International Chinese Spy Balloon spotted flying over the Billings, Montana

Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence on US military sites- NBC News

(Reuters) -A Chinese balloon that flew across the United States was able to gather intelligence from several U.S. military sites and transmit it back to Beijing in real time, despite the Biden administration's efforts to prevent it from doing so, NBC News reported on Monday.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-spy-balloon-gathered-intelligence-111100516.html
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I recall that Biden wanted to shoot it down as soon as it entered US airspace (from Canada) but the Defense Dept. said to wait till it went over water.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-reason-not-shooting-down-balloon-raises-questions-1779399

DoD effed up.
 
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ShadowRun said:
They ever identify the other flying devices that happened ?
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hopefully same officials that leaked this will leak that! What is embarassing about this is they said the Chinese were able to get around the efforts to stop it from transmitting simply by flying figure 8s to go over it severval times lol. Sounds like something that would happen in a children's cartoon

edit: and wouldn't they know that at the time? So did the admin lie before congress?



Did Biden lie here?




edit: actually, they MUST have known as it was flying because they saw they were still able to control it, doing the figure 8s, so obviously they knew it wasn't just following wind patterns.
 
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MicroBrew said:
Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence on US military sites- NBC News

(Reuters) -A Chinese balloon that flew across the United States was able to gather intelligence from several U.S. military sites and transmit it back to Beijing in real time, despite the Biden administration's efforts to prevent it from doing so, NBC News reported on Monday.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chinese-spy-balloon-gathered-intelligence-111100516.html
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I recall that Biden wanted to shoot it down as soon as it entered US airspace (from Canada0 but the Defense Dept. said to wait till it went over water.
https://www.newsweek.com/joe-biden-reason-not-shooting-down-balloon-raises-questions-1779399

DoD effed up.
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What intel that can’t already be gathered with Google satellite photos?
 
Yehudim said:
What intel that can’t already be gathered with Google satellite photos?
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reported today they were collecting information the type electrical signals from various weapons, communications, etc are used at these military bases/locations.
 
cottagecheesefan said:
reported today they were collecting information the type electrical signals from various weapons, communications, etc are used at these military bases/locations.
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Couldn't someone drive around in the car and pick up the same signals?
 
I recall being told that no way they could be transmitting, which I argued they could.

Why they waited until the thing was over the Atlantic to give the electronics a salt water bath is ridiculous. They could have used an F-15 (100K ft) and use guns on the balloon portion to bring it down at will. Why they waited so long and used an F-22 (65K ft) missile that caused more destruction is baffling.

The next person that brings up OMG! Can't bring it down over populated areas. Should be forced to fly, in a small prop plane, across the U.S.A. and made to look down the whole time. That bit of propaganda was only for the really stupid people. They waited to salt bath that thing.
 
Whippy McGee said:
I recall being told that no way they could be transmitting, which I argued they could.

Why they waited until the thing was over the Atlantic to give the electronics a salt water bath is ridiculous. They could have used an F-15 (100K ft) and use guns on the balloon portion to bring it down at will. Why they waited so long and used an F-22 (65K ft) missile that caused more destruction is baffling.

The next person that brings up OMG! Can't bring it down over populated areas. Should be forced to fly, in a small prop plane, across the U.S.A. and made to look down the whole time. That bit of propaganda was only for the really stupid people. They waited to salt bath that thing.
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This was the explanation given as why it was not riddled with bullets.

"You can fill a balloon full of bullet holes, and it's going to stay at altitude," David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and fighter pilot, tells the Post. The air pressure that high up doesn't allow helium to freely escape through small holes, even if fighter jets flying by at hundreds of miles per hour can riddle the near-stationary balloon with bullets.

https://theweek.com/us-military/102...cheap-bullets-to-shoot-down-chinese-balloon-3

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I don't know why they didn't bring it down over land but I am not buying the DoD's excuse of it posing a hazard.
 
MicroBrew said:
This was the explanation given as why it was not riddled with bullets.

"You can fill a balloon full of bullet holes, and it's going to stay at altitude," David Deptula, a retired Air Force lieutenant general and fighter pilot, tells the Post. The air pressure that high up doesn't allow helium to freely escape through small holes, even if fighter jets flying by at hundreds of miles per hour can riddle the near-stationary balloon with bullets.

https://theweek.com/us-military/102...cheap-bullets-to-shoot-down-chinese-balloon-3

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I don't know why they didn't bring it down over land but I am not buying the DoD's excuse of it posing a hazard.
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Doesn't that seem like bullshit? I mean, if I shoot up the top of the balloon portion, hot air... rises right out of those bullet holes and it's going down. It seems like the physics is straight forward.
 
China succeeded in flying the massive balloon over some military bases on multiple occasions and sent the information back to Beijing in real time, NBC News reported on Monday, citing two current senior US officials and one former high-level administrator. The balloon, which was the size of three school buses, was occasionally flown in a figure-eight formation over at least some of those sensitive sites before it was shot down in early February.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/03/china-spy-balloon-us-military-intelligence


the size of three school buses hey? americans will use anything but the metric system.
 
Whippy McGee said:
Doesn't that seem like bullshit? I mean, if I shoot up the top of the balloon portion, hot air... rises right out of those bullet holes and it's going down. It seems like the physics is straight forward.
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The pressure up there is very low though, so it does sound plausible. That article also says that some years back the Canadian airforce riddled (with bullets) one of their weather balloons that was drifiting away towards Europe but they couldn't bring it down.
 
MicroBrew said:
The pressure up there is very low though, so it does sound plausible. That article also says that some years back the Canadian airforce riddled (with bullets) one of their weather balloons that was drifiting away towards Europe but they couldn't bring it down.
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Then the sidewinder would always work, but the claims that we couldn't do it were ridiculous. It seems if you shot the top off the balloon, it's coming down. A Weather Balloon in the Canadian event likely doesn't have a school bus worth of equipment in weight pulling it down like the Chinese Spy Balloon. I have another friend that was an F-16 pilot and then the F-35 later on, I wonder if he has a better answer. I'm supposed to have a dinner with him up in the Tri-Cities in a month or so, I'm going to ask for sure and when I do, I'll try to let you know what he had to say.
 
Whippy McGee said:
Then the sidewinder would always work, but the claims that we couldn't do it were ridiculous. It seems if you shot the top off the balloon, it's coming down. A Weather Balloon in the Canadian event likely doesn't have a school bus worth of equipment in weight pulling it down like the Chinese Spy Balloon. I have another friend that was an F-16 pilot and then the F-35 later on, I wonder if he has a better answer. I'm supposed to have a dinner with him up in the Tri-Cities in a month or so, I'm going to ask for sure and when I do, I'll try to let you know what he had to say.
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But, during one of the other balloon incidents (the hobby balloon over the great lakes), the missile missed it's target. Luckily, it landed in the lake.

If a missile missed the balloon over Montana, it could have created a bit of damage.
 
Who even knows whether it's true or not. Have to think about ulterior motives in making this kind of announcement.
 
Fluffernutter said:
But, during one of the other balloon incidents (the hobby balloon over the great lakes), the missile missed it's target. Luckily, it landed in the lake.

If a missile missed the balloon over Montana, it could have created a bit of damage.
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Have you flown over Montana? It consists of hundreds and hundreds of square miles empty of any humans. That, "hurt someone on the ground" talking point is pure propaganda, but it's so laughable that you really shouldn't repeat it.
 
Whippy McGee said:
Have you flown over Montana? It consists of hundreds and hundreds of square miles empty of any humans. That, "hurt someone on the ground" talking point is pure propaganda, but it's so laughable that you really shouldn't repeat it.
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Couidnt risk dropping the ballon on a bear
 
Whippy McGee said:
Have you flown over Montana? It consists of hundreds and hundreds of square miles empty of any humans. That, "hurt someone on the ground" talking point is pure propaganda, but it's so laughable that you really shouldn't repeat it.
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I wasn't thinking about people, but a wildfire
 
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