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Comment by neuralRiot | Hacker News Reader

I’m not in the defense industry neither know how the Chinese spy agency works but I guess there are more covert ways to spy than sending a 20ft ballon half way around the world.

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I expected this to be some dude’s project that got blown out of proportion.

Thats why I am waiting in more info to come out and not jumping on the "evil Chinese spies" band wagon. It could be "evil chinese spies," but I also know there are communities like Ham Radio that people around the world have balloons they deploy.

And yea, the DoD said it may be. But I think the DoD is still looking for WMDs in Iraq.

There is report of another one across Costa Rica.

The balloon diameter was more like 40-60 meters.

20ft payload. Making this a very large system as far as high altitude balloons are concerned. The balloon is about the size of a football field

So that is how many desktop computers worth of processing power? Or how many cars worth of sensor equipment? What did they need so much space/weight carrying capacity for?

But not many ways are as cheap and close to the ground if you don't care about being found out.

One theory is that the Chinese know that. This could be them sending a message: "If you defend Taiwan, we can get over your heads cheaply and easily". The only casualties on the U.S. mainland during WW2 were Japanese balloons dropping bombs on the west coast. I doubt that symbolism was lost on the military or the Biden administration.

That can't be the message. You saw how easy it was to down the balloon.

It was easy to down one balloon during peace-time. You're right.

Please see my comment further below for why that might not work in aggregate during a real military conflict.

Edit: I'll paste it here in case it gets buried:

I really do wonder if this is them testing that they can reliably and cheaply get high-altitude balloons to the U.S. mainland. In the event of a military conflict, I can imagine them swarming us with these. They must cost far, far less than the average American military aircraft. If our air power becomes partly tied up defending Taiwan, dropping bombs from craft like these might be an effective strategy to demoralize the U.S. population. I commented this above but I feel it's worth repeating here: the only casualties in the U.S. mainland during WW2 were Japanese balloons dropping bombs on the west coast[1].

I also wonder if this operation will end up backfiring. Suddenly, lots of people in the U.S. have Chinese aggression on their mind. Knowing Americans pretty well, I would expect this to actually increase public support for the defense of Taiwan. Inshallah.

1. https://amp.smh.com.au/world/north-america/when-japanese-bal...

I thought the whole thing was blown out of proportion and was almost certainly a weather balloon mistake, but I forgot about that WWII anecdote, and you are absolutely right. The odds of it actually being related to military just went up a lot in my calculations.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you just need a single plane with a machine gun on board to take down hundreds of these if you cared to take them down? And you can spot them far, far away and take them down far away from the coast, can't you?

I mean, they can't really do evasive maneuvers, they're not fast, they don't fight back, they're not armored, you wouldn't need super modern missiles.

It appears this particular balloon was traveling at 60000 feet altitude. The flight ceiling of an F-22 is 50000 (according to the internet, although the actual number is very likely classified). If that's correct, then shooting a balloon from 10000 feet below with a machine gun is not easy. Even if you put some holes in it, such a balloon is not going to simply pop like a party balloon. It very likely does not have a pressure differential between the inside and the outside, so the holes will simply allow the air to mix slowly (very slowly) with the lifting gas inside (hydrogen or helium). It will probably take days or weeks before the balloon goes down.

The effective range of the F-22's Vulcan Cannon is 2000 feet - That's where you expect about a quarter of the shots to hit... When you're talking about a fighter-jet sized target. The bullets will easily travel, still at kill velocity, well beyond that. I have no doubts that for a slow moving target such as a balloon, they can spray and pray, and pop it every time.

You might be right. On the other hand, today they used a missile. Such a missile costs about $200k, while a Vulcan round is under $20 (collectors can buy one round for $20, see [1], the military can probably buy in bulk for much less).

Maybe they just wanted to show off. But maybe it's just not that easy to take down a high flying balloon with unguided munitions.

[1] https://www.gunbroker.com/item/968543844

My understanding as a layman is that we cannot shoot objects at altitudes 60,000ft+ with machine guns. We need fighter jets equipped with specialized missiles, or ground-based SAMs, that are very expensive, and have some limitation on their range.

Meh, countermeasures for even lots of balloons are not difficult to imagine.

For lots of balloons way out of reach of fighter aircraft? What is there apart from expensive missiles that can operate at such altitudes?

Balloons carrying EMPs?

This came up my mind too. Have read that a high altitude EMP bomb would cause havoc on modern infrastructure.

Not sure about the details though. Hope someone knowledge can chime in.

“EMP” is mostly a Hollywood thing. Not that is entirely fabricated or anything, but it’s almost entirely popular science articles and action movies, very little real weapons systems, and the movies create a lot of misconceptions.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_warfare is the closest related thing.

What you would actually do is see if you could jam its comms, hit it with a laser (these exist as actual practical weapons these days), or engineer tiny high altitude anti aircraft missiles, either something that already exists or small mods to existing tech for the use case.

The US has done tons of research on high energy lasers to the point we had weapons that could target ICBMs. Now for anti-missile they weren't terribly practical, but for a large slow ballon its possible they could be. I've not found any research on lazing balloons, but I guess it exists out there somewhere.

How do quickly can those lasers be repositioned and fire? Couldn't China just launch a ton of these from many locations and let those disperse further, and make them extremely reflective in the relevant wavelengths? Also, not sure if a few small-ish holes would actually bring one of these down, they don't have a big pressure differential at altitude.

Then they're going to be shocked when they realize how satellites work

China has ICBMs with nuclear warheads. No one is confused about whether China has the ability to harm Americans on American soil.

No one is confused about the result of the use of nuclear weapons. Has Russia used them yet in their almost year-long war against Ukraine? Has the U.S.? Update your assumptions. All major powers are exploring how they might wage war short of nukes.

>All major powers are exploring how they might wage war short of nukes.

Certainly not with balloons.

The Chinese are a very innovative major power. Underestimate them at your own risk.

Yes but they are a major power because they have a large military and hundreds/thousands of strategic nuclear weapons. Not because they have some balloons.

That's what they want you to believe.

It’s odd to simultaneously say that nuclear weapons are irrelevant to the discussion and yet say that it would be an underestimate to expect that they probably wouldn’t rely on balloons.

Do you think a nuclear power could wage a conventional war against the U.S. on U.S. soil without it escalating very quickly to nuclear war? That would indeed be a significant update to my assumptions. Nothing about Russia and Ukraine has caused a similar update to my assumptions for the incredibly obvious reason that Ukraine is not a nuclear power.

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