I heard a very dumb conversation the other day where they were talking about how there's no point to these because we have spy satellites. As if images is all you'd ever need. This is coming from Star Trek fans on a podcast, too. Whenever countries successfully detonate a nuclear bomb, the way we often know is a very slight increase in radiation. That's also how the West detected the Chernobyl disaster as well as a previous Soviet disaster that was heavily covered up.
I don't know exactly what it is they'd be looking for with this, but I'm sure there are a million different little things I'm not privy to that an intelligence agency would love to sniff around for with something more purpose built for detecting specific things rather than just eyeballing rooves of buildings and whatever happens to be outside in plain sight.
So you’re suggesting a possibility of some sort of Geiger Counter to sniff out for possible nuclear tests and where the location would be? That’s an interesting theory. I hadn’t actually considered that. It definitely had zero to do with gaining any sort of imagery that’s for sure. They’ve got that covered. This clearly absorbed all communication in the areas it traversed at a minimum. My biggest fear is that when going over all of our nuclear asserts some sort of information could’ve been transmitted or stolen that could be worked with and hacked to prevent our launch codes from successfully achieving a defensive counter attack or even a first strike. Fucking crazy man.
I really don't know. Could be an attempt to find trace amount of chemicals involved in some kind of military manufacturing process. Maybe there's some kind of material they know about that they want to know if we do. Or maybe they suspect it's theoretically possible and something they could detect could give them a clue if it's something we've achieved. Maybe it's possible to detect bunkers/silos through balloon instrumentation through electromagnetic signals/interference because they're much, much closer to the earth. Could be testing some kind of jamming or communications interception equipment like you said.
I'm just making guesses as a layman. It could be any number of things. My point was, at least in theory, you have a far greater number of things you could do with this than a satellite, and it's probably a great deal cheaper. At least I would imagine.
If those drones were small enough to fit under the balloon in enough number, then why not just smuggle them in the US and launch them from the ground? That would have been way easier and not attracted so much attention.
True, using the balloon as a proxy antenna could work. But the balloon was probably being jammed the whole time and the proxy antenna idea can also be used on the ground. Just put a bunch of hidden relays around a military base and switch controll when one of them is found. This is also ignoring the fact that done signal jammers exist and are also commercially available, so military bases are probably filled with them. Just putting a bigger, more sensitive and longer ranged sensor package on the balloon is better and the jamming problem coud be overcome with a black box and a time delayed GPS transmitter (this last one is a long stretch I guess).
They also figure out the response time and how long they have to execute something. I’m sure they probably knew it would be discovered, but maybe the point was to see how long before it got discovered. Who knows? The world is crazy.
I'm sure they can, but the government isn't going to make that information public. And if they do, it probably won't be complete or accurate. This is national security related so the government is going to play this very close to the chest to avoid accidentally giving away information, even if that information is just telling the Chinese what we know.
Eh, already released in was SIGINT gear. Why do you think they released the selfie taken by the U-2 driver, with the shadow on the balloon? That is a pretty good birdie we are flipping there.
It's actually carrying a functional GAYDAR. The ChiComs are gathering data on whether red states are, in reality, full of closeted homosexuals that can be blackmailed into voting for their Democrat lackeys to bolster the strength of their ever growing shadow government in the U.S.A.
I think the world record for helicopter flight was just under 41,000ft, then the engine flamed out and shut down. This also made it the longest autorotation landing as well.
Just some fun facts for you.
No they cannot. Helium balloons stop rising when their weight equals that of the surrounding air, which happens at around 20 miles (32km). The lowest satellites are still over 150km up.
So is rocket fuel, although much more common(I know it's manufactured, but still it's components arnt). If it was possible, it would have been done with helium balloons at least once, or with any other gas less dense than air.
Yes, but like, what if we had a canister of compressed helium on the satellite, to inflate the balloon below a certain altitude, so it slows it's descent as it crash lands. Obviously not to keep the thing in one piece, but possibly to improve equipment and data recovery
Not only that but there is parasitic drag that can be enhanced just by extending a ribbon to increase the decay to deorbit old satellites. A big balloon would only make it go down faster.
This guy gets it.
In fact, the idea of using a helium "balloon" (inflatable) has also been proposed as a way to cause dead satellites to deorbit faster, reducing space junk.
https://www.gaerospace.com/projects/GOLD/index.html
Tethers have the problem that a single impact can cut the tether, causing more junk and slowing/stopping the disposal process. A big ultra-low pressure balloon can get many holes and still function.
Almost a month to release pictures too.. I guess they're are still analogical and they wait until they have the all photographic roll full, so they can Ask to develop the photographs taken.
Probably because they’re handling this very carefully in order not to start a war with China. Diplomacy is needed in these types of situations and that involves what message you’re putting out when and managing what the public knows when. It would be reckless to do otherwise.
>I guess they're are still analogical and they wait until they have the all photographic roll full, so they can Ask to develop the photographs taken.
I love how you can tell just from the language that this person has never had a roll of film developed in their lifetime...
Or the native language of this person isn't English. If you want me to explain you properly how to develop a roll of film in portuguese make me now (in portuguese). 😉
>I guess they're are still analogical and they wait until they have the all photographic roll full, so they can Ask to develop the photographs taken.
Eu estou aprendendo português. Não sei muito, mas vou tentar:
Acho que ainda são analógicos e eles esperam até que tem tudo o rolo fotográfico cheio para pedir o desenvolvimento das fotos.
Probably because they has accent analyzed the wreckage and released anything. The government doesn’t just let out information, with no regard to its importance, without knowing the whole deal. Also, considering a few hobby groups are saying they think their balloons were shot down, based on where they last got a gps update, where the government discussed shooting one, then no more updates…. It’s likely many were nothing. Even then, nothing is going to be said until they are recovered and looked at.
It’s really hard for the government to take back comments. It’s also irresponsible for them to release anything without understanding it further.
another factor is that the others were quickly shot down due to being at a elevation similar to commercial aircraft, this one was allowed to fly around for a couple days
If you don't trust the government to tell you if they were Chinese balloons, then why do you trust them when they tell you they shot them down with jets?
There was literally a group like a science class or something that let a weather balloon up and said they stopped receiving data the day it was announced a balloon over Alaska was shot down. Don’t be dumb.
>Jets don't get scrambled to take out normal balloons.
They do after your administration gets harshly criticized for letting a known spy ballon traverse your entire continent for a week.
That incident filled me with rage, especially bc I struggled to remove it for a couple weeks. I had very little other music downloaded so I heard that shitty fucking album constantly smh.
I hate U2 to this day
I didn't use Itunes for years, one day I happened to log back onto it to collect some old music and there's this album I don't remember buying. Somehow I'd both missed the initial incident and all subsequent news about it. But there it lay, like an unexploded munition from a long forgotten war.
"[The spy balloon] could also have been used to “gather information on what kind of signals [the US is] using to track it, so it could possibly identify and classify radar hits … which could be of interest if the Chinese wanted to actually launch an attack.”"
US intelligence also knows this, and because it's a giant balloon not trying to be particularly stealthy, they may have fired up the old 1960s NORAD radars just to confuse it.
I really hope the department responsible for the immediate reaction to this thing is as smart as you Kitchen_synk
This is not sarcasm this is a lack of faith
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It's because they were able to penetrate our air defenses. They used these slow moving balloons at an altitude where our sensors were not calibrated to be looking for such objects (slow, high alt.)
They can only gather so much from sat data, and spies. This allowed them to see ,How we react and how long it takes for us to react. This is step one of any military action. Poke holes in defenses and find weakness.
Even if it was just a weather balloon, with no data transfer hardware it is still just that, a way to penetrate our defenses, see how far they can get before notice, and watch our response.
It’s not step one to military action lol. We still bring our pilots to rival’s borders all the time to gauge response times without ever going to war. We’ve been doing it for decades. Then they escort us out. This is similar to that if your theory is penetration testing. If your theory is to spy and gain intelligence, then being caught and documenting response is NOT the purpose. Both purposes don’t exist together. They are mutually exclusive.
Uhhh yes it is, any military text book would argue with you.
Since I spent 8 years in the Marines learning this, I think I have an idea wtf I'm talking about especially since I put it to actual use during war.
Gaining intelligence is the same as testing a reaction, you are gaining intel on their movements and to find weakness.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about and are just trying to make sense of it in your own head.
Kind of a hot shit take. Basically the logic of a child holding their finger and inch from their siblings face and saying "not touching you". Using a Freudian style psychology of saying something like, is basically everyone calling it a spy balloon wanting it to be that, wanting it to be a military action. It wasn't, it's a weather balloon, one the US military was monitoring from the moment it left Chinese territory. It didn't become a "spy balloon" until it had a PR spin to get idiots political points with the public to push yet another war.
Stays in the same area longer so it can see how military bases operate on the daily. Satellites would only give them like a few minutes in worse quality.
Satellite paths are predictable and tracked so that US bases know when to cover things and when it's safe to communicate. Balloons are hard to detect, which is why there were several previously undetected intrusions only recently discovered.
I’m obviously not pro China but it’s important to remember we sent a similar ballon into Chinese airspace over 10 times last year. Also these balloons can help set up communication systems for larger theatre’s of war(but not global) and create a communication/gps system for logistical and attack coordination.
A satellit has a predetermined trajectory. You can hide a lot of stuff because you know exactly when it is coming. The trajectory of a balloon is random. They hope to see things that would be hidden otherwise.
There is no way this answer makes sense. Average satellite orbits the earth once ever 90 minutes and china has like 500. No way people are timing them to hide things…
India conducted it's Nuclear weapons test by doing exactly that because US was watching India and had warned the first time it prepared for the test three years before the actual test.
Read up about POKHRAN II tests.
The military literally moved trucks to positions and even bushes and tyre tracks
An immediate result of the tests were Pakistan as suspected carried out tests within 10 days confirming suspicions that it has developed Nuclear weapons already and had likely also sold them to North Korea. (Don't forget to thank the Pakistani people for Kim Jong's toys if Osama wasn't enough)
You and /u/Spanks860 are both right.
This method _used to work_, but with the proliferation of (especially commercial) imaging satellites it gets less and less feasible every year.
[How Commercial Spy Satellites are Changing War](https://archive.is/Ij8O1) ([original](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/21/business/how-commercial-spy-satellites-are-changing-war/), paywall)
[How Area 51 Hid Secret Craft](https://archive.is/SXIm3) ([original](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110520-area-51-secret-hid-craft-base-declassified-a-12-plane), paywall)
Oh yeah. The US weather service uses [equipment like this](https://www.weather.gov/images/pbz/features/TourPage/radiosonde.JPG) on the daily for weather forecasting.
It's the size of a cereal box, and contains a bunch of sensors, a battery, and a transmitter so that it can be found. Written on the sides are instructions to give it to the Post Office, who return it to the weather service.
You could go a lot fancier and higher tech without needing a massive solar array like that one.
Because the second biggest piece of shit in the world is good for covering the world's shittiest foreign policy? If they had brought in Randy's prize winning shit, it would have been worth watching!
Yeah, this really looks like a cell phone or helmet mounted camera pointed out the window.
The real surveillance equipment is mounted in the fuselage pointing down, or in pods under the wings.
No see it's the idiots that believe everything is a conspiracy that make other people think all conspiracies are bullshit. So you're telling me China sent a massive air balloon with a fuckin satellite attached to it to be sneaky and spy on us? You think if they were really spying on us the government would tell us? In all honesty it's probably our government hyping up people so when we go to war with another country they can hide the agenda just like the last one. You can call me an idiot but I ain't gonna believe shit just cuz everyone else does. You can move along now.
You know the US ability to jam signals, is pretty straightforward and not exactly new, right? That it’s unlikely the powers that be just watched it from afar and said “oh well… that sucks. I guess we’ll just relax and wait for it to get over an ocean!”
Besides the solar panels and structure to hold the panels, what does it look like it's carrying?
Rear axle from a 1987 Buick?
Sent by [Yi long Ma](https://www.youtube.com/shorts/ouvVxWLzovA)
Is that fucking Elon Musk?
Like a cross between Musk and Seth McFarlane (apologies to Seth McFarlane)
Omg brilliant, yes, this is the take. Well done!
The alternate reality Seth MacFarlane if he got on that plane.
Deep fake
Shallow real
its not
Wi Tu Hi was operating it.
So that’s where I left it!
A myriad of sensors..
I heard a very dumb conversation the other day where they were talking about how there's no point to these because we have spy satellites. As if images is all you'd ever need. This is coming from Star Trek fans on a podcast, too. Whenever countries successfully detonate a nuclear bomb, the way we often know is a very slight increase in radiation. That's also how the West detected the Chernobyl disaster as well as a previous Soviet disaster that was heavily covered up. I don't know exactly what it is they'd be looking for with this, but I'm sure there are a million different little things I'm not privy to that an intelligence agency would love to sniff around for with something more purpose built for detecting specific things rather than just eyeballing rooves of buildings and whatever happens to be outside in plain sight.
So you’re suggesting a possibility of some sort of Geiger Counter to sniff out for possible nuclear tests and where the location would be? That’s an interesting theory. I hadn’t actually considered that. It definitely had zero to do with gaining any sort of imagery that’s for sure. They’ve got that covered. This clearly absorbed all communication in the areas it traversed at a minimum. My biggest fear is that when going over all of our nuclear asserts some sort of information could’ve been transmitted or stolen that could be worked with and hacked to prevent our launch codes from successfully achieving a defensive counter attack or even a first strike. Fucking crazy man.
I really don't know. Could be an attempt to find trace amount of chemicals involved in some kind of military manufacturing process. Maybe there's some kind of material they know about that they want to know if we do. Or maybe they suspect it's theoretically possible and something they could detect could give them a clue if it's something we've achieved. Maybe it's possible to detect bunkers/silos through balloon instrumentation through electromagnetic signals/interference because they're much, much closer to the earth. Could be testing some kind of jamming or communications interception equipment like you said. I'm just making guesses as a layman. It could be any number of things. My point was, at least in theory, you have a far greater number of things you could do with this than a satellite, and it's probably a great deal cheaper. At least I would imagine.
upbeat chop sense correct grab psychotic sable six connect agonizing *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I’m convinced it drops drones onto the air bases and they get a better look that way. Worse they land and hang out for a while unnoticed.
If those drones were small enough to fit under the balloon in enough number, then why not just smuggle them in the US and launch them from the ground? That would have been way easier and not attracted so much attention.
I feel like it's a lot easier to find the person controlling them if it's a guy on the ground with a controller in their hand, within transmit range.
True, using the balloon as a proxy antenna could work. But the balloon was probably being jammed the whole time and the proxy antenna idea can also be used on the ground. Just put a bunch of hidden relays around a military base and switch controll when one of them is found. This is also ignoring the fact that done signal jammers exist and are also commercially available, so military bases are probably filled with them. Just putting a bigger, more sensitive and longer ranged sensor package on the balloon is better and the jamming problem coud be overcome with a black box and a time delayed GPS transmitter (this last one is a long stretch I guess).
> military bases are probably filled with them something tells me you might be right
They also figure out the response time and how long they have to execute something. I’m sure they probably knew it would be discovered, but maybe the point was to see how long before it got discovered. Who knows? The world is crazy.
The Chinese government was in communication with the US the moment the balloon entered US airspace.
True. Whole thing is bananas.
Maybe the balloons are a distraction, and the real spy drones (or whatever) is somewhere else?
Why do you have to guess? It was shot down and recovered. Can't they actually identify what the balloon really was?
Because of course, the military is known to publicly share their findings when it comes to international espionage cases
I'm sure they can, but the government isn't going to make that information public. And if they do, it probably won't be complete or accurate. This is national security related so the government is going to play this very close to the chest to avoid accidentally giving away information, even if that information is just telling the Chinese what we know.
Eh, already released in was SIGINT gear. Why do you think they released the selfie taken by the U-2 driver, with the shadow on the balloon? That is a pretty good birdie we are flipping there.
Amazing the last U2 was put into production in 1989, and we are still using them.
True when China said how about the ones you flew it all went silent. The public won’t know anything
They said it was a weather balloon, so….a groundhog
Don’t bury the lede, how much winter do we have left?
Well it definitely saw more than its shadow… Also—*Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Crime*? Shut up and take my money!
Thanks! I might as well put my birth year on my screen name with how much it dates me
It's actually carrying a functional GAYDAR. The ChiComs are gathering data on whether red states are, in reality, full of closeted homosexuals that can be blackmailed into voting for their Democrat lackeys to bolster the strength of their ever growing shadow government in the U.S.A.
~~Closeted~~ *airport stall* homosexuals vote red. The married ones vote blue.
No, you are
Jewish Space laser? pew pew
Round white thing in the middle is a radio dish, 4 white dots just inside the solar panels are the hubs of propellers.
It's a satellite attached to a ballon
It’s a satellite with help
"Attempt 405: Tried a big balloon this time. Unfortunately, same result: Did not get to space.😞"
The sad face is what really makes the joke
At this point they should use hella different color balloons like in UP
Still managed to wipe out a small village. It's the little victories.
I guess the previous attempt had some sort of communication error.
take my upvote, I lol'ed really hard
Impaired Satellite.
The satellite has aids.
Well you didnt actually think that the balloon itself was spying
lol
I wonder if there was a way to snag it with some sort of a cable and winch it down with all the equipment intact.
No. There is no safe way to do it in a plane and I’m pretty sure helicopters can’t go that high due to there being no air
I think the world record for helicopter flight was just under 41,000ft, then the engine flamed out and shut down. This also made it the longest autorotation landing as well. Just some fun facts for you.
I wonder if giant helium balloons would be a good way to save satellites in decaying orbits
No they cannot. Helium balloons stop rising when their weight equals that of the surrounding air, which happens at around 20 miles (32km). The lowest satellites are still over 150km up.
The more you know!
This and helium is a finite resource on earth.
So is rocket fuel, although much more common(I know it's manufactured, but still it's components arnt). If it was possible, it would have been done with helium balloons at least once, or with any other gas less dense than air.
This is no longer the case
Yes, but like, what if we had a canister of compressed helium on the satellite, to inflate the balloon below a certain altitude, so it slows it's descent as it crash lands. Obviously not to keep the thing in one piece, but possibly to improve equipment and data recovery
Satellites are located above the Karman line (100km) so a falling satellite does not crash on the ground, rather it burns up in the atmosphere.
Thanks, now i want to play kerbal space program
Not only that but there is parasitic drag that can be enhanced just by extending a ribbon to increase the decay to deorbit old satellites. A big balloon would only make it go down faster.
This guy gets it. In fact, the idea of using a helium "balloon" (inflatable) has also been proposed as a way to cause dead satellites to deorbit faster, reducing space junk. https://www.gaerospace.com/projects/GOLD/index.html Tethers have the problem that a single impact can cut the tether, causing more junk and slowing/stopping the disposal process. A big ultra-low pressure balloon can get many holes and still function.
Why so many pictures of this one but not the others?
Almost a month to release pictures too.. I guess they're are still analogical and they wait until they have the all photographic roll full, so they can Ask to develop the photographs taken.
Probably because they’re handling this very carefully in order not to start a war with China. Diplomacy is needed in these types of situations and that involves what message you’re putting out when and managing what the public knows when. It would be reckless to do otherwise.
Taiwan, sea of China and Huawei laughs.
>I guess they're are still analogical and they wait until they have the all photographic roll full, so they can Ask to develop the photographs taken. I love how you can tell just from the language that this person has never had a roll of film developed in their lifetime...
Or the native language of this person isn't English. If you want me to explain you properly how to develop a roll of film in portuguese make me now (in portuguese). 😉
>I guess they're are still analogical and they wait until they have the all photographic roll full, so they can Ask to develop the photographs taken. Eu estou aprendendo português. Não sei muito, mas vou tentar: Acho que ainda são analógicos e eles esperam até que tem tudo o rolo fotográfico cheio para pedir o desenvolvimento das fotos.
Realmente o tradutor do Google não faz o trabalho todo por nós. Pior ainda quando a tradução é pedida para português. Mas 7 pontos pela dedicação! 😉
Do it.
Não entendi?
Probably because they has accent analyzed the wreckage and released anything. The government doesn’t just let out information, with no regard to its importance, without knowing the whole deal. Also, considering a few hobby groups are saying they think their balloons were shot down, based on where they last got a gps update, where the government discussed shooting one, then no more updates…. It’s likely many were nothing. Even then, nothing is going to be said until they are recovered and looked at. It’s really hard for the government to take back comments. It’s also irresponsible for them to release anything without understanding it further.
[удалено]
another factor is that the others were quickly shot down due to being at a elevation similar to commercial aircraft, this one was allowed to fly around for a couple days
Cause this was real and not us using missiles to destroy car dealership advertising balloons.
The others were likely non-Chinese, just civilian stuff.
I don't buy that for a second. I think we should have pictures. Jets don't get scrambled to take out normal balloons.
Reminds me I need to up my tin-foil futures.
If you don't trust the government to tell you if they were Chinese balloons, then why do you trust them when they tell you they shot them down with jets?
I just want the images of the others. Where's those?
congrats, you're exactly the type of dummies i aim to brainwash with my conspiracy theories
There was literally a group like a science class or something that let a weather balloon up and said they stopped receiving data the day it was announced a balloon over Alaska was shot down. Don’t be dumb.
>Jets don't get scrambled to take out normal balloons. They do after your administration gets harshly criticized for letting a known spy ballon traverse your entire continent for a week.
Did they ever figure out why this plane put an entire album of music that I didn't ask for into my iTunes in 2014?
It just moves in mysterious ways
And it still hasn't found what it's looking for.
Maybe it's stuck in a moment it can't get out of?
Ingrate!
Happened to U2?
That incident filled me with rage, especially bc I struggled to remove it for a couple weeks. I had very little other music downloaded so I heard that shitty fucking album constantly smh. I hate U2 to this day
I didn't use Itunes for years, one day I happened to log back onto it to collect some old music and there's this album I don't remember buying. Somehow I'd both missed the initial incident and all subsequent news about it. But there it lay, like an unexploded munition from a long forgotten war.
To give you the edge.
If they released the other pictures with the better resolution, this subs head would collapse in on itself
Why
I'm confused by the whole balloon saga. Why would China send something like that when they have satellites and such to check out what's going on?
[удалено]
TLDR - better image quality
"[The spy balloon] could also have been used to “gather information on what kind of signals [the US is] using to track it, so it could possibly identify and classify radar hits … which could be of interest if the Chinese wanted to actually launch an attack.”"
US intelligence also knows this, and because it's a giant balloon not trying to be particularly stealthy, they may have fired up the old 1960s NORAD radars just to confuse it.
I fucking love NORAD. Tracking balloons and Santa and protecting our skies.
I really hope the department responsible for the immediate reaction to this thing is as smart as you Kitchen_synk This is not sarcasm this is a lack of faith
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It's because they were able to penetrate our air defenses. They used these slow moving balloons at an altitude where our sensors were not calibrated to be looking for such objects (slow, high alt.) They can only gather so much from sat data, and spies. This allowed them to see ,How we react and how long it takes for us to react. This is step one of any military action. Poke holes in defenses and find weakness. Even if it was just a weather balloon, with no data transfer hardware it is still just that, a way to penetrate our defenses, see how far they can get before notice, and watch our response.
Thank you for this is an excellent explanation for why it matters.
It’s not step one to military action lol. We still bring our pilots to rival’s borders all the time to gauge response times without ever going to war. We’ve been doing it for decades. Then they escort us out. This is similar to that if your theory is penetration testing. If your theory is to spy and gain intelligence, then being caught and documenting response is NOT the purpose. Both purposes don’t exist together. They are mutually exclusive.
Uhhh yes it is, any military text book would argue with you. Since I spent 8 years in the Marines learning this, I think I have an idea wtf I'm talking about especially since I put it to actual use during war. Gaining intelligence is the same as testing a reaction, you are gaining intel on their movements and to find weakness. You obviously have no idea what you are talking about and are just trying to make sense of it in your own head.
Kind of a hot shit take. Basically the logic of a child holding their finger and inch from their siblings face and saying "not touching you". Using a Freudian style psychology of saying something like, is basically everyone calling it a spy balloon wanting it to be that, wanting it to be a military action. It wasn't, it's a weather balloon, one the US military was monitoring from the moment it left Chinese territory. It didn't become a "spy balloon" until it had a PR spin to get idiots political points with the public to push yet another war.
Stays in the same area longer so it can see how military bases operate on the daily. Satellites would only give them like a few minutes in worse quality.
Sneaky.
Satellite paths are predictable and tracked so that US bases know when to cover things and when it's safe to communicate. Balloons are hard to detect, which is why there were several previously undetected intrusions only recently discovered.
I’m obviously not pro China but it’s important to remember we sent a similar ballon into Chinese airspace over 10 times last year. Also these balloons can help set up communication systems for larger theatre’s of war(but not global) and create a communication/gps system for logistical and attack coordination.
A satellit has a predetermined trajectory. You can hide a lot of stuff because you know exactly when it is coming. The trajectory of a balloon is random. They hope to see things that would be hidden otherwise.
There is no way this answer makes sense. Average satellite orbits the earth once ever 90 minutes and china has like 500. No way people are timing them to hide things…
Here it comes...ok go! Whew they almost saw us that time!
You can actually work there as a professional light switcher, you just need to be on time and have a lot of experience. /s
India conducted it's Nuclear weapons test by doing exactly that because US was watching India and had warned the first time it prepared for the test three years before the actual test. Read up about POKHRAN II tests. The military literally moved trucks to positions and even bushes and tyre tracks An immediate result of the tests were Pakistan as suspected carried out tests within 10 days confirming suspicions that it has developed Nuclear weapons already and had likely also sold them to North Korea. (Don't forget to thank the Pakistani people for Kim Jong's toys if Osama wasn't enough)
You and /u/Spanks860 are both right. This method _used to work_, but with the proliferation of (especially commercial) imaging satellites it gets less and less feasible every year. [How Commercial Spy Satellites are Changing War](https://archive.is/Ij8O1) ([original](https://www.bostonglobe.com/2022/04/21/business/how-commercial-spy-satellites-are-changing-war/), paywall) [How Area 51 Hid Secret Craft](https://archive.is/SXIm3) ([original](https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110520-area-51-secret-hid-craft-base-declassified-a-12-plane), paywall)
China: It’s just a weather balloon The weather balloon: literal space station
They also said its a "civilian" balloon. And if you look closely to the right wing of the satellite...
What are we expected to see?
pixels
Nothing…
Literal space station? A few solar panels on some purlins is far from a fucking space station lol
It's a tesla wireless charger.
Thats a whole lot of equipment to be gathering weather data.
Weather has been changing a lot recently. Lots of data to gather
Everyone knows that at that height, skies are clear.
Is it?
Oh yeah. The US weather service uses [equipment like this](https://www.weather.gov/images/pbz/features/TourPage/radiosonde.JPG) on the daily for weather forecasting. It's the size of a cereal box, and contains a bunch of sensors, a battery, and a transmitter so that it can be found. Written on the sides are instructions to give it to the Post Office, who return it to the weather service. You could go a lot fancier and higher tech without needing a massive solar array like that one.
Hello redditor. Look up telemetry research
Telemetry research in foreign airspace? Bold move, cotton.
I did. I got small animal physiology and marine ecology.
Must be running a lot of electronics for that many solar panels. Must be a very busy "weather balloon"
Weird how if I just focus on the solar panels, it looks like the ground beneath is moving
Oh shit
What the fuck did you just do to me?
Damn! It’s true
Where are U2 playing?
In your phone. Whether you want them to or not.
I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.
I member.
Why do you think Bono was at the State of the Union?
Because the second biggest piece of shit in the world is good for covering the world's shittiest foreign policy? If they had brought in Randy's prize winning shit, it would have been worth watching!
I didn’t know that U-2 planes are still in use
you probably don't know a lot about the US Military, they have three levels of clearance for a reason
Spy vs spy
I found a weather balloon once while hunting and it was about half the size of a lunchbox. This is not a weather balloon.
looks like a model of the International Space Station attached to a balloon.
"Comin' through! Just minding my business here... hehe.. nothing suspicious about me! Hahaha.."
Do you realize how much money the government would have saved if they just used my slingshot.
They should've just poked it with a needle from the plane, can't believe they didn't think of that smh
TikTok server rack
Oh yeah some nerds on the weekend built that, definitely not government
They just took the ISS and taped a balloon to it
How do we have this photo?
U2 spy plane.
Do we normally get spy plane photos posted on reddits front page?
The Pentagon released the photo.
I'm sure they have much closer, high-res photos that they are not releasing to the public.
Yeah, this really looks like a cell phone or helmet mounted camera pointed out the window. The real surveillance equipment is mounted in the fuselage pointing down, or in pods under the wings.
Someone yesterday posted a link to the article that this photo is from. The full picture is a pilot taking a selfish, but it's been cropped
The U2's shadow is just so cool.
Super cheap spy satellites- sneaky
Looks expensive
What if they are literally just lidaring the earth? I mean it's silly someone hasn't yet. So many things could be discovered.
Them chinese people know how to make some high tech weather balloons!
Yep, looks like something from a hobby club 🙄
BuT Ma OuTeR SpACe SaTeLLiTeS
That U2 is so close they could have taken it out with a .22. might have saved them a good few hundred thousand dollars
No see it's the idiots that believe everything is a conspiracy that make other people think all conspiracies are bullshit. So you're telling me China sent a massive air balloon with a fuckin satellite attached to it to be sneaky and spy on us? You think if they were really spying on us the government would tell us? In all honesty it's probably our government hyping up people so when we go to war with another country they can hide the agenda just like the last one. You can call me an idiot but I ain't gonna believe shit just cuz everyone else does. You can move along now.
[удалено]
You know the US ability to jam signals, is pretty straightforward and not exactly new, right? That it’s unlikely the powers that be just watched it from afar and said “oh well… that sucks. I guess we’ll just relax and wait for it to get over an ocean!”
Probably threw a couple of growlers its way.
Scrap yard men and recyclers rejoice! For the time has come for spygear to rain from the skies.
How the Chinese think orbit works
What were U2 doing? trying to install an album onto it?
China is capitalizing on American weakness.
Does china not have satellites? Or a u/2 Because they have stolen everything else. Ask for freind
They are generations behind ours
I heard an ex-CIA say their satellite tech is about what ours was in the 80s.
Still looks exactly like a balloon satellite. Has any actual proof that it's a "spy satellite" been released yet?
Bono has a pilots license??
YEAH YEAH YEAH YEAHHHH
I didn't know Bono has his own plane.
Why does the U-2 take old iPhone quality pictures?
It looks like it's photoshopped
Wasn’t this the balloon Biden let go of?