8 ms·

I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down. There's no hard r

I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down. There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to air traffic), people just ignore it... weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time. But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down, even if it caused an international incident.. and luckily nothing serious happened. So now that the cat is out of the bag, we're going to shoot down every balloon that hasnt filed all of the required paperwork that enters out airspace that's reachable by our aircraft... because 1) the public demands it; 2) it'll become political fodder if the white house doesn't; and 3) the international issue it generates is easier for the white house to handle than the political criticism. If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration. Edit: bobbyjo pointed out this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antennas-other-equipment-to-gather-intelligence-u-s-says-11675953033 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna... Since that likely settles the balloons intent… we can add 4) now that we know it’s a spy balloon, we’re going to shoot down all the balloons. Before the large balloon was shot down, no one would have bothered to check. No one is stopping weather balloons at the border. Big mistake on chinas part.

themodelplumber 4y ago
They are probably going to keep making blunders like this, now that internal leadership (source of many internal blunders in recent years) has been consolidated / stabilized, and they are still aiming for more international power. The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious blind spots. That could be pretty huge. I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc. Right now Chinese leadership does not want to be seen "bending" in this way or that, by their internal audience. But not doing so is a huge risk factor for them in international diplomacy. Whether the US or any other country really takes advantage of the opportunity and resulting partial leadership vacuum in the international space will be interesting to see.
- 8ytecoder 4y ago
  It's the classic dilemma that most people who prefer expedient governance don't always understand. When a government is paralysed by too much bureaucracy and corruption, everyone craves for something lean and expedient. Anyone who wants to combat that will want to consolidate power. Once they have successfully consolidated - usually by eliminating anyone in the way irrespective of whether they're someone who speak truth to power or a bureaucrat trying to preserve their fiefdom - all that's left are the yes-men. Then starts the bungling and fumbling and doubling down and over-corrections.
  - _0w8t 4y ago
    This describes the current situation in Russia with Putin surrounded by yes men. But it is not true about China where officials are frequently fired loosing pretty much everything. I.e. if one always say yes in China, the consequences for not delivering are high so one is under the pressure to say no at least sometimes. There are indications that even in Russia Putin got that and tried to introduce harsher punishments than assigning the failed official to less prestigious positions. But it seems they did too little too late.
- DoctorNick 4y ago
  > I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc. Yeah, that’s OUR racket!
raverbashing 4y ago
And might I add, their reaction after it was shot down was anything but reassuring (that it was just a weather balloon)
godelski 4y ago
> If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration. As evidence to this claim, you'll see that many articles are actively discussing the fact that these balloons are relatively common. The big difference here, American citizens could see this object with just their eyes (uncommon for a balloon). I do buy the argument that China overplayed their hand.
dirtyid 4y ago
>erred by sending such a large I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything, that's strategically exploitable especially if PRC can make current WH admin look weak by flying a balloon at height that can't be shot down. Medium/long term, PRC building/exposing CONUS vunerability is net benefitial for PRC posture - it's their version of, in DoD parlance, integrated deterence. IMO US analysis missing strategic calculus on PRC side.
- jjtheblunt 4y ago
  You could just pop them with a laser instead of bothering to scramble jets and missiles, I’d think.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    You could but confirming US has that capability is significant. The purpose is to gather intelligence after all. E: Lunar ranging = ground stations. Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. If anything, balloons will try to bait responses from SHiELD/air based laser ABL interception (YAL1) that can be extrapolated to IndoPac theatre.
    - jjtheblunt 4y ago
      Considering the lunar ranging experiment of fifty years ago, it seems like it shouldn’t be some big surprise? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment#/media/File%3AGoddard_Spaceflight_Center_Laser_Ranging_Facility.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experime...
    - CameronNemo 4y ago
      Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. It is also not feasible to keep using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar balloons. I kind of doubt that the planes are cheaper than ground based lasers. Even so, a mobile ground station could avoid giving away the US position and allow them to cover more area. Not sure how feasible that is.
s3p 4y ago
I don't fully agree with the political assessment because the WH gave the Pentagon permission to shoot it down when they deemed appropriate. They didn't order the pentagon to do it immediately. I'm not sure (someone please chime in if you know) if the WH 'ordered' the Pentagon to shoot it down in the sense that it HAD to come out of the air at some point, or if the message was just "shoot it down if you think that's the best thing to do".
- colanderman 4y ago
  With respect to judging nuance, I think you're giving the American public too much credit.
- Consultant32452 4y ago
  US officials explicitly said recovering the payload was a high priority. In part, that is why they chose that particular location to shoot it down. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-recovering-chinese-spy-balloon-was-key-to-response-2023-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-recovering-chin...
kylehotchkiss 4y ago
Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices
- rgbrenner 4y ago
  That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains. And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    > That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains. Not true: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antennas-other-equipment-to-gather-intelligence-u-s-says-11675953033 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...
    - rgbrenner 4y ago
      Thank you. I missed this somehow.
      - throwawaymaths 4y ago
        Not that it's necessarily indictatory, but this balloon had a payload the size of a small jet. By my understanding (I could be wrong) that's very uncommon for a weather balloon.
    - toomuchtodo 4y ago
      https://archive.is/oORem https://archive.is/oORem
- benatkin 4y ago
throwaway4good 4y ago
[flagged]
- mastax 4y ago
  From what I understand: - the balloon was required to file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder - the balloon did not file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder So either the balloon's operator didn't know about the requirements, which seems unlikely given its apparent sophistication, or the operator was deliberately hiding the presence of the balloon, in which case I think it's reasonable to call it a spy balloon.
  - irthomasthomas 4y ago
    Looking on from UK this all seems like a big joke. Slow moving, massive balloons, visible for hundreds of miles are sophisticated spying apparatus? But all the previous encounters over the years have just been unremarkable weather balloons?
- chipsa 4y ago
  A weather balloon is a couple pounds at most.
throwaway4good 4y ago
[flagged]
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  Do you honestly think shooting down a balloon in your own airspace is an aggressive act?
  - throwaway4good 4y ago
    Three public shoot downs certainly signals something new.
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
      New, yes, but that doesn't answer my question. I don't see this as anymore aggressive than yearly war games, and significantly less aggressive than claiming islands and ocean territories that are contested and building military installations on them...
    - jamiek88 4y ago
      Yes it suggests our military has the right to defend our sovereign airspace and that of our allies as well as the ability and will to do so until these outrageous and arrogant acts of escalation stop. Be careful how many times you prod the beast.
    - jfengel 4y ago
      It suggests that there is something new in the air, deliberately obscuring its source and mission.
  - irthomasthomas 4y ago
    Yes. Given that they have allowed free passage of such weather balloons for decades previously.
    - BobbyJo 4y ago
bailoon 4y ago
[flagged]
ksherlock 4y ago
> There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hard rule about when life begins but killing a 5 year old isn't a 22nd trimester abortion, it's murder. 18-60'000 feet is class A, controlled airspace in the US and Canada. When the US sent U2s over the USSR, the rationale wasn't that 70,000 feet was "space", it was that it was that 70,000 feet was too high for soviet radars detect and and soviet planes to intercept.
- oceliker 4y ago
  > What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? What does this mean? I don’t see a reference to tea in the comment you are replying to.
  - jemmyw 4y ago
    It's a common expression https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_that_got_to_do_with_the...%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_that_got_to_do_with...
    - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
      It’s not so common any more. I bet less than 5% of gen Z know it.
      - oceliker 4y ago
        I’m a millennial living in US (although non native English speaker) and had no idea.
      - officialjunk 4y ago
        i've never heard of it.
      - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
        There are many things it seems GenZ is unaware of but it is very much a common, well-known expression for more serious people.
cdot2 4y ago
Ranking members of the previous administration have publicly denied that there were any previous balloons and no evidence has been presented that there were previous similar incidents.
- amanaplanacanal 4y ago
  No evidence has been presented to us. It sounds like the info came from the intelligence community, and they likely wouldn’t tell how they know what they know.
belter 4y ago
The second object has not been called a balloon by US Air Command. Most interesting are some reports of pilots saying the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes. [1] Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious. On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant presence of AWACS and other multiple airplane sorties, the Aliens everybody was talking about here days ago, seem to have vanished... [1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-alaska-military-latest/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-obj...
- bombcar 4y ago
  Pilots always claim sensor interference- it covers any mistakes they may have made.
  - dawdaway 4y ago
    Evidence for this?
    - datavirtue 4y ago
      Look, it was just a weather balloon, folks. Nothing to see here. Sounds familiar.
  - Tozen 4y ago
    F-22 pilots are not scrubs that got the job by luck. To be one, means being among the best. If it is being reported accurately, that the F-22 pilot says there was some kind of interference coming from the object, then there likely really is something to it.
    - belter 4y ago
      Definitely not scrubs... "How do you become an F-22 pilot?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/e76db/how_do_you_become_an_f22_pilot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/e76db/how_do_you_...
thorawayz 4y ago
There are absolutely hard rules about national airspace, what the hell do you think the ICAO exists for? https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Airspace%20and%20Civil-Military%20Cooperation.pdf https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Ai...
- TheCoelacanth 4y ago
  Conspicuously absent from that document are any vertical measurements. At exactly what altitude national airspace stops is not clearly established.
sockaddr 4y ago
Too clever by half
ryan_j_naughton 4y ago
We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred. One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor. Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.
- Animats 4y ago
  > We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred. We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package. It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.
  - _0w8t 4y ago
    Now that US has learned that the big ballon was spy one, it would not be an embarrassment but a reasonable assumption that smaller ones could be spy ones as well. So they should be stopped.
  - voldacar 4y ago
    The balloon stopped drifting and lingered around military sites beneath it. That seems to rule out solar observation or atmospheric data collection.
  - joemazerino 4y ago
    Science balloons have to go through a rigorous, and constant, check with DOD to ensure no mis communicating happens. I have first hand experience with this. We had to constantly ping our DOD channels to make sure they knew where we were and how long we would be staying there or risk being shot down.
CyanBird 4y ago
>...because 1) the public demands it; An appropriate quote to the situation “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” - Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927
everdrive 4y ago
>If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration. But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  > If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!
  - ss108 4y ago
    I'm a China hawk, but I hope it doesn't come to that. Would like to point out something relevant: China and India kill each others soldiers fairly frequently. I find it rather remarkable their issues haven't escalated.
    - hollerith 4y ago
      They kill each others soldiers, yes, but they are always small engagements because it is very difficult to transport a large formation of Chinese soldiers to Indian territory (specifically, any territory India cares about) or vice versa because the mountains are such formidable barriers.
VoodooJuJu 4y ago
>But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down 1. Where can one find evidence of this mass demand? 2. How does the US government gauge this mass demand without formal voting/polling? Were people phoning their senators, "SHOOT IT DOWN!"? I'm sure crazies phone in all kinds of things from time to time - what's the threshold for acting on demands/mass demand?
- weard_beard 4y ago
  The change.org poll really blew up.
tdehnel 4y ago
This is a really long winded way of displaying your contempt for your fellow citizens.
Sporktacular 4y ago
"But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down" You mean saw with their eyes or on the news? If it was with their eyes then it wouldn't lead to public demand since as you say "weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time." and there's no way to attribute it to another country. If it's on the news then physical size is not relevant but detectability and newsworthiness are. People would have cared.
ecf 4y ago
> just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration Trying to stir up an impeachment case over the response to the first balloon is just projection as usual from the GOP. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republicans-connect-china-spy-balloon-fiasco-migrant-crisis-southern-border.amp https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republica...

themodelplumber 4y ago

They are probably going to keep making blunders like this, now that internal leadership (source of many internal blunders in recent years) has been consolidated / stabilized, and they are still aiming for more international power. The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious blind spots. That could be pretty huge. I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc. Right now Chinese leadership does not want to be seen "bending" in this way or that, by their internal audience. But not doing so is a huge risk factor for them in international diplomacy. Whether the US or any other country really takes advantage of the opportunity and resulting partial leadership vacuum in the international space will be interesting to see.

8ytecoder 4y ago
It's the classic dilemma that most people who prefer expedient governance don't always understand. When a government is paralysed by too much bureaucracy and corruption, everyone craves for something lean and expedient. Anyone who wants to combat that will want to consolidate power. Once they have successfully consolidated - usually by eliminating anyone in the way irrespective of whether they're someone who speak truth to power or a bureaucrat trying to preserve their fiefdom - all that's left are the yes-men. Then starts the bungling and fumbling and doubling down and over-corrections.
- _0w8t 4y ago
  This describes the current situation in Russia with Putin surrounded by yes men. But it is not true about China where officials are frequently fired loosing pretty much everything. I.e. if one always say yes in China, the consequences for not delivering are high so one is under the pressure to say no at least sometimes. There are indications that even in Russia Putin got that and tried to introduce harsher punishments than assigning the failed official to less prestigious positions. But it seems they did too little too late.
DoctorNick 4y ago
> I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc. Yeah, that’s OUR racket!

raverbashing 4y ago

And might I add, their reaction after it was shot down was anything but reassuring (that it was just a weather balloon)

godelski 4y ago

> If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration. As evidence to this claim, you'll see that many articles are actively discussing the fact that these balloons are relatively common. The big difference here, American citizens could see this object with just their eyes (uncommon for a balloon). I do buy the argument that China overplayed their hand.

dirtyid 4y ago

>erred by sending such a large I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything, that's strategically exploitable especially if PRC can make current WH admin look weak by flying a balloon at height that can't be shot down. Medium/long term, PRC building/exposing CONUS vunerability is net benefitial for PRC posture - it's their version of, in DoD parlance, integrated deterence. IMO US analysis missing strategic calculus on PRC side.

jjtheblunt 4y ago
You could just pop them with a laser instead of bothering to scramble jets and missiles, I’d think.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  You could but confirming US has that capability is significant. The purpose is to gather intelligence after all. E: Lunar ranging = ground stations. Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. If anything, balloons will try to bait responses from SHiELD/air based laser ABL interception (YAL1) that can be extrapolated to IndoPac theatre.
  - jjtheblunt 4y ago
    Considering the lunar ranging experiment of fifty years ago, it seems like it shouldn’t be some big surprise? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experiment#/media/File%3AGoddard_Spaceflight_Center_Laser_Ranging_Facility.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experime...
  - CameronNemo 4y ago
    Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. It is also not feasible to keep using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar balloons. I kind of doubt that the planes are cheaper than ground based lasers. Even so, a mobile ground station could avoid giving away the US position and allow them to cover more area. Not sure how feasible that is.

s3p 4y ago

I don't fully agree with the political assessment because the WH gave the Pentagon permission to shoot it down when they deemed appropriate. They didn't order the pentagon to do it immediately. I'm not sure (someone please chime in if you know) if the WH 'ordered' the Pentagon to shoot it down in the sense that it HAD to come out of the air at some point, or if the message was just "shoot it down if you think that's the best thing to do".

colanderman 4y ago
With respect to judging nuance, I think you're giving the American public too much credit.
Consultant32452 4y ago
US officials explicitly said recovering the payload was a high priority. In part, that is why they chose that particular location to shoot it down. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-recovering-chinese-spy-balloon-was-key-to-response-2023-2 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-recovering-chin...

kylehotchkiss 4y ago

Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices

rgbrenner 4y ago
That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains. And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.
- BobbyJo 4y ago
  > That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains. Not true: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antennas-other-equipment-to-gather-intelligence-u-s-says-11675953033 https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...
  - rgbrenner 4y ago
    Thank you. I missed this somehow.
    - throwawaymaths 4y ago
      Not that it's necessarily indictatory, but this balloon had a payload the size of a small jet. By my understanding (I could be wrong) that's very uncommon for a weather balloon.
  - toomuchtodo 4y ago
    https://archive.is/oORem https://archive.is/oORem
benatkin 4y ago

throwaway4good 4y ago

[flagged]

mastax 4y ago
From what I understand: - the balloon was required to file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder - the balloon did not file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder So either the balloon's operator didn't know about the requirements, which seems unlikely given its apparent sophistication, or the operator was deliberately hiding the presence of the balloon, in which case I think it's reasonable to call it a spy balloon.
- irthomasthomas 4y ago
  Looking on from UK this all seems like a big joke. Slow moving, massive balloons, visible for hundreds of miles are sophisticated spying apparatus? But all the previous encounters over the years have just been unremarkable weather balloons?
chipsa 4y ago
A weather balloon is a couple pounds at most.

throwaway4good 4y ago

[flagged]

BobbyJo 4y ago
Do you honestly think shooting down a balloon in your own airspace is an aggressive act?
- throwaway4good 4y ago
  Three public shoot downs certainly signals something new.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago
    New, yes, but that doesn't answer my question. I don't see this as anymore aggressive than yearly war games, and significantly less aggressive than claiming islands and ocean territories that are contested and building military installations on them...
  - jamiek88 4y ago
    Yes it suggests our military has the right to defend our sovereign airspace and that of our allies as well as the ability and will to do so until these outrageous and arrogant acts of escalation stop. Be careful how many times you prod the beast.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    It suggests that there is something new in the air, deliberately obscuring its source and mission.
- irthomasthomas 4y ago
  Yes. Given that they have allowed free passage of such weather balloons for decades previously.
  - BobbyJo 4y ago

bailoon 4y ago

[flagged]

ksherlock 4y ago

> There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hard rule about when life begins but killing a 5 year old isn't a 22nd trimester abortion, it's murder. 18-60'000 feet is class A, controlled airspace in the US and Canada. When the US sent U2s over the USSR, the rationale wasn't that 70,000 feet was "space", it was that it was that 70,000 feet was too high for soviet radars detect and and soviet planes to intercept.

oceliker 4y ago
> What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? What does this mean? I don’t see a reference to tea in the comment you are replying to.
- jemmyw 4y ago
  It's a common expression https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_that_got_to_do_with_the...%3F https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_that_got_to_do_with...
  - gadflyinyoureye 4y ago
    It’s not so common any more. I bet less than 5% of gen Z know it.
    - oceliker 4y ago
      I’m a millennial living in US (although non native English speaker) and had no idea.
    - officialjunk 4y ago
      i've never heard of it.
    - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
      There are many things it seems GenZ is unaware of but it is very much a common, well-known expression for more serious people.

cdot2 4y ago

Ranking members of the previous administration have publicly denied that there were any previous balloons and no evidence has been presented that there were previous similar incidents.

amanaplanacanal 4y ago
No evidence has been presented to us. It sounds like the info came from the intelligence community, and they likely wouldn’t tell how they know what they know.

belter 4y ago

The second object has not been called a balloon by US Air Command. Most interesting are some reports of pilots saying the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes. [1] Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious. On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant presence of AWACS and other multiple airplane sorties, the Aliens everybody was talking about here days ago, seem to have vanished... [1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-alaska-military-latest/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-obj...

bombcar 4y ago
Pilots always claim sensor interference- it covers any mistakes they may have made.
- dawdaway 4y ago
  Evidence for this?
  - datavirtue 4y ago
    Look, it was just a weather balloon, folks. Nothing to see here. Sounds familiar.
- Tozen 4y ago
  F-22 pilots are not scrubs that got the job by luck. To be one, means being among the best. If it is being reported accurately, that the F-22 pilot says there was some kind of interference coming from the object, then there likely really is something to it.
  - belter 4y ago
    Definitely not scrubs... "How do you become an F-22 pilot?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/e76db/how_do_you_become_an_f22_pilot/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/e76db/how_do_you_...

thorawayz 4y ago

There are absolutely hard rules about national airspace, what the hell do you think the ICAO exists for? https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Airspace%20and%20Civil-Military%20Cooperation.pdf https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Ai...

TheCoelacanth 4y ago
Conspicuously absent from that document are any vertical measurements. At exactly what altitude national airspace stops is not clearly established.

sockaddr 4y ago

Too clever by half

ryan_j_naughton 4y ago

We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred. One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor. Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.

Animats 4y ago
> We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred. We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package. It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.
- _0w8t 4y ago
  Now that US has learned that the big ballon was spy one, it would not be an embarrassment but a reasonable assumption that smaller ones could be spy ones as well. So they should be stopped.
- voldacar 4y ago
  The balloon stopped drifting and lingered around military sites beneath it. That seems to rule out solar observation or atmospheric data collection.
- joemazerino 4y ago
  Science balloons have to go through a rigorous, and constant, check with DOD to ensure no mis communicating happens. I have first hand experience with this. We had to constantly ping our DOD channels to make sure they knew where we were and how long we would be staying there or risk being shot down.

CyanBird 4y ago

>...because 1) the public demands it; An appropriate quote to the situation “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” - Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927

everdrive 4y ago

>If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration. But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.

SQueeeeeL 4y ago
> If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!
- ss108 4y ago
  I'm a China hawk, but I hope it doesn't come to that. Would like to point out something relevant: China and India kill each others soldiers fairly frequently. I find it rather remarkable their issues haven't escalated.
  - hollerith 4y ago
    They kill each others soldiers, yes, but they are always small engagements because it is very difficult to transport a large formation of Chinese soldiers to Indian territory (specifically, any territory India cares about) or vice versa because the mountains are such formidable barriers.

VoodooJuJu 4y ago

>But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down 1. Where can one find evidence of this mass demand? 2. How does the US government gauge this mass demand without formal voting/polling? Were people phoning their senators, "SHOOT IT DOWN!"? I'm sure crazies phone in all kinds of things from time to time - what's the threshold for acting on demands/mass demand?

weard_beard 4y ago
The change.org poll really blew up.

tdehnel 4y ago

This is a really long winded way of displaying your contempt for your fellow citizens.

Sporktacular 4y ago

"But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down" You mean saw with their eyes or on the news? If it was with their eyes then it wouldn't lead to public demand since as you say "weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time." and there's no way to attribute it to another country. If it's on the news then physical size is not relevant but detectability and newsworthiness are. People would have cared.

ecf 4y ago

> just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration Trying to stir up an impeachment case over the response to the first balloon is just projection as usual from the GOP. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republicans-connect-china-spy-balloon-fiasco-migrant-crisis-southern-border.amp https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republica...