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  1. #1
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Why the discovery of a Chinese balloon in US skies is such a big deal

    Tensions between the U.S. and China are on the rise again after the discovery of what the Biden administration is describing as a sophisticated Chinese espionage tool flying over the United States.


    The discovery of a massive Chinese surveillance balloon over Montana, which hosts some nuclear silos, sparked a diplomatic crisis on Friday, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken quickly postponing a high-stakes trip to Beijing hours before he was set to leave.

    Senior U.S. officials across the Departments of State and Defense lodged complaints with their Chinese counterparts, underscoring the anger across the Biden administration.


    Republicans in Congress slammed both China and the administration over the fact that the balloon had made it into U.S. skies, calling it a serious security breach.


    And from China, there was a sense of chagrin, with the nation issuing a statement accepting responsibility for a private balloon flying into U.S. airspace. Beijing said it regretted this had happened.


    The discovery is a severe incident, said Jacob Stokes, a senior fellow with the Center for a New American Security, and one that is testing how the U.S. and Chinese can cool tensions.


    “I think this incident tells us what we already knew about the state of the U.S.-China relationship. The two powers are locked in an intense geopolitical rivalry, and that’s both the reason we need effective diplomatic engagement, and simultaneously, the major obstacle to those channels working effectively to avoid competition from spiraling out of control,” he said.


    Some experts expressed caution at overstating the threat from the Chinese balloon.

    “I don’t know exactly what the balloon is collecting but [if it] were important then it would probably have been shot down long ago,” Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project and associate senior fellow to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, told The Hill.


    “That said, it’s the latest chapter in a global trend of an increasing number of unmanned aerial and underwater vehicles used by countries for intelligence collection.”


    Press secretary and Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said Friday that the Pentagon expects the balloon will be over the U.S. for a few days. It is reviewing options over whether to destroy it, given concerns over falling debris.

    It’s not the first time the U.S. has observed surveillance flights, U.S. officials said, but the timing of Blinken’s trip to Beijing and the balloon’s movements prompted a firmer response.


    “It is appearing to hang out for a longer period of time, this time around, [and is] more persistent than in previous instances,” a senior defense official told reporters in a briefing Thursday night. That would be one distinguishing factor.”


    A U.S. official told The Washington Post that Chinese spy balloons had been observed in Hawaii last year and other times in the Pacific.

    Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher with the RAND Corporation, said surveillance balloons — the use of which stretches back to the Civil War — present a relatively cheap and difficult-to-detect method of intelligence collection.


    “They can be hard to detect because there’s not a lot of metal on them, so radars will not easily find them … you can position them in a place and just keep them there. Newer technologies allow little motors to be attached so you can make adjustments to the position of the balloon and then they can just stay in a place for quite a while,” he said.


    They hold an advantage over satellites which when discovered, are predictable given their orbital path, he said.





    “So these are reasons why China has taken an interest in balloons.”


    Still, the balloon’s discovery over sensitive American military locations marks a serious provocation and comes at a time when U.S. and Chinese military tensions are extremely high, said Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former deputy assistant to the National Security Council.


    “It’s possible China is trying to probe and see how this administration will react to something like this. It’s possible they are trying to test whether the Biden administration is distracted by the war in Ukraine.”

    The U.S. views China as its main competitor on nearly every front — diplomatic, military, economic and ideological — and Blinken’s trip to Beijing was expected to manage these areas of fraught competition from spiraling into conflict.


    Among the most immediate concerns is avoiding a U.S. and Chinese military confrontation over Taiwan, where Washington fears Beijing is preparing an invasion of the self-ruled island within the next few years.


    China has sided with Russia amid its military assault on Ukraine, has expanded its nuclear weapons stockpile and is generally seen as holding ambitions to overtake the U.S. militarily, technologically and economically.

    Jim Townsend, who served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for European and NATO policy during the Obama administration, described the Chinese surveillance balloon as operating in a “gray area” of conflict — activities security analysts describe as being provocative and disruptive, but below the threshold of kinetic military activity, challenging how the target can mount a proportional response.


    “It’s the Chinese screwing with us,” he said. “They’re pushing us to see how we will respond.”


    Republicans quickly seized on the Chinese balloon’s intrusion to hammer the Biden administration, accusing the Pentagon and President Biden of being soft on China.


    Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in a Friday appearance on “The Mike Gallagher Show” that it was “disappointing” the Pentagon “chose not to bring it down when it was over a sparsely populated area where they could have retrieved it.”


    “If these things are flying over our airspace, and there’s an opportunity to bring them down, we’re going to do it,” Rubio said. “We’re not going to do it in a way that’s going to fall on a major city and kill anyone … [but] we have to make that pretty clear.”


    Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) sent a letter to the Pentagon Thursday night demanding answers about the balloon after it was spotted in Montana, where a major air force base, Malmstrom Air Force Base, houses nuclear missiles.

    “The administration failed to protect our border and now has failed to protect our skies,” Daines tweeted.


    Heath, of the RAND Institute, said it will be important to follow how the Department of Defense talks about Chinese surveillance and intelligence in the coming days, whether they will choose to disclose more information about Chinese tactics and motivations or provide an opening to resume diplomatic talks.


    “Are we going to see other follow-on disclosures of other things the Chinese are doing that signal that the U.S. government is actually moving in a more hardline direction?” he asked. “Versus if this appears to be a one off, and the U.S. government has signaled that it wants to resume talks and ease tensions, that would reveal a disposition that’s much more inclined towards reducing tensions.”





    Chinese spy balloon over Kansas City: Why it's a big deal

  2. #2
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Blinken postpones China trip following balloon discovery

    Secretary of State Antony Blinken has postponed a planned high-stakes weekend diplomatic trip to China as the Biden administration weighs a broader response to the discovery of a high-altitude Chinese balloon flying over sensitive sites in the western United States, a U.S. official said Friday.


    The abrupt decision came despite China’s claim that the balloon was a weather research satellite that had blown off course. The U.S. has described it as a surveillance satellite.


    The decision came just hours before Blinken had been due to depart Washington for Beijing and marked a new blow to already strained U.S.-Chinese relations. The official said Blinken and President Joe Biden determined it was best not to proceed with the trip at this time.

    Blinken’s long-anticipated meetings with senior Chinese officials had been seen in both countries as a way to find some areas of common ground amid major disagreements over Taiwan, human rights, China’s claims in the South China Sea, North Korea, Russia’s war in Ukraine, trade policy and climate change.


    Although the trip, which was agreed to in November by President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit in Indonesia, had not been formally announced, officials in both Beijing and Washington had been talking in recent days about Blinken’s imminent arrival.


    The meetings were to begin on Sunday and go through Monday.


    The discovery of the balloon was announced on Thursday by Pentagon officials who said one of the places it was spotted was over the state of Montana, which is home to one of America’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base.


    A senior defense official said the U.S. prepared fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the balloon if ordered. The Pentagon ultimately recommended against it, noting that even as the balloon was over a sparsely populated area of Montana, its size would create a debris field large enough that it could have put people at risk.


    The official said the spy balloon was trying to fly over the Montana missile fields, but the U.S. has assessed that it has “limited” value in terms of providing intelligence it couldn’t obtain by other technologies, such as spy satellites.


    Nevertheless, the discovery alarmed many in Washington, leading to several protests lodged with Chinese officials and attracted strong criticism of the administration particularly from Republican members of Congress who have advocating taking a tougher stance with China.


    China, which angrily denounces surveillance attempts by the U.S. and others over areas it considers to be its territory and once forced down an American spy plane, offered a generally muted reaction to the Pentagon announcement.


    In a relatively conciliatory statement, the Chinese foreign ministry said late Friday that the balloon was a civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research. The ministry said the airship has limited “self-steering” capabilities and “deviated far from its planned course” because of winds.


    “The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into U.S. airspace due to force majeure,” the statement said, citing a legal term used to refer to events beyond one’s control.

    Blinken postpones China trip following balloon discovery | Taiwan News | 2023-02-03 2300

  3. #3
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    It was the jet stream. Dunno about you, but this kerfuffle really floats my balloon

  4. #4
    Days Work Done! Norton's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by misskit View Post
    Republicans in Congress slammed both China and the administration over the fact that the balloon had made it into U.S. skies, calling it a serious security breach.
    Biden and Blinken are reacting by cancelling his trip to this only and not what makes sense.
    The trip should not have been cancelled!

  5. #5
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  6. #6
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    This has gotta be the worst thing since TikTok.

  7. #7
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    Call Branson.

  8. #8
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Bit like the chinkies, full of hot air.

  9. #9
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    You would think there would be a way to communicate between countries that your county has a run-away balloon before it becomes an international incident.

  10. #10
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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    Second Chinese surveillance balloon spotted over South America, Pentagon says

    The Pentagon has confirmed to ABC News that a second Chinese surveillance balloon has been spotted transiting over South America.


    There were early reports Friday that the balloon was flying over Colombia and Venezuela but there was no information until now.


    "We are seeing reports of a balloon transiting Latin America. We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon," said Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder.


    Second Chinese surveillance balloon spotted over South America, Pentagon says - ABC7 New York

  11. #11
    Thailand Expat misskit's Avatar
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  12. #12
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    What a load of fucking twaddle.

    They can't shoot it down over US airspace because

    (a) There are thousands of commercial aircraft in the skies
    and
    (b) If it's chinky spying kit, they may have rigged it to explode below a certain altitude.

    So they'll just wait until it's out over an ocean and shoot it down then if they feel they need to.

    Even an F15 can get that high.
    The next post may be brought to you by my little bitch Spamdreth

  13. #13
    Thailand Expat OhOh's Avatar
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    History of spy balloons


    "Spy balloons are a surprisingly old technology considering that they continue to be actively used in the 21st century.

    The use of balloons for military purposes dates back to the third century A.D., when Han dynasty Chancellor Zhuge Liang (Kongming) was surrounded by Wei dynasty Gen. Sima Yi at Pinlo, situated in the Sichuan province of modern-day China. Zhuge Liang used paper-made "lanterns," or hot air balloons, to signal the rescue forces."

    Spy balloons: Old tech sowing new Chinese-US tensions

    Chinese balloon soars across US; Blinken scraps Beijing trip


    By Associated Press
    2023/02/04 08:30

    "As for Blinken's trip, Jean-Pierre said a diplomatic visit to China was not appropriate at such a time. She said that "the presence of this balloon in our airspace ... is a clear violation of our sovereignty as well as international law and it is unacceptable this occurred."

    Chinese balloon soars across US; Blinken scraps Beijing trip | Taiwan News | 2023-02-04 08:30:00

    Which international law?

    One source of an actual law regarding dropping explosives from balloons:

    "Such was the fear of balloons that they were banned in the 1899 Hague Convention’s article IV,

    ‘Declaration of Projectiles from Balloons’ which stated that ‘the contracting powers agree to prohibit, for a term of five years, the launching of projectiles and explosives from balloons or by other new methods of a similar nature.’

    The Convention made a timely bid to future-proof bombing from the air."

    China and the strange history of balloon warfare | The Spectator

    Weather balloon

    "Weather balloons are launched around the world for observations used to diagnose current conditions as well as by human forecasters and computer models for weather forecasting. Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily"

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon

    More horseshit from the 16%.
    A tray full of GOLD is not worth a moment in time.

  14. #14
    Making people dance. :-)
    Edmond's Avatar
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    As international incidents go, this one is hilarious.


    A fokin' balloon. And the 'mightiest country in the world' freak the fok out and don't know how to deal with it 555

  15. #15
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    I think this is serious. By doing nothing, the Americans look weak. It just encourages the Chinese to think the Americans are weak.

  16. #16
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    What a load of fucking twaddle.

    They can't shoot it down over US airspace because

    (a) There are thousands of commercial aircraft in the skies
    and
    (b) If it's chinky spying kit, they may have rigged it to explode below a certain altitude.

    So they'll just wait until it's out over an ocean and shoot it down then if they feel they need to.

    Even an F15 can get that high.
    Well the first line of your post is correct for what follows.

    If you are clueless just say so, it’s nothing new.

  17. #17
    Thailand Expat harrybarracuda's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edmond View Post
    As international incidents go, this one is hilarious.


    A fokin' balloon. And the 'mightiest country in the world' freak the fok out and don't know how to deal with it 555
    See above.

    There's no point in shooting it down over land, it's the size of three buses.

  18. #18
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    Quote Originally Posted by harrybarracuda View Post
    Even an F15 can get that high.
    Exactly, it is just another useful idiot posting nonsense. Lots of planes fly in the stratosphere. The Concord cruised at 60k feet. An F-15 can fly at 65K feet and has set records flying to 98K feet.

    1975. In setting the last of the eight records, it reached an altitude of 98,425 feet just 3 minutes, 27.8 seconds from brake release at takeoff and "coasted" to nearly 103,000 feet before descending. It was flown in its natural metal finish to reduce weight for the record-setting flights.
    McDonnell Douglas F-15 Streak Eagle > National Museum of the United States Air Force™ > Display.

    As usual, OhDoh is just posting crap. An F-15 could shoot it down with an off the shelf air-to-air missile.

    Flying this balloon into the US is all about optics. It is not seeing anything more than satellites can already see.

  19. #19
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    I'm surprised they've not shot it down just to check out the technology it's using. Huawei ROCKS!

  20. #20
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    How do they know it's Chinese? Does it have a red dragon on the side?

  21. #21
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    How do they know it's Chinese?
    Ask dumb questions, win dumb prizes. The Chinese already admitted that it was theirs dippy.

  22. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by Edmond View Post
    As international incidents go, this one is hilarious.
    It is not just "a balloon" it is a surveillance equipment platform that has invaded a sovereign countries airspace.

  23. #23
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    Or is it a weather balloon? Anyway, it's hilarious.

  24. #24
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    Quote Originally Posted by sabang View Post
    Or is it a weather balloon? Anyway, it's hilarious.
    Oh yea? well it's a fun and games until someone loses an eye.

  25. #25
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    I reckon it drifted of from.vang vieng and is full of Korean tourists
    Why the discovery of a Chinese balloon in US skies is such a big deal-20230103_170327-jpg

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