Chinese Weather Balloons, and Should You Worry About Them?

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jderimig said:
Maybe. Let's find out. I am sure Rep. Mike Turner chairman of the house intelligence committee will look into this. Somebody is lying.
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I look forward to seeing the witness list. And which ones are under oath and which ones aren't. It would also be nice to see which people have a sudden lapse of memory once they get under oath, despite having a crystal-clear recollections of everything last week on the news shows...
 
I laughed reading the fuss about spy ballloons.

Some years ago a group of us—courtesy the good offices of the United States Navy—got permission to drive onto Naval Weapons Station China Lake and view the extraordinary petroglyph sites. A lot of preparation: written application in advance, fill out forms, show US passports.

On Station we were escorted in convoy by Navy personnel, strictly admonished to stay in our vehicles unless expressly permitted, and to keep our cameras away—no photos!—until we arrived at the petroglyph site. We missed the chance to film a herd of wild horses.

I laughed then too, looking up and waving at the Russian spy satellites. While I remained thankful for the Navy’s hospitality. The US military is a great conservation organization.
 

Soooo.....it's bad when someone ELSE does it, not when WE do it..... :)​

​

A Brief History of Project Moby Dick, the Cold War’s Least Believable Surveillance Strategy​

The U.S. once launched hundreds of balloons in an attempt to spy on the Soviets.​


https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/cold-war-balloon-surveillance
".........This daring aeronautical maneuver was a part of one of the Cold War’s most incredible intelligence gathering stunts. In an effort to gather information from behind the Iron Curtain, the U.S. Air Force launched hundreds of spy balloons to float over the Soviet Union, collect photographic coverage, and hopefully reappear in friendly airspace for midair recovery.

In the days before reconnaissance satellites, balloons were seen as a safer alternative to proposals for manned overflights, and less provocative than plans to attach cameras to cruise missiles. But the audacity of the balloon program also reflected the tremendous appetite for recon information in Washington. In his 1991 history of the Moby Dick program, as it was known, Curtis Peebles describes how “the reconnaissance balloon had the highest national priority of 1-A. The only other project to share this priority was the hydrogen bomb. Knowledge is power.”

eSA5LmpwZw.jpg
 
Irony of the US Spy Balloons of the 1950s. Russia's Luna-3, which took the first images of the far side of the moon, used film from one of the US spy balloons that landed in Russia. Story:

https://fstoppers.com/film/how-sovi...far-side-moon-captured-air-force-kodak-325971
".....But by a curious twist of history, some parts of the fallen GENETRIX balloons would reach an epic height. A few months after the end of the project, Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite in space (Sputnik), marking the beginning of the space race. The next destination after earth orbit was the moon, but Russian engineers couldn’t figure out a way to produce a radiation-resistant film like the one found in the fallen GENETRIX balloons. They didn’t know how the Americans made their radiation proof film, but they simply reused the GENETRIX film for their own Luna 3 spacecraft. On the 4th of October 1959, 40 frames of this 35mm black and white film salvaged from one of the GENETRIX balloons were loaded inside the space probe on top of a Luna rocket in Kazakhstan. The American film was cut into the required dimension from the original large format film (9x9 inches) and calibration marks were inserted in order to facilitate the post mission image interpretation.

The mission objective was to capture the first image of the far side of the moon, a mysterious territory never observed before by mankind.

The Russian space probe was a technological marvel at the time. The spacecraft oriented one side toward the Sun and then a photocell sensitive to light detected the Moon and pointed the cameras towards it. Detection of the Moon signaled the camera eyelids cover to open and the photography sequence to start automatically. The dual lens camera was fitted with a 200mm f/5.6 and a 500mm f/9.5 objective. The camera took 29 pictures over 40 minutes at distances ranging from 39,500 miles to 41,500 miles above the surface, covering 70% of the lunar far side. 17 or 12 of these frames (reports vary) were transmitted back to the Earth, and six were published by the Soviet Union..... "

far-side-moon-nasa.jpg

[The quality of the source pictures taken on high-end spy film must have been outstanding but the analog scanning and transmission process degraded the result considerably. Source: NASA.]
 
boatgeek said:
But if someone just bleats "fake news!" with no sources or support to back it up, it's hard to take them seriously.
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Amen... (I think...)

Fake news is just that FAKE. It is NOT news. Period. Stop using that term. Like alternative facts. NO SUCH THING. Fact is fact. There is no alternative facts nor fake news. The former is either a fact or not. Period. The latter is either news or lies, speculation, spin, or editorial. End of story. The FACT that 70+ million people are snookered and can not tell, nay, admit, there is a difference is sad.

Shooting down the balloon should have been done ASAP 'AFTER' gathering some intel. I am told by the news, news, not someone's personal echo chamber, that it was jammed from sending back intel. Cool.

As for all the boyz calling for a ban on Chinese goods, wow. You have ZERO clue how your lives and the lives of your family would change. None. Clueless. Disastrous.

JMO... and we all know...
 
georgegassaway said:
HooKay, everyone who agrees with that, stop buying ANYTHING from China, and make your families to stop it too.
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Amen. Just hunker down in your backwoods shack with your guns. George they are clueless. Totally utterly. They have no clue. All the medical supplies that would dry up. They think Biden is the inflation king!? (Which is a bunch of BS... but whatever). Just WAIT until you get to the doctor, dentist, or hospital and all the items MUST not be made in china. Yeah... ZERO insurance and you get a bill for 10s or 100s of 1000s of dollars. Just wait until the ridiculously priced cars of today are double or triple the price. And yes... the paper tubing of your rocket, proudly made in the USA is not $40, but $120.

Fools rush in...
My last post here
 
georgegassaway said:
HooKay, everyone who agrees with that, stop buying ANYTHING from China, and make your families to stop it too.

Including "U.S.Made" products... that use any parts from China. Like microchips.

Also, say bye-bye to getting anymore electronic altimeters and other onboard electronics, as AFAIK many use at least one key electronic component from China. Sometimes, even the circuit boards.

Also NOTHING from Estes except engines, ignitors, and Wadding (the only things they make in-house). And no doubt several other hobby rocket companies that likely get some stuff from China.

Bet nobody will REALLY stop.

Just forum big-talk blather, not realistic.
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As long as it took to shift our productivity overseas it will take twice that time or more to get it back. I think it is something we need to work on. But to yank the rug out from any country we already sold out to is not only unrealistic but possibly unethical. In any case ramping up American productivity could bring back a good chunk of those jobs. How to go about it is the ?

I would also like to know when did our govt make it easier for American companies to be, cheaper, tax free, etc..... to run it on foreign soil. Then American companies went for it! All political persuasions caught up in that.
 
Bravo52 said:
I was part of the DoD in the "Five sided puzzle palace" and I can tell you that not everything that comes out of there is truthful...sometimes to the point it would make your toes curl. Sure, most of it is puerile but the thing that most Americans fail to grasp is that once you make Flag rank and are at the highest levels of the military, you are not longer a warrior and mostly politician.
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Senior Defense Official and Senior Administration Officials are nothing but a way for journalists to cover up that their sources are politically motivated hacks, and usually only have hearsay to pass around.
 
boatgeek said:
Oh, absolutely agreed that flag rank officers are politicians. And absolutely press offices range between spin and outright lying. But if someone just bleats "fake news!" with no sources or support to back it up, it's hard to take them seriously. They might be right, but if you're going to say the Pentagon is lying, you ought to provide a counterargument source.
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Edit: The video won't play for all but it is of Mattis saying he knew nothing...
 
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Sorry everyone, but I couldn't hold back. This is for all the 80's heavy metal people. This song seemed appropriate and it brought back memories.

 
K'Tesh said:
It's taken 40 posts before someone posted this???

Come on guys... It's time for the tunes...



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I remember this song from my senior year in high school. It was very popular, and I remember liking it, but I guess I kind of forgot what it was really about.

Now after a few days and seeing how things have escalated over this balloon, I went back and listened to the song for the first time in years and realized how spot on it is for this situation. A bunch of balloons drift over a border, paranoid panic ensues, opportunists start escalating the call for war, and in the end, everything is destroyed.

Obviously we can’t have China sending spy balloons over our territory, and we need to put a stop to that. But it also feels like this thing is getting a bit blown out of proportion and being exploited for opportunistic political reasons, and there’s a lot of the kind of tough-guy posturing that usually gets us in trouble. Maybe we should dial it down a notch before we get 99 years of war over a balloon like in the song.
 
I may be mistaken but on the large balloons we use in the US are similar to the Chinese balloon
in size and the US balloons have a parachute attached attached to the payload to recover payload
when balloon is "cut down ". There was a balloon like the Chinese one released from Palestine Texas that
landed in Halifax NC around 1979-1980 which is about 6 miles from my home. While chatting with balloon ground crew
they told me the clear balloon envelope was usually given to the land owner where the balloon landed at . He said the
envelope made good wrapping materials to wrap food in before freezing.

@ jbsommerfeldt

Gallon of milk was like $5 in 1978 One thing I liked was no sales tax.
If item was $4.99 you paid $4.99. I was TMP driver for my unit transporting personnel to
and from Anchorage International Airport.

I had to get use to the 4 hour time difference when calling my parents in NC

Crazy thing I ever saw was a LT and a NCO walking around
the Headquarters Building that housed personnel on 2nd and 3rd floors and 4 units on each end of 1st floor.
Now and then I would see the NCO stop bend down and pick "something " up. Upon asking my buddy what was the deal
he calmly replied they walk around the building 2 times a month to pull up sprouting pot plants !! at that time 1 oz of pot was
legal for personal use only and off base only. The users would throw the pot seeds out of the window after cleaning the weed and
the seeds would sprout up !!

I saw a couple of the Buzzbe Frisbe in alaska !!

 
boatgeek said:
Given that Pompeo directly said in his memoir that they cut Bolton out of White House meetings because Bolton would leak or lie about items under discussion, I'm not sure that I'd trust either one of them. Even more so when there's a political issue under discussion that might make them look bad and they're not under oath.

[edit] Not to mention that Bolton was NSA from 4/2018-9/2019 and Pompeo was NSA from 1/2017-4/2018 and Sec of State from 4/2018-1/2021. It's 100% possible that the balloon incidents were before or after Bolton's tenure as NSA. Pompeo should have been told as NSA or SoS, but there was so much backbiting and infighting in the last administration (see also above) that it's possible he was kept out of the loop by Defense.
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Or ... the current administration is making this up. Occam's razor dude.

Just produce the memos and briefings (redacted) from that time and we will know. Or our they in the Maro Lago fireplace?
 
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Bravo52 said:


Edit: The video won't play for all but it is of Mattis saying he knew nothing...
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3-2-1....That is because the Chinese were scared to death of Mattis and flew the imaginary balloons after he resigned.
AND... NORAD who has the most sophisticated air warning system in the world got spoofed by an aircraft crossing into US airspace at 60,000ft moving at Mach 0.08.
AND.. the crack US intelligence service analysts just analyzed the data and found the incursions 3-4 years later the incidents.
 
jderimig said:
Or ... the current administration is making this up. Occam's razor dude.

Just produce the memos and briefings (redacted) from that time and we will know. Or our they in the Maro Lago fireplace?
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Sure. Put them all up under oath in a hearing. That’ll be a lot of fun to watch memories get vague under penalty of perjury.

jderimig said:
3-2-1....That is because the Chinese were scared to death of Mattis and flew the imaginary balloons after he resigned.
AND... NORAD who has the most sophisticated air warning system in the world got spoofed by an aircraft crossing into US airspace at 60,000ft moving at Mach 0.08.
AND.. the crack US intelligence service analysts just analyzed the data and found the incursions 3-4 years later the incidents.
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Mattis is one of the few people in this that I’m inclined to believe based on public statements. As you note, he wasn’t SecDef for all that long. Let’s get the others up under oath as well.

As long as we’re claiming to use Occam’s Razor, it’s also entirely plausible that the first three balloons were small enough, unpowered, and over “unimportant” areas of the country for a short enough time that they weren’t briefed all the way to the top. That would also be consistent with them not being noticed by the public.

[edit] I should have read the articles before posting. They did make it clear that the earlier balloons were undetected at the time, and discovered later by the intelligence services. I maintain that it's possible that NORAD wasn't looking for small objects moving slowly and so earlier versions of the balloon may not have tripped alarms if their radar returns were lower than the "squelch" value set to reduce false positives. However, that leaves open the question of how the IC knew enough about the balloons and thought them important enough to brief NORAD but somehow that briefing never made it to higher levels of DoD or the IC. [/edit]

As you say, let’s have the hearings to find out. I would only add that we should investigate both administrations with equal vigor. Given the House’s performance over the last few days, I’m not particularly optimistic about that.
 
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I’d like to know more about all the balloon overflights—this one and the previous ones, under whichever administrations. But this whole thing was politicized from the beginning and has only gotten worse.

”You’re soft on balloons!”

”No way! You’re the ones who are soft on balloons!”

”Bull! No one has ever been as tough on balloons as us!”

”You had plenty of balloons and never did anything about it!”

”Nuh-uh!”

”Yeah-huh!”
 
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?
 
boatgeek said:
How do y'all feel about not being able to buy any Estes products for the next 3-5 years? TVs? Thumb drives? How will your friends and neighbors feel about that? How will Target and WalMart cope with having half or more of their stores empty? Because that's what it means to cut China off (among lots of other stuff?
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On the other hand, I've seen several prognosticators/analysts say that war with China over Taiwan (or other things) is inevitable, and some of them say it will happen within the next five years. If and when such a thing happens, ALL trade with China will come to a screeching halt, not just a handful of import restrictions. It might be prudent to consider stockpiling Chinese product that you think you really need... like rockets.
 
The Chinese spy balloon was surveilling US citizens to determine how well the general population is prepared for war in terms of their personal rocket kit stockpiles.
 

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