Chinese Weather Balloons, and Should You Worry About Them?

The Rocketry Forum

Help Support The Rocketry Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
ANY administration who allowed Chinese equipment to wander around above our country without it being removed, did the wrong thing, and I don't care which administration it is.

If it's a completely innocent weather balloon, it obviously doesn't matter, but we've learned a hard lesson that the Chinese government cannot be trusted to be honest about it's actions (ours too, I know).

If it's carrying spy equipment, but it can't get pictures any better than orbiting satellites, it doesn't matter. It shouldn't be allowed.

If it's leaking a new virus across the country and we don't find out about that until after it's been shot down a week later, it's way too late.

The problem is there's no way to know where on the spectrum of innocent to dangerous something like this could be, so why take a chance and not destroy it as soon as you're aware of it?
This is what I was thinking. How do you know it is innocent when you first see it? People on Pearl Harbor thought the Japanese airplanes were innocent until they found out otherwise.

As for previous balloons, I'm wondering how many really appeared undetected. I would be surprised if the recent "target practice" balloon wasn't observed since it left its launch spot. Why it wasn't downed the first time it crossed out of international waters I don't know, it should have never traveled over any US land.

As for lying about balloons- how do we know if anything said by a politician is truthful? or anything said by a government official? or anything said by media? I'm not saying that they lie all the time but enough of them lie enough of the time to bring a lot into question.
 
NORAD head Van Herck says that they didn't know about the intrusions until notified by intel services. Pompeo headed intelligence services. Pompeo says there were no Chinese balloon intrusions on his watch. So either Van Herck is lying, Pompeo is lying, or Pompeo was sleeping at the wheel and didn't know what his own intel services were doing. That's not ridiculous, that's tragic.
Is the CIA the only “intel service” out there? 🤣 Pompeo moved to Sec State after two years (2018). Even that, when did Van Herck say they were told? Was it two weeks ago when all this balloon started flying over the middle of the country? Van Herck wasn’t NORAD until Sept of 2020 so it is excruciatingly unlikely he was told before President Trump was out of office. So it is most likely neither is lying. I’m positive you can do a better job of thinking this through, it wouldn’t be tragic if you didn’t but it would be ridiculous if you didn’t…
 
Last edited:
EDIT: Don’t you hate when someone posts “avoid politics”, just as you complete a wickedly devastating political post, and you have to go back and delete it?
And yet, even though Hobie1dog got political and a warning was issued immediately afterwards, his post was allowed to remain. I'm sure if I post anything anti-Biden my post will be removed within minutes. This exact same pattern in this forum has been going on for years.

I wish the political rules were applied evenly but I doubt they ever will be.
 
And yet, even though Hobie1dog got political and a warning was issued immediately afterwards, his post was allowed to remain. I'm sure if I post anything anti-Biden my post will be removed within minutes. This exact same pattern in this forum has been going on for years.

I wish the political rules were applied evenly but I doubt they ever will be.
As is (almost) always the case, if you feel that particular post has crossed that line, feel free to report it.
 
Is the CIA the only “intel service” out there? 🤣 Pompeo moved to Sec State after two years (2018). Even that, when did Van Herck say they were told? Was it two weeks ago when all this balloon started flying over the middle of the country? Van Herck wasn’t NORAD until Sept of 2020 so it is excruciatingly unlikely he was told before President Trump was out of office. So it is most likely neither is lying. I’m positive you can do a better job of thinking this through, it wouldn’t be tragic if you didn’t but it would be ridiculous if you didn’t…
Oh, so there were incursions during the previous admin. and no one knew about it until intel did a "forensics analysis" on the data?
So former admin officials who say it never happened aren't lying because they were clueless that it happened?
ROTFLMAO.
If you believe that I have some lava land I'd like to sell to you.
 
And yet, even though Hobie1dog got political and a warning was issued immediately afterwards, his post was allowed to remain. I'm sure if I post anything anti-Biden my post will be removed within minutes. This exact same pattern in this forum has been going on for years.

I wish the political rules were applied evenly but I doubt they ever will be.

I think if you are suggesting Chuck issued a warning but didn’t delete the post because he has a pro-Biden bias, you might be barking up the wrong tree. Lol!
 
I wish the political rules were applied evenly but I doubt they ever will be.
Posts from all sides of the spectrum have been deleted.
I get the impression that most of the moderators are moderate conservatives.
You may be looking at things from a narrow personal perspective.
Understandable, but try looking at the bigger picture.
Peace.
party balloon bearing a gift of love letters
Or fortune cookies.
 
I wonder if maybe this balloon was part of a larger operation to stress-test the country. We know that the Russians have done operations in which they’ve used their internet troll army to inject divisive ideas into our social media platforms in a way that just looks organic, and then left the political partisans and the engagement-based social media algorithms that amplify and promote angry division propagate those planted messages out into the mainstream. Maybe the Chinese sent the balloon in a way that they knew someone would spot it and at the same time planted the idea that the balloon represented American weakness or reflected a weak response by the current administration. And now we are turning on each other. That kind of division is a win for China. Ideally, when a nation faces an external threat, they pull together and confront it in a United way, instead of taking political potshots. Maybe it’s a reflection of our divided country, or maybe it’s external influence, or maybe it’s foreign influence exploiting our existing internal division.
 
Japanese scientists carefully studied what would become commonly known as the jet stream, realizing these currents of wind could enable balloons to reach United States shores in just a couple of days. The balloons remained afloat through an elaborate mechanism that triggered a fuse when the balloon dropped in altitude, releasing a sandbag and lightening the weight enough for it to rise back up. This process would repeat until all that remained was the bomb itself. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey.

The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. Engineers hoped that the weapons’ impact would be compounded by forest fires, inflicting terror through both the initial explosion and an ensuing conflagration. That goal was stymied in part by the fact that they arrived during the rainy season, but had this goal been realized, these balloons may have been much more than an overlooked episode in a vast war.
 
From perusing the thread, I have to admit I'm surprised by how many participants seem to think the Chinese are itching to provoke a shooting war with us, or perform something devastating like loft an EMP bomb over here and detonate it, taking down our infrastructure.

I'm pretty sure that's the last thing they want. Doing so would isolate them (well, except for Russia and North Korea), and that's not in their interests.
China wants to grow economically. Every indicator points to this. This might include things such as pushing their territorial boundaries by building islands, pressing their claim on Taiwan, and other things that rile up their neighbors and the west. Sure.

But they hold something like $1Trillion in our debt and have the prospect of taking on more of it. (source) We can't service that debt or pay it back or increase it if we are at war with them.

The West (US + UK + EU) alone does something like $1.7T per year in trade with them (source), and that number snowballs if you include other countries that would side with us. Take away this trade, or even curtail it a little bit, and their economy grinds to a halt overnight.

Also look at the percentage of GDP spent on the military, comparing US with China (we are about double by this measure, source)

China plays a long game. This includes riling up it's opponents, setting them against each other, pushing boundaries, and generally towing a line that is focused on putting themselves at economic advantage while keeping their opponents (try to avoid the term enemies), confused and on the back foot.

A shooting war with the west would bankrupt the country and foment rebellion at home. Not happening. Comparisons with Pearl Harbor scenarios are bogus. Our economy and the Japanese economy of the time were nowhere near this intertwined.

Let's use that moldy old chestnut in our analysis: "Follow the money." It still holds true.
 
Japanese scientists carefully studied what would become commonly known as the jet stream, realizing these currents of wind could enable balloons to reach United States shores in just a couple of days. The balloons remained afloat through an elaborate mechanism that triggered a fuse when the balloon dropped in altitude, releasing a sandbag and lightening the weight enough for it to rise back up. This process would repeat until all that remained was the bomb itself. By then, the balloons would be expected to reach the mainland; an estimated 1,000 out of 9,000 launched made the journey.

The massive balloons would then be launched, timed carefully to optimize the wind currents of the jet stream and reach the United States. Engineers hoped that the weapons’ impact would be compounded by forest fires, inflicting terror through both the initial explosion and an ensuing conflagration. That goal was stymied in part by the fact that they arrived during the rainy season, but had this goal been realized, these balloons may have been much more than an overlooked episode in a vast war.
In a sense from California's perspective if and when they get back into their dry season... you could technically use that climate to your advantage, but from what we have gathered, the Chinese are theoretically testing or utilizing the balloons as spy ware.... In contrast the Japanese were at war with the US, but from their point it would be suicide to launch a invasion via amphibious... But to note you can definitely use unmanned weapons to cause a lot of damage, with very little resources and timing...
At this point we dont know what exactly the Chinese gathered or even got out of the Balloons they used, but to the US we shall be ready to pop them next time when they enter our air space
 
Maybe it’s a reflection of our divided country, or maybe it’s external influence, or maybe it’s foreign influence exploiting our existing internal division.
Maybe the Chinese are watching too many old Twilight Zone episodes.

"Prejudices can kill. And suspicions can destroy. And a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its' own. And the pity of it is, that these things cannot be confined...
to the Twilight Zone".
Rod Serling
 
Let's use that moldy old chestnut in our analysis: "Follow the money." It still holds true.
My bet all along is that the balloon was engaged in surface mapping or other land analysis that is part of their acquisition strategy and they don't have satellite technology to achieve the goals.

it's all speculation at this point..
By some of the best intelligence analysts ever produced by The Facebook Institute for Foreign Relations, Google U. or Twitter Tech.
 
Am I the only one who low key wants to buy a Chinese spy balloon? A new one, not a wet one with a missile hole in it.

That thing flew at 60,000 feet across an ocean and over an entire continent! We could load it up with strongly worded letters and send it to Pooty in Moscow.
 
My bet all along is that the balloon was engaged in surface mapping or other land analysis that is part of their acquisition strategy and they don't have satellite technology to achieve the goals.


By some of the best intelligence analysts ever produced by The Facebook Institute for Foreign Relations, Google U. or Twitter Tech.

I think the balloon is equipped with ”sniffers” to detect chemical signatures in air samples.

That’s my theory, and I’m a retired virologist, constitutional scholar, and military strategist, starting my new career in electronic surveillance and psychological warfare. So I know what I’m talking about!
 
Am I the only one who low key wants to buy a Chinese spy balloon? A new one, not a wet one with a missile hole in it.

That thing flew at 60,000 feet across an ocean and over an entire continent! We could load it up with strongly worded letters and send it to Pooty in Moscow.

Ukraine should start sending balloons into Russia.
 
Am I the only one who low key wants to buy a Chinese spy balloon? A new one, not a wet one with a missile hole in it.

That thing flew at 60,000 feet across an ocean and over an entire continent! We could load it up with strongly worded letters and send it to Pooty in Moscow.
Just think about how big a rocket an amateur could launch into orbit by starting from a platform suspended from three of these balloons! 🤪🤪
 
Back
Top