Balloons China Style

padtigers

Heisman
Jun 6, 2010
37,092
67,982
113
Love living here. The only down side is more and more people are finding out about it and moving here. Fighting traffic on four seasons is a *****
I think they love it. My uncle and his brother have slowly sold off their farming business. They once had about 12K acres. So him living on 30 seems small. But he loves the landscape and being that close to the mountains.
 

fender44

Sophomore
Dec 8, 2009
94
107
33
It baffles me that the government is just letting it happen. Shoot that thing down
Hmmm, just maybe the government wants to see where it’s going and wants to see what data it has collected. Wonder if the government is processing any signals that the floater is generating. You’re right shoot’er down.
 
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kell9941

All-American
Jan 20, 2004
2,430
6,242
83
Hmmm, just maybe the government wants to see where it’s going and wants to see what data it has collected. Wonder if the government is processing any signals that the floater is generating. You’re right shoot’er down.
I’m guessing it may be boobie trapped somehow. Sorry, no pics.
 

cu22.

Sophomore
Oct 4, 2010
243
156
38
I grew up in East Flat Rock near the post office and my mom still lives there, I live out off Hwy 64 going towards etowah right before Broyles Rd
Drive by the post office taking my daughter to hillandale every weekday for school
 
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jimbob1019

Heisman
Aug 4, 2009
11,596
22,355
103
Yes guys. You all probably found out about this at the same time our government did. And our government is also probably just letting it stay up there to ensure China gets as much Intel as possible. That is 100% what is happening here.
Icy…this is, at the very least, bad optics…there’s just no way to spin this & despite your allegiance to the Democratic Party, I think you know this…
 

gcsoccer16

Heisman
Jul 26, 2012
13,279
30,820
83
Yes guys. You all probably found out about this at the same time our government did. And our government is also probably just letting it stay up there to ensure China gets as much Intel as possible. That is 100% what is happening here.
Lol you will defend anything from this administration. Our admin is actually playing 4D underwater chess by letting them do a nation wide surveillance operation, right?
 

iceheart08

Heisman
Sep 1, 2005
14,236
23,900
113
Lol you will defend anything from this administration. Our admin is actually playing 4D underwater chess by letting them do a nation wide surveillance operation, right?

I'm not defending the administration, I'm calling most of the posters itt stupid for having absolutely no idea how this works and jumping to conclusions that are also stupid.

There are multiple conservatives/non liberals itt agreeing with me.

So, as I've said to others itt, stop being stupid.
 

Broheim

All-American
Aug 15, 2022
1,878
7,131
108
Lol. Really what intel are they going to gather from a balloon that they couldn't gather from a satellite or as owners of quite a bit of real estate in this country via spies, etc? This whole thing seems like another smoke screen to me.
 

spskillz

Heisman
Dec 18, 2001
15,872
23,375
113
It's not a balloon. It's a UAV. It's just using balloon technology to stay airborne. It's no different than flying a a Chinese version of the Predator over our country.
LMAO at “balloon technology!”
 

grazhoppa

Heisman
Apr 30, 2008
5,715
14,085
93
Lol. Really what intel are they going to gather from a balloon that they couldn't gather from a satellite or as owners of quite a bit of real estate in this country via spies, etc? This whole thing seems like another smoke screen to me.
Radio and microwave data.
 

PawsFan

Heisman
Dec 17, 2019
14,793
42,193
113
2 days to late.
Taking a deep breath, I can see that this COA was accepted by the administration as the least risk COA. Over the Atlantic there's zero chance it fall's on Zek's barn, no media circus around the crash site, you mitigate the risk of secondary effect's (harmful chemicals if any, forest fires caused by the crash, "booby traps" etc).

Still, you let a foreign intelligence aircraft fly all over your country embarrassing you. Shooting this down over Alaska has the same level of risk. There isn't crap in Alaska for it to damage.

If we didn't see this over Alaska, then there's some Generals that need to be retired immediately. However, as I work Air Defense for a living, I doubt we didn't see this coming from the time it launched in China.

For those that suggested we are "jamming it." What are you jamming it with? Nothing ground based I assure you. Not with an aircraft either. What are you jamming? The guidance feed? Unlikely. A nickle says that this was on a preplanned GPS route. They don't need active control of it the device. They can download new waypoints into its Nav computer pretty easily to change its course. You jamming the package data? Okay, that assumes they are live feeding the information back to China. Do we know the freq they are doing that on? Maybe, maybe not. You likely aren't figuring that freq out on the fly. If we do, do you want to reveal to Xi that we have a capability to interfere with their feeds? That just provided them better intel than they'd get from any picture. Probably best to save that card for when they invade Taiwan.

This device wasn't meant to collect. It was meant to embarrass. Mission accomplished.

Now we need to send a Carrier Strike Group to circle the Spratly Islands for the next six months.

The administration should also openly sell new weapon systems to Taiwan to piss Xi off.
 
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