/loon/ https://x.company/projects/loon/
consumer451 4y ago
> when China has perfectly good satellites. We need to move past this whole "why use spy balloons when we have satellites" thing. Even Scott Manley repeated it. The USA has what are likely the most capable surveillance satellites in the world yet the USA still employs spy planes. For one thing, RF signals suffer from path loss over distance. The difference is >140km in distance. That's a lot of signal loss. Another factor is loiter time.
jallen_dot_dev 4y ago
> why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites. The balloon floated about 100x closer to the surface than a satellite in low-Earth orbit and travelled much slower, making it potentially easier to collect signals/images.

yamtaddle 4y ago

That precedent already exists. Trespassing planes were shot down during the cold war, when they could be, and China knocked a US intelligence plane out of the sky over "contested" airspace (way south of China, near some of the islands they're claiming in a move to gain sovereignty over as much of the sea route via the Straight of Malacca, and sea routes to SE Asian states like Vietnam, as they can) in '01 (kinda by accident, probably, but that didn't stop them from claiming it was OK for them to do that and detaining the flight crew until an apology was issued)

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

bailoon 4y ago

> I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. It's more likely a coordinated event to get people to talk about something other than covid and the last 3 disastrous years. Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid. Now that the covid era appears to be over, what better way to distract people than "war". They did the same thing with 9/11. Uncomfortable questions about 9/11 was overshadowed by war and iraqi "wmds". Eventually people forget or move on. Call me a cynic, but china ends covid lockdowns and all of a sudden we get "surveillance" balloons. And the entire media apparatus has us talking about silly balloons instead of wondering what the last 3 years of covid was about. My guess was a staged "terrorist" attack somewhere to transition us from the covid news cycle. Turns out we got balloons instead. Whatever works in the end.

arcticfox 4y ago
>Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid at least in the US, I don't think anyone is really interested in covid anymore enough to require any distraction. Maybe that argument makes sense in China.
- bailoon 4y ago
  What? Many want fauci, the pfizer ceo, etc arrested. People want answers to how covid started, the lockdowns, masks, etc. Everyone here is over covid as a pandemic, but that doesn't mean we don't have questions that we want answered.
  - mostlysimilar 4y ago
    What? Who are these "many"? Who is "we"? Source?
  - IAmGraydon 4y ago
    No…you’ve been in a social media echo chamber and convinced yourself there are many others that think like that. The truth is that’s an illusion. Really, 99.99% of people don’t really care.

cpursley 4y ago

This is exactly what Larry Johnson (former CIA) at sonar21.com suggested.

nkurz 4y ago

Or more directly, maybe they intend to start shooting down our balloons. There were stories last year that the US military was planning to deploy surveillance balloons over Russian and China. Have we indeed been doing so? Here's one of the stories: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloons/ https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloo....