Posted by:
caffiend
(
)
Date: February 04, 2023 03:53PM
I wonder if anything would have been done except that it was plainly visible from the ground, and thus reported. It should have been shot down, with the debris collected for analysis, as soon as it entered US airspace over the Pacific.
One report stated that it "re-entered US airspace over Idaho," which probably explains the Canadian sighting.
And no, I don't think balloons will commence by "dropping general nastiness." But they can be one of several, even many, offensive instruments. The PLA now knows how to exploit the North American jet stream.
Some analysis from Fox, if that isn't verboten:
"Rebekah Koffler, President of Doctrine & Strategy Consulting and a former DIA intelligence officer, argued that any information or insights that the U.S. can glean from the balloon do not outweigh the damage caused by allowing a Chinese device to breach U.S. airspace. I suppose there's value in not shooting it down, but I think the risk of the Chinese thinking that they could just breach our airspace without consequences, in my view, far outweighs whatever insight we can glean from that particular balloon that we don't know already from other sources," Koffler, who specializes in foreign aerospace threats, doctrines and operations, told Fox News Digital.
Koffler explained that the balloon effectively provides a couple of different advantages to China that more conventional and expected spy methods might not, chiefly the ability to hover and collect data in addition to seeing what range of capabilities China can bring against the United States as it starts "preparing the battlefield."
"Satellites move, they don’t hover over a target," Koffler said. "We don’t know what kind of sensors are in this particular balloon, but there are various types of sensors" for what she called "measurement intelligence. It appears as though this particular spy balloon could be doing – and again, we don’t have that confirmed – but it could be collecting our signals intelligence . . . and it could be collecting our communications coming out of [military] targets and those facilities," she added, clarifying that it could be looking at communications volume to understand operational procedures of the U.S. military.
"With the Chinese increasing tensions and their force posture with regards to Taiwan, what they are concerned about is our response, so tracking any kind of spike in communications could indicate to them that we’re getting ready to do something."
The U.S. sits in a delicate position with its stockpiles of missiles and munitions weakened following a year-long effort to supply Ukraine as it pushes back Russia’s invasion. Still, that effort may have left the U.S. strained – the perfect opportunity for China to test the capabilities of the single most significant deterrent to its plans to retake Taiwan...
The fact that we did not pre-empt that balloon from entering U.S. airspace is significant to them....
Partially, the Chinese may be looking to see what other capabilities they can bring to bear in a Taiwan situation, since they know the U.S. is a "tech-reliant" nation, meaning they must look at what other methods they can "bring to the table," according to Koffler. Such methods might include what many consider "low tech," like the surveillance balloon, despite the potentially sophisticated detection technology that it carries. These additional capabilities could help "cover the gaps" in other surveillance capabilities.
"It is a gradual kind of building a composite picture of what the battle environment would be if things went south," Koffler concluded."
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Wish I could share your trust in our military's decision process, Summer. Remember the Battle of Kabul, August 2021?
https://i.redd.it/x90593rgpri71.jpg