If we shoot it down, then it also gives the Chi-Coms and excuse to shoot down one of our planes that gets too close to their airspace. Best thing we can do is fly this balloon next to it/under it.

I'm gonna take a different tact...the CCP are sloppy and this is an example of their ineptitude. One of their agencies lost a weather balloon, everyone was so scared they didn't report it or, they did but, the bureaucracy that exists, delayed any solutions to dealing with it until it had drifted off. The CCP aren't very good at dealing with problems, when they come up with a solution, its ham-fisted and not well thought-out; when things get out of control, they could ask for help but, that would mean loosing-face and the CCP can't have anything embarrassing happen to them.

Look at their space program, while they've made some tremendous strides (thanks to a lot of theft) they also allow rocket bodies and broken satellites to reenter the atmosphere, and belatedly or, not at all, notify those in the path of the debris. As for why we haven't done anything about it, either 1) We've known about this thing since it crossed Alaska and understood it posed no threat other than an eye-sore or, 2) Our threat systems are also heavily layered with bureaucracy approvals that getting any approval to respond, requires an act of God, to which he'll ponder and conduct a poll on what to do....meanwhile the balloon continues to float away.

Maybe the administration is doing something. High level visits getting axed is a nice slap in the face to Xinnie the Pooh
https://www.foxnews.com/politi...postpones-trip-china

quote:

Originally posted by Balzé Halzé:

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:

There is a documentary about Unit 741 on YT. I recommend not eating beforehand.

I assume you mean Unit 731?

yes.

The military got a better look at it today:

quote:

Originally posted by IrishWind:
Maybe the administration is doing something. High level visits getting axed is a nice slap in the face to Xinnie the Pooh
https://www.foxnews.com/politi...postpones-trip-china

The visits were only postponed. They should've been summarily canceled.

quote:

Originally posted by parabellum:

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
I didn’t read through all the posts, but…I assume the question has been asked:

Why is a “Chinese Spy Balloon” still flying over the U.S.?

Your question suggests that you haven't read anything in this thread, nor have you read any online news articles or tuned in to any cable news channel.

It does, but actually I have read news reports. It seems the balloon is very large, and there’s fear that the falling debris could cause harm, even if shot down over a relatively unpopulated area in Montana. That doesn’t explain however, why the balloon was allowed to reach Montana. The device traversed the Aleutians then crossed into Canada before reaching Montana . The USAF has three airbases in Alaska. Clear AFB’s mission is an “early warning station,” designed to track ICBMs and other threats along the west coast. The other two, Elmendorf and Eielson, both have fighter wings.

So, is there good reason why it was allowed to reach the CONUS and remain there?

Shoot it down, pickup the pieces and soak them in sewage and send it back to China with a note Happy New Year.

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
So, is there good reason why it was allowed to reach the CONUS and remain there?

1) Paralysis through analysis
or,
2) We monitored its electronic emissions and determined it wasn't a threat

quote:

Originally posted by corsair:

quote:

Originally posted by TMats:
So, is there good reason why it was allowed to reach the CONUS and remain there?

1) Paralysis through analysis
or,
2) We monitored its electronic emissions and determined it wasn't a threat

I’d say both are correct…

“Too many mind”

quote:

Originally posted by Oscar Zulu:
Better call Frank Luke..


OZ

I think this balloon is above the operating ceiling of a Spad XIII.

A friend had a very good point today.

Via text:

Me: “Did you hear about that Chinese spy balloon, basically parked over our ICBM fields? Trump would have shot that shit down the second crossed into our airspace!”

Friend: “If Trump were President they wouldn’t have even dared to launch that thing”

I wonder if the Chinese bought one of Hunter's paintings right before they launched their balloon?

So, this isn't the first time...

China’s Spy Balloon Over Montana Is Part Of A Larger, More Troubling Pattern

quote:

"But out of an abundance of caution, we have taken additional mitigation steps. I'm not going to go into what those are.

Electronic warfare at work...
Fry the electronics, track it and pick-up the pieces where ever it lands.

quote:

Perhaps most interestingly, Pentagon Press Secretary Ryder and the senior U.S. defense official both said suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloons have been monitored passing over the continental United States in recent years on multiple occasions. This includes instances that took place before Biden took office in 2021. Neither of them would say exactly how frequently this has occurred or provide details about any past incidents. They did say that the balloon that is currently inside U.S. airspace has been here longer than others in the past.

Uh, what?

It’s also being reported that it’s definitely not agricultural… It’s military

It happened under Trump?


BULLL

SHIT

They would have been shouting it from the rooftops that we had an incursion and the Bad Orange Man didn’t know what to do.

No, this is all about providing cover for this doddering fool Biden now

Isn't this a job for the Space Force??

Kinda surprised some good ole' boys out there haven't resolved this situation.

Dry run: Balloons called top ‘delivery platform’ for nuclear EMP attack

February 03, 2023

High-altitude balloons, such as the one China has floated over mountain state military bases this week, are considered a key “delivery platform” for secret nuclear strikes on America’s electric grid, according to intelligence officials.

Spy balloons, used by Japan to drop bombs during World War II, are now far more sophisticated, can fly at up to 200,000 feet, evade detection, and can carry a small nuclear bomb that, if exploded in the atmosphere, would shut down the grid and wipe out electronics in a many-state-wide area.

The threat of balloon-launched electromagnetic pulse attacks was warned about by a congressional EMP commission and inside the military several years ago.

In a 2015 report for the American Leadership & Policy Foundation, Air Force Maj. David Stuckenberg, one of the nation’s leading EMP experts, wrote extensively about the threat balloons carrying bombs pose to national security.

“Using a balloon as a WMD/WME platform could provide adversaries with a pallet of altitudes and payload options with which to maximize offensive effects against the U.S.,” he wrote in the report.

“A high altitude balloon could be designed, created, and launched in a matter of months. There is nothing to prevent several hundred pounds of weapons material from being delivered to altitude,” he added.

On Friday, he told Secrets, "China’s recent balloon flyover of the United States is clearly a provocative and aggressive act. It was most likely a type of dry run meant to send a strategic message to the USA. We must not take this for granted.”

Now in the private sector, Stuckenberg, a national security expert and scientist who led the Defense Department’s EMP Task Force and chairman of the American Leadership & Policy Foundation, pointed to Japan’s World War II “Project Fugo” that targeted the U.S. with balloon bombs as an example of the threat. “Not since WWII has North America faced a threat of this nature. Project FuGo in Japan used balloons to float bombs on the trade-winds across the Pacific to the U.S. and Canada,” he told Secrets.

EMP experts have warned that China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran have programs to hit the U.S. grid with electromagnetic pulse weapons that would cut the cord for a year or longer. A congressional report has warned that a blackout that long could result in millions of deaths.

Stuckenberg cited the research of the late Peter Pry, who headed a congressional commission on EMP and reported on the potential of a balloon-launched attack.

He wrote in the report, “Peter Pry, a former CIA analyst and member of the Congressional Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack, stated, ‘Imagine the consequences of a balloon EMP attack that damages and destroys electronic systems at the speed of light within an EMP field with a radius of hundreds of kilometers. The Eastern Grid generates 75% of U.S. electricity and supports most of the population.” Pry also notes, “Virtually any nuke detonated anywhere over the Eastern Grid will collapse the entire Eastern Grid, not just the area within the EMP field, because of cascading failures that will ripple outward.”

Stuckenberg concluded in his paper, “In the case of EMP, the consequences of a failure to anticipate ALL delivery modes within the reach of an imaginative enemy could be immediate and widespread. As guardians of our nation’s future, planners must leave no stone unturned in the effort to deprive America’s enemies of low cost, lowtech, high-consequence military options.”

China has said that its balloon flying over Montana is safe and not a threat. The Pentagon has rebuffed calls to shoot it down because it could be a safety issue to those below it.

https://www.washingtonexaminer...r-nuclear-emp-attack