5 ms·

For RF SIGINT anything the ionosphere absorbs, scatters or reflects isn’t observable by satellites but may be from this balloon.

flangola7 4y ago
What could this balloon collect that any regular jet couldn't? I don't think the government is transmitting secrets over such a wide open medium. Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge.
- kube-system 4y ago
  > Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge. Are you suggesting that encryption is useless against a superpower? If that’s what you’re saying, the same applies to anything transmitted on a cable.
  - flangola7 4y ago
    No I'm saying anything broadcast over such an easily intercepted medium is almost certainly not useful. (Either encrypted or information that is not secretive.) If it really was a signal intelligence balloon, I don't see what it could possibly learn.
    - kube-system 4y ago
      Encryption makes signals intelligence more difficult, not impossible. It is and has always been a game of cat and mouse. There is still a lot you can learn from analyzing encrypted signals. The metadata itself may be quite valuable, and any world power undoubtedly does cryptanalysis.
      - Breza 4y ago
        Wouldn't there also be a benefit from knowing, for example, that there's a bunch of encrypted radio chatter on a military frequency coming from a rural Montana town with a population of 500? Even without knowing anything that's being said, it might indicate a military presence in that location.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  A jet is more conspicuous and arguably a bigger offense, China also does not have jets with the required range or service ceiling. SIGINT is valuable even if you can’t decrypt the contents, in fact when you can it’s usually COMMINT. SIGINT provides you with other valuable information such as frequencies used, cadence and also allows you to uncover new locations of forces and installations. Also governments still use a lot of unencrypted or partially encrypted communications - cellphones are a great example even if voice and data is encrypted the cell ID and other valuable metadata isn’t.
- samstave 4y ago
  What do you think of this conspiracy theory thought: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34873156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34873156 - HAARP [0] was built in 1993, and its often been accused of being able to incite tectonic response from the Earth. Obviously, this is the tinfoil... but for a couple decades HAARP has been blamed for earthquakes. What I find interesting in this, is that with the "spy balloons", aside from the one which was shot down over the Atlantic, after 'passing through' Alaska and then across the US is supposedly "Chinese"... The other balloons were shot down over Alaska, and over Billings. Interestingly, both HAARP and the other balloons for weather tracking are from University Fairbanks. (and there has been a lot of posts recently for the strength of the Aurora - such as the super bright one yesterday from Alaska which made the entire night and snow glow strong green color) Video from GeoEngineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBt9rqXkcXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBt9rqXkcXo - >>"The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emit light of varying colour and complexity." -- Now for the core of the conspiracy ; If HAARP can cause earthquakes through the interactions between the Ionosphere, or the beam pointing from bouncing waves off the Ionosphere, it would be interesting if that activity was being measured/tracked through the balloons that they use to measure aspects of the Ionosphere, and the blowing up of the balloons was to destroy the evidence of tracking and monitoring the effects of 3.6 Million Watt beams being shot up from multiple locations, and converging on the same point. Its interesting that we have Earthquake Lights - where the atmosphere above a major earthquake will light up the sky just prior to the EQ, kind of like sheet lightning, due to the changes in ionization. (and recall, there are treaties that were signed (supposedly) decades ago banning weather-warfare... There was a 6.4 again in Turkey today, more building collapsed, but were apparently building that were already damaged in the previous. So if we could look into the correlation between very strong Aurora, EQs, and when/if one of the HAARP installations was active at the time... (look at the wiki for the image of the activity bands: https://i.imgur.com/D7xqMHK.png https://i.imgur.com/D7xqMHK.png Notice that "high activity" is the RED band, which is closest to Turkey's region... and then look at this path of the chinese balloon, which roughly follows the path of the bands in the Aurora output: https://i.imgur.com/DocezpQ.png https://i.imgur.com/DocezpQ.png --- There are also patents related to using HAARP to send ULF both into the atmosphere and into the ground... (see patents below) So, I find it interesting to correlation (not causation) for massive geological event (a 1 in 1,000 year series of earthquakes in Turkey - in a swarm where typically each of the earthquakes by themselves would still be considered massive, and more than 60,000 people have died so far (the current official number claimed by MSM is 45,000 - but there are thousands who were recovered and buried without being added to the tally, as well as thousands of bodies that were pulverized and wont be discovered for a time, if at all) I am not saying this is how it is, I am just saying I find all these coincidences odd... Obviously turkey is basically bordered by tectonic boundaries ; the timing of everything is bizarre. -- https://www.britannica.com/topic/HAARP https://www.britannica.com/topic/HAARP https://patents.google.com/patent/US8299936B2/en?q=(HAARP)&oq=HAARP https://patents.google.com/patent/US8299936B2/en?q=(HAARP)&o... https://patents.google.com/patent/US8115622B2/en?q=(HAARP)&oq=HAARP https://patents.google.com/patent/US8115622B2/en?q=(HAARP)&o...

flangola7 4y ago

What could this balloon collect that any regular jet couldn't? I don't think the government is transmitting secrets over such a wide open medium. Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge.

kube-system 4y ago
> Anything broadcast over radio should be assumed to be public knowledge. Are you suggesting that encryption is useless against a superpower? If that’s what you’re saying, the same applies to anything transmitted on a cable.
- flangola7 4y ago
  No I'm saying anything broadcast over such an easily intercepted medium is almost certainly not useful. (Either encrypted or information that is not secretive.) If it really was a signal intelligence balloon, I don't see what it could possibly learn.
  - kube-system 4y ago
    Encryption makes signals intelligence more difficult, not impossible. It is and has always been a game of cat and mouse. There is still a lot you can learn from analyzing encrypted signals. The metadata itself may be quite valuable, and any world power undoubtedly does cryptanalysis.
    - Breza 4y ago
      Wouldn't there also be a benefit from knowing, for example, that there's a bunch of encrypted radio chatter on a military frequency coming from a rural Montana town with a population of 500? Even without knowing anything that's being said, it might indicate a military presence in that location.
dogma1138 4y ago
A jet is more conspicuous and arguably a bigger offense, China also does not have jets with the required range or service ceiling. SIGINT is valuable even if you can’t decrypt the contents, in fact when you can it’s usually COMMINT. SIGINT provides you with other valuable information such as frequencies used, cadence and also allows you to uncover new locations of forces and installations. Also governments still use a lot of unencrypted or partially encrypted communications - cellphones are a great example even if voice and data is encrypted the cell ID and other valuable metadata isn’t.
samstave 4y ago
What do you think of this conspiracy theory thought: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34873156 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34873156 - HAARP [0] was built in 1993, and its often been accused of being able to incite tectonic response from the Earth. Obviously, this is the tinfoil... but for a couple decades HAARP has been blamed for earthquakes. What I find interesting in this, is that with the "spy balloons", aside from the one which was shot down over the Atlantic, after 'passing through' Alaska and then across the US is supposedly "Chinese"... The other balloons were shot down over Alaska, and over Billings. Interestingly, both HAARP and the other balloons for weather tracking are from University Fairbanks. (and there has been a lot of posts recently for the strength of the Aurora - such as the super bright one yesterday from Alaska which made the entire night and snow glow strong green color) Video from GeoEngineering: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBt9rqXkcXo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBt9rqXkcXo - >>"The resulting ionization and excitation of atmospheric constituents emit light of varying colour and complexity." -- Now for the core of the conspiracy ; If HAARP can cause earthquakes through the interactions between the Ionosphere, or the beam pointing from bouncing waves off the Ionosphere, it would be interesting if that activity was being measured/tracked through the balloons that they use to measure aspects of the Ionosphere, and the blowing up of the balloons was to destroy the evidence of tracking and monitoring the effects of 3.6 Million Watt beams being shot up from multiple locations, and converging on the same point. Its interesting that we have Earthquake Lights - where the atmosphere above a major earthquake will light up the sky just prior to the EQ, kind of like sheet lightning, due to the changes in ionization. (and recall, there are treaties that were signed (supposedly) decades ago banning weather-warfare... There was a 6.4 again in Turkey today, more building collapsed, but were apparently building that were already damaged in the previous. So if we could look into the correlation between very strong Aurora, EQs, and when/if one of the HAARP installations was active at the time... (look at the wiki for the image of the activity bands: https://i.imgur.com/D7xqMHK.png https://i.imgur.com/D7xqMHK.png Notice that "high activity" is the RED band, which is closest to Turkey's region... and then look at this path of the chinese balloon, which roughly follows the path of the bands in the Aurora output: https://i.imgur.com/DocezpQ.png https://i.imgur.com/DocezpQ.png --- There are also patents related to using HAARP to send ULF both into the atmosphere and into the ground... (see patents below) So, I find it interesting to correlation (not causation) for massive geological event (a 1 in 1,000 year series of earthquakes in Turkey - in a swarm where typically each of the earthquakes by themselves would still be considered massive, and more than 60,000 people have died so far (the current official number claimed by MSM is 45,000 - but there are thousands who were recovered and buried without being added to the tally, as well as thousands of bodies that were pulverized and wont be discovered for a time, if at all) I am not saying this is how it is, I am just saying I find all these coincidences odd... Obviously turkey is basically bordered by tectonic boundaries ; the timing of everything is bizarre. -- https://www.britannica.com/topic/HAARP https://www.britannica.com/topic/HAARP https://patents.google.com/patent/US8299936B2/en?q=(HAARP)&oq=HAARP https://patents.google.com/patent/US8299936B2/en?q=(HAARP)&o... https://patents.google.com/patent/US8115622B2/en?q=(HAARP)&oq=HAARP https://patents.google.com/patent/US8115622B2/en?q=(HAARP)&o...