Chinese spy balloon shot down over US | Hacker News Reader

Chinese spy balloon shot down over US

theguardian.com

12 pointsjimnotgym10 comments

I don’t understand why they needed to use a missile to shoot the balloon down. Seems like overkill.

This article has a reasonable answer:

"...a 100-meter weather balloon remained aloft for six days after being shot with 1,000 rounds by Canadian F-18 fighter jets in 1998."

https://www.newsweek.com/police-beg-locals-refrain-taking-po...

Whoa, cool! TIL. thanks for sharing.

It really emphasizes how bad the GOP commentary is as they and Trump Jr make comments about going outside with your guns and shooting it down yourself. Lots of people could get hurt, and that would totally have not worked anyway.

Nobody should fire a loaded weapon into the air at something 20+ km away. Be pro gun if you want, but don't support and recommend such irresponsible behaviours!

A faux naive question: What evidence precludes this being an atmospheric or weather research tool driven off course by the jetstream, more than a rather suboptimal spy tool?

All I've got is mainstream news, and I do tend to agree with it but the information feed here would be state input from national strategic feeds, and I'd like to know if the FAA or NOAA or some scientific agency has another view. Upper atmospheric jetstreams are hard. It has a low power budget.

Do ex Loon people know if there is a more benign story here? (For instance)

The Chinese can launch high quality optics and RF devices in LEO any time they like. Party balloon tricks aren't indicative of their remote sensing capabilities.

It should have been shot down when it first entered US airspace near Alaska. Having ignored it is a dereliction of duty and should lead to impeachment.

Fox News is leaking.

This is a very shortsighted opinion. We’re lucky you don’t make any important decisions. Seeing what they’re interested in is useful for us. Also, seeing it incoming for some time probably gave sensitive tech/teams time to close up shop for a bit.

Not shortsighted in the least. The president’s responsibility is to safeguard the country and its citizens. He failed to do so. What if next time it’s a long range bomber from China or Russia? Ignore them as well? And if it was an EMP instead of a trial run? China is not an ally nor a friendly competitor. The US has outsourced most strategic sourcing to China, eg drugs. Stupidity coupled with weakness is dangerous. Pay attention to history. Somewhere Santayana is saying “I told you so”.

You do realize military and intelligence leaders are the ones that made the recommendation not to shoot it down immediately, right? It's a bit of a political cheap shot to try and lay the blame on the sitting President. Unless he were to say, ignore the advice of those leaders, which the article makes clear he didn't.

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