> 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

> 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.