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I doubt the "spy drones" are of any particular military value anyway. It's more a test to see what will happen if you send something suspicious into your rival'
by notahacker 4y ago
I doubt the "spy drones" are of any particular military value anyway. It's more a test to see what will happen if you send something suspicious into your rival's airspace. The Trump administration chose to ignore them, the Biden administration in slightly different geopolitical circumstances chose to shoot them down.
Since this would have been an anticipated outcome, I don't think it really changes anything other than making it clear to China that the present US government won't necessarily overlook everything for the sake of good relations.
- rhaway84773 4y agoThe U.S. has been pushing the UK to not include any Chinese equipment in any infrastructure they buy. It’s not clear to me what the Chinese could have learnt thst they didn’t already know.
- notahacker 4y agoI don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon (it takes marginally higher resolution images than a satellite but so do lots of less obvious stuff like aircraft and consumer drones that are perfectly entitled to be in US airspace). But the US was pushing the UK not to include Chinese equipment (and indulging in some very loud anti-China rhetoric mostly for domestic consumption) under the previous administration but was too cautious to pull the trigger, so them not being too cautious now is new information. Unmanned balloons are obviously a lower risk way of testing that than other ways it could test the US tolerance, and may play well with Chinese domestic audiences too.
- LemmyInThePub 4y ago> I don't think they'd have learned much from the visuals of a balloon I suggest a balloon payload would be better aimed at monitoring (and establishing patterns of) RF traffic rather than visual data.