Can someone explain why this is not being shot down immediately?
1. There's a high risk of debris falling on people on the ground.
2. Any sensitive information collected would have been sent home already, so shooting it now isn't going to do much good.
So Pentagon leadership recommended not taking "kinetic action". What's interesting is that they have been tracking it for several days over the US mainland. You'd think the strongest military in the world could do something other than...just watch.
There’s an argument to be made that the strongest military in the world showing restraint and just watching is probably a good thing.
This was unacceptable to the West, so we covertly overthrew their democracy and installed an unpopular autocratic monarch in 1953. This Monarch would then rule for the next 26 years until in 1979 they would have their own "real" revolution. It was largely led by Islamic extremists, and they replaced our puppet monarchy with an Islamic theocracy. And this theocracy not only has a pretty negative view of the West, but for some reason always thinks we're trying to engage in covert actions to try to overthrow them! Go figure.
1953 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat
I’m not even suggesting this was good foreign policy, just that none of the above history proves the thesis that we set them back a few hundred years.
You are are aware of the difference between the 1820s and 1920s I hope.
Iran wasn't touched, you may mean Iraq.
That excuse seems really odd to me. Montana is the third-least densely populated state with 6.86 people per square mile of land.
https://www.malmstrom.af.mil/About-Us/Fact-Sheets/Display/Ar...
They could probably shoot it down without making much debris. And even if it made debris, at most it would hit a cow. The reality is it's not collecting anything of value.
These have taken place numerous times
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/341st_Missile_Wing_LGM-30_Minu...
It's like a fly sitting on the windshield of your car parked in the driveway or something. It's there, it might be annoying if you think about it, but it isn't actually doing any meaningful harm.
Maybe they are planning to drop an insignificant number of small munitions on random locations in the US or something.
In Western Montana? Rather doubtful. Just wait 5 minutes until it is over national forest land, which is the vast majority of the area, and then shoot it down.
Which is not at all what is occurring. Having flight tracks of multiple refueling tankers demonstrates far more resources have already been expended on this "not a concern to us" than was spent on deploying it...
if there was any risk, it would be shot down. it it wasn't, it was probably observing wilderness/pastures
i say we launch a balloon that parks itself below theirs blocking the view. no capabilities given up then
Some bean counters decided this was low threat. And, more likely, China told us it was coming, and probably to just count silos like we’ve been doing back and forth since the 70s
If it was spooky, it wouldn’t be bright white…
Pretty sure they've got satellites that can do that.
The point is to use them on a real danger. Accurate or not, the Pentagon clearly doesn’t see this ballon as a threat in any capacity. Why would they do anything other than keep an eye on it?
Maybe they are doing signals intelligence on it.
Maybe it's a (fake) Chinese school project, and the world wide media will be like tomorrow "US gov shoots down Chinese little girl science project".
"Cool balloon Mei, want to bring it to the White House?"
>Cool clock, Ahmed. Want to bring it to the White House? We should inspire more kids like you to like science. It's what makes America great.
https://twitter.com/POTUS44/status/644193755814342656
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2015/09/16/440890750...
B) China has probably cut a deal to “count nuke sites” which is informally allowed in request during times of high nuclear tension
C) They most likely told us before hand it was going over
D) this is almost positively a big ol nothing burger, and some back channel deal with China to get them not to support Russia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies
Military intelligence gathering is so common that countries basically agree to not start a shooting war for overflying each others country gathering military intelligence.
If every military intelligence balloon, satellite, aircraft, drone, etc, was considered an act of war and destroyed, the world as we know it would have ended a long, long, long time ago, and none of us would be here having this conversation.
https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/radiosondes
Tons more in amateur radio etc., see APRS
Also, the negative effects of a failed attempt to shoot down could be worse than the threat of the balloon. Both in terms of embarrassment and spent ordinance getting dropped.
There is also a risk of somehow triggering an unanticipated outcome due to e.g. unknown materials or chemicals on board.
That said, "non-governmental" and "non-U.S." coverage can be suprisingly illusory. Pay attention to the sources next time you see a Xinjiang story, whether in or out of the U.S., and report back if you find out that it ultimately sources someone other than Zenz (of course, make sure to do this recursively).
It's also worth pointing out that non-governmental organizations get their funding from somewhere, and, surprise, the places most critical of China tend to get their grants from sources that are ultimately government funds. The National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Asia are particularly infamous for distancing themselves from their government ties (Allen Weinstein, a founder of the former, famously said in a 1991 interview that "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.").