Americans across this great nation can sleep soundly tonight, knowing that the looming threat of Communist balloons has been met with resolution and strength.
In all seriousness, I imagine the payload will be moderately interesting, but probably no more than that. It might even be just a bunch of mostly off the shelf stuff. I mean, floating a balloon over the USA–I am pretty sure they anticipated that it would be shot down eventually. My guess is that they beamed whatever data they gained back home as soon as they got it, encrypted probably, and little to nothing was stored on the balloon payload itself.
At the very least, they probably got to record some radars they don’t always get to monitor, and while it’s doubtful the radars were using any sensitive wartime modes, you never know.
RichVR
3197
No word on whether we will try to recover the telemetry package. But I can’t believe that it won’t be attempted. When it is recovered we will know a lot more, I would think.
Edit: And since the PRC knew it would happen, I can’t believe that it has anything that might be secret. I mean, you send up something like a balloon, you don’t put in anything too advanced. Thus, it wasn’t advanced enough to make any difference surveillance wise.
Alstein
3198
That does not look like the weather balloons we use.
Another possible motive for the balloon is to prompt reactions by systems and platforms that Chinese satellites or other assets could monitor.
It is maddening to see all the GOP asshats gibbering about this showing weakness or being a humiliation. It wasn’t that long ago we were heaping (well-deserved, mind you) scorn and disgust on the USSR for being trigger-happy and paranoid in shooting down KAL 007. In this case, we acted much as any rational actor would. We assessed the threat (minimal), looked at the possible dangers to engaging over land (moderate but high enough to be a worry), examined the best case scenario for getting ahold of the payload more or less intact (over water most likely), and then followed through.
It was all pretty much textbook. Many of the comments show you how clueless many people are about military and intelligence affairs, as well as how emotional and ultimately devoid of any actual information the whole GOP approach is these days.
pyrhic
3204
nice overview. Also, if that balloon icon is real, that’s hilarious
Good thing we have F-22s!
Thrag
3208
The U-2 was used to track the balloon.
Thought these bits were interesting.
Finally, the U-2 possesses a highly capable electronic warfare suite. Flying in relatively close proximity to the balloon, and especially above it, it’s possible it may have been able to jam any communications being sent to satellites above.
Yesterday, Politico reported that the U.S. Intelligence Community had previously assessed that smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia in 2020 were carrying some kind of radar-jamming payload.
So the balloon is jamming us and we’re jamming the ballon. Their jamming, we’re jamming, they jamming, we jamming, I hope you like jamming too.
That article about the U-2 doesn’t surprise me. I worked for about a year at the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) which is government-speak for “the agency that launches spy satellites.” Some of the stories related in the initial security briefings were crazy - like stuff out of James Bond movies. So I was pretty sure we weren’t just sitting down on the ground staring wistfully at the balloon.
JonRowe
3211
Yeah, this is why the GOP furor over the Biden admin response is just hilarious.
“let’s get a photo op of me out there with a gun! I’ll shoot the balloon that is around 12 miles up with my AR-15”
Like we weren’t doing something about it the whole time, just because Biden didn’t want to drop the thing on Kansas City.
Well, when you build a large part of your political messaging and tribal identity on the feverish imaginings of an unrealistic to the point off delusional deification of the military in the abstract, unaccompanied by any actual knowledge of anything about the military, the intelligence community, or much else for that matter, this is what you get.
RichVR
3213
Mar-A-Lago, on the other hand…
Welp. That’ll be stuck in my head for the day.
Djscman
3215
I wonder if any of those kooky but quasi-documented UFO sightings in the past few years might have been one of these surveillance balloons?
The WaPo says that this balloon was part of a “vast surveillance network”, which doesn’t sound like only five balloons in the last five years.
https://wapo.st/3JP9mMu
(gift link)
Chinese balloon part of vast aerial surveillance program, U.S. says
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/07/china-spy-balloon-intelligence/
