Chinese Weather Balloons, and Should You Worry About Them?

Onebadhawk
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I've been reading about Chinas economic collapse for months. Looks like it hit the tipping point. What worries me about this is I think it makes an invasion of Taiwan more likely. Something to divert attention away from their economic troubles. To rally the masses behind the Government.
 
This morning's news was that several European nations are considering boycotts of Chinese companies that are supplying the Russian war machine... so... most of them?

Oddly, I'm not certain how that plays out in relation to a potential invasion of Taiwan. I am uncertain because we don't know how deep the recent corruption scandals go, as in, just how many of their rockets are filled with water instead of fuel, and how much does that carry over into other things like artillery shells, tanks that actually work, cases of ammunition that are empty, etc. Of course, the Russian military had the same problem and they launched an invasion anyway but it's taken them almost two years to straighten some of that out (if they ever do). The second unknown is that China is already feeling the effects of their population bomb. Several decades of their one child policy means that they already have a major shortage of young people, and that shortage gets worse in future years rather than better. Would any of those things absolutely be a deal killer and stop them from invading? No. But they all have an effect on their ability to attack, and to sustain a protracted fight, which, Russia's war in Ukraine has amply demonstrated the potential of what may have been previously considered to be unlikely.
 
Peartree said:
This morning's news was that several European nations are considering boycotts of Chinese companies that are supplying the Russian war machine... so... most of them?

Oddly, I'm not certain how that plays out in relation to a potential invasion of Taiwan. I am uncertain because we don't know how deep the recent corruption scandals go, as in, just how many of their rockets are filled with water instead of fuel, and how much does that carry over into other things like artillery shells, tanks that actually work, cases of ammunition that are empty, etc. Of course, the Russian military had the same problem and they launched an invasion anyway but it's taken them almost two years to straighten some of that out (if they ever do). The second unknown is that China is already feeling the effects of their population bomb. Several decades of their one child policy means that they already have a major shortage of young people, and that shortage gets worse in future years rather than better. Would any of those things absolutely be a deal killer and stop them from invading? No. But they all have an effect on their ability to attack, and to sustain a protracted fight, which, Russia's war in Ukraine has amply demonstrated the potential of what may have been previously considered to be unlikely.
Click to expand...
On top of all of those issues, opposed amphibious landings are extraordinarily hard. I may be corrected, but I'm pretty sure the US and UK are the only world powers that have made successful opposed landings in the modern era. Supply lines a few hundred kilometers long don't make it easier. It's even worse when man-portable missiles (eg Javelin) can disable a landing ship at a range of several kilometers. Taiwan doesn't need bunkers and pillboxes to defend the beaches. They can do that from hedgerows and brush at the shoreline.

Also, let's take a look at the Chinese amphibious fleet. In the near future, they'll have:
8 Type 075 LHDs, 60 armored vehicles, 800 troops each, plus significant helicopter capability
8 Type 071 LSTs, 60 armored vehicles, 800 troops each, plus small helicopter capability
29 Type 072 LSTs, 10 armored vehicles, 250 troops each
18 small landing craft

At best, that lands around 20,000 troops on the beach, with supporting armor. Taiwan's army is 130,000 strong and they have very short supply lines. For reference, the Allies landed 130,000 troops on D-Day, opposing 50,000 Germans.
 
boatgeek said:
At best, that lands around 20,000 troops on the beach, with supporting armor. Taiwan's army is 130,000 strong and they have very short supply lines.
Click to expand...
But Chinese might have Zapp Branigan leading them! "I sent wave after wave of men onto the beach until the other side ran out of bullets!"
 
techrat said:
But Chinese might have Zapp Branigan leading them! "I sent wave after wave of men onto the beach until the other side ran out of bullets!"
Click to expand...
That pretty much describes the tactics currently employed by Russia and why commentators refer to their attacks as "meat waves."
 
They can spread a new Covid variant around Taiwan and when everybody is either sick or dead they can just walk in.
 
GOP Sen. Marco Rubio warned on social media that the AT&T outage affecting tens of thousands of Americans pales in comparison to what a potential China cyberattack would look like.

"I don’t know the cause of the AT&T outage," the Florida Republican posted on X on Thursday. "But I do know it will be 100 times worse when #China launches a cyber attack on America on the eve of a #Taiwan invasion."

The outages started popping up just before 3:30 a.m. ET, according to a graph shown on the website that tracks outages.

Most users, 54%, say they are having issues with mobile phone service. More than a third of customers reporting being affected say they have no signal at all, and 8% of users say their mobile internet is down.
 
IMHO Bloomberg is a one of the more reliable sources of news.

(Bloomberg) -- A cyberattack against a division of UnitedHealth Group Inc. has caused a nationwide outage of a computer network that’s used to transmit data between health-care providers and insurance companies, rendering some pharmacies unable to process prescriptions, according to the company and reports from affected organizations.

UnitedHealth found a “suspected nation-state associated cyber security threat actor” had access to subsidiary Change Healthcare’s systems on Feb. 21, prompting the company to disconnect them from other parties, the company said in a filing Thursday.

UnitedHealth, the country’s largest health insurer, said in a statement Thursday that the cyberattack and related “network interruption” only impacted Change Healthcare and that all its other systems are operational. Change Healthcare is a key intermediary in the $1.5 trillion US health insurance market.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unitedhealth-blamed-nation-state-threat-214720756.html
 
I just heard about this latest balloon! I didn’t get a chance to panic.

At lunch today the restaurant was in same parking lot as Walmart.
There was a drone delivering packages flying over our heads. 10 pounds from a couple hundred feet is way more scary than Chinese balloons.
 

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