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They are probably going to keep making blunders like this, now that internal leadership (source of many internal blunders in recent years) has been consolidated / stabilized, and they are still aiming for more international power.

The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious blind spots. That could be pretty huge.

I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.

Right now Chinese leadership does not want to be seen "bending" in this way or that, by their internal audience. But not doing so is a huge risk factor for them in international diplomacy.

Whether the US or any other country really takes advantage of the opportunity and resulting partial leadership vacuum in the international space will be interesting to see.

It's the classic dilemma that most people who prefer expedient governance don't always understand. When a government is paralysed by too much bureaucracy and corruption, everyone craves for something lean and expedient. Anyone who wants to combat that will want to consolidate power. Once they have successfully consolidated - usually by eliminating anyone in the way irrespective of whether they're someone who speak truth to power or a bureaucrat trying to preserve their fiefdom - all that's left are the yes-men. Then starts the bungling and fumbling and doubling down and over-corrections.

This describes the current situation in Russia with Putin surrounded by yes men. But it is not true about China where officials are frequently fired loosing pretty much everything. I.e. if one always say yes in China, the consequences for not delivering are high so one is under the pressure to say no at least sometimes.

There are indications that even in Russia Putin got that and tried to introduce harsher punishments than assigning the failed official to less prestigious positions. But it seems they did too little too late.

> I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.

Yeah, that’s OUR racket!

We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.

One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor.

Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.

> We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.

We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package.

It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.

Now that US has learned that the big ballon was spy one, it would not be an embarrassment but a reasonable assumption that smaller ones could be spy ones as well. So they should be stopped.

The balloon stopped drifting and lingered around military sites beneath it. That seems to rule out solar observation or atmospheric data collection.

Science balloons have to go through a rigorous, and constant, check with DOD to ensure no mis communicating happens. I have first hand experience with this. We had to constantly ping our DOD channels to make sure they knew where we were and how long we would be staying there or risk being shot down.

It doesn't matter what their 'objectives' are really.

Yeah they are not worried about our 'detection limits' and definitely not 'wasting our resources'.

They might possibly be hoping to pick up some F22 signatures or something like that but even then very unlikely. They have ships that can do that.

And given the 'free publicity' the China Hawks are going to get (not quite 'Sputnik Moment' but a bit like that) I suggest it can't bode well for them, unless are playing real 3D chess and some internal guy is trying to get America to 'wake up' so as to prevent a war!

It's definitely a wierd one.

Might not be a probe of military capability, but rather a probe of diplomatic stance. US govt is forced to make a statement about the balloon -- which normally they wouldn't care about -- to the public: US govt can choose to either lie and save face for China, saying it was a weather balloon, thus demonstrating earnestness in building relations, or tell the truth and say it was a spy balloon, thus demonstrating unwillingness to paper over such a diplomatic faux pas.

> learn about our military readiness

I suspect they won’t learn much other than how the US responds to balloons. It’s not like the US is revealing anything novel or secret. They’ve used already unclassified and publicly available aircraft and ordinance.

> If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.

As evidence to this claim, you'll see that many articles are actively discussing the fact that these balloons are relatively common. The big difference here, American citizens could see this object with just their eyes (uncommon for a balloon). I do buy the argument that China overplayed their hand.

>If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.

But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.

> If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours."

People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!

I'm a China hawk, but I hope it doesn't come to that.

Would like to point out something relevant: China and India kill each others soldiers fairly frequently. I find it rather remarkable their issues haven't escalated.

They kill each others soldiers, yes, but they are always small engagements because it is very difficult to transport a large formation of Chinese soldiers to Indian territory (specifically, any territory India cares about) or vice versa because the mountains are such formidable barriers.

The second object has not been called a balloon by US Air Command. Most interesting are some reports of pilots saying the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes. [1]

Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious.

On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant presence of AWACS and other multiple airplane sorties, the Aliens everybody was talking about here days ago, seem to have vanished...

[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-obj...

Pilots always claim sensor interference- it covers any mistakes they may have made.

Evidence for this?

Look, it was just a weather balloon, folks. Nothing to see here. Sounds familiar.

F-22 pilots are not scrubs that got the job by luck. To be one, means being among the best. If it is being reported accurately, that the F-22 pilot says there was some kind of interference coming from the object, then there likely really is something to it.

Definitely not scrubs...

"How do you become an F-22 pilot?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/e76db/how_do_you_...

"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.

Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."

This article and any other that mentions these two things has absolutely no source for the statement. There is a 0.0% chance F22 pilots are talking to the press, so I really believe this is a complete fabrication.

Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices

That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains.

And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.

> That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains.

Not true: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...

Thank you. I missed this somehow.

Not that it's necessarily indictatory, but this balloon had a payload the size of a small jet. By my understanding (I could be wrong) that's very uncommon for a weather balloon.

https://archive.is/oORem

Maybe in the near future you won't be able to attach a full tube of toothpaste to a weather balloon and send it high up into the air, just a 3 oz size.

Weather balloons are tiny, yes, but they aren't tracked by radar anymore. Generally, it's a set of meteorological instruments and a GPS to track the location. It's a bit easier to get that to work, as you no longer need to make sure your radar works, but rather, just that the GPS is working before you let go. That said, payload is substantially smaller than these things (<1 kg for current tech).

Wrong.

https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html...

I assume this would be slightly more clear as "aren't tracked by radar anymore [by their controllers]" -- who does what tracking and how, of course, wildly varies. (Not trying to be overly pedantic, just saying out loud my internal thought reply.)

I don't fully agree with the political assessment because the WH gave the Pentagon permission to shoot it down when they deemed appropriate. They didn't order the pentagon to do it immediately. I'm not sure (someone please chime in if you know) if the WH 'ordered' the Pentagon to shoot it down in the sense that it HAD to come out of the air at some point, or if the message was just "shoot it down if you think that's the best thing to do".

With respect to judging nuance, I think you're giving the American public too much credit.

US officials explicitly said recovering the payload was a high priority. In part, that is why they chose that particular location to shoot it down. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-recovering-chin...

>...because 1) the public demands it;

An appropriate quote to the situation

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

- Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927

>But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down

1. Where can one find evidence of this mass demand?

2. How does the US government gauge this mass demand without formal voting/polling?

Were people phoning their senators, "SHOOT IT DOWN!"? I'm sure crazies phone in all kinds of things from time to time - what's the threshold for acting on demands/mass demand?

The change.org poll really blew up.

There are absolutely hard rules about national airspace, what the hell do you think the ICAO exists for?

https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Ai...

Conspicuously absent from that document are any vertical measurements. At exactly what altitude national airspace stops is not clearly established.

> There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hard rule about when life begins but killing a 5 year old isn't a 22nd trimester abortion, it's murder. 18-60'000 feet is class A, controlled airspace in the US and Canada.

When the US sent U2s over the USSR, the rationale wasn't that 70,000 feet was "space", it was that it was that 70,000 feet was too high for soviet radars detect and and soviet planes to intercept.

> What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

What does this mean? I don’t see a reference to tea in the comment you are replying to.

It's a common expression https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_that_got_to_do_with...

It’s not so common any more. I bet less than 5% of gen Z know it.

I’m a millennial living in US (although non native English speaker) and had no idea.

i've never heard of it.

There are many things it seems GenZ is unaware of but it is very much a common, well-known expression for more serious people.

Does more serious equal older? I’m already too serious!

I know quite a few teenagers who are far more serious than my middle-aged self.

It's an uncommon expression then. The commenter might be British. Anyway, anyone reading this thread knows it now.

I recently met someone who uses the expression "country mile" all the time. Hadn't heard it before but it's cool. "That's more popular by a country mile" Country miles are obviously better than city miles. So now I'll probably end up using it.

A country mile is often hot and dusty and walked uphill both ways by your grandpa. Time stands still and the cicadas buzz. It’s bigger than a city mile even in how much imagination it takes to conjure.

It’s a euphemism for a nonsequitor, OP is asking what balloon size has to do with it being okay to shoot it down since there’s nothing about size in protected airspace laws.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/price_of_tea_in_China

Maybe would have been clearer to use a nonseqiotor that doesn't involve China- for a second there I thought that there was something linking these balloons to tea trade or sanctions or something

My mother used to say that all the time!

I don’t know where the parent got their wrong information but US airspace is pretty clear to anyone that knows anything about aviation. It’s not sone vague thing no one can define. That’s pretty silly.

"But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down"

You mean saw with their eyes or on the news? If it was with their eyes then it wouldn't lead to public demand since as you say "weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time." and there's no way to attribute it to another country. If it's on the news then physical size is not relevant but detectability and newsworthiness are. People would have cared.

> just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration

Trying to stir up an impeachment case over the response to the first balloon is just projection as usual from the GOP.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republica...

And might I add, their reaction after it was shot down was anything but reassuring (that it was just a weather balloon)

This is a really long winded way of displaying your contempt for your fellow citizens.

Too clever by half

Ranking members of the previous administration have publicly denied that there were any previous balloons and no evidence has been presented that there were previous similar incidents.

No evidence has been presented to us. It sounds like the info came from the intelligence community, and they likely wouldn’t tell how they know what they know.

>erred by sending such a large

I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything, that's strategically exploitable especially if PRC can make current WH admin look weak by flying a balloon at height that can't be shot down. Medium/long term, PRC building/exposing CONUS vunerability is net benefitial for PRC posture - it's their version of, in DoD parlance, integrated deterence. IMO US analysis missing strategic calculus on PRC side.

Serious question: was there ever any doubt that US military could shoot something down out of the sky no matter how high it flies? If they are doing this to determine capabilities, it's like staking at a grocery store to see if it sells milk.

Removing doubt has value. If US has to shift to another platform to hit 80k feet ballon reveals specific capabilities. Like if US has to start using advanced ground based interceptors, it will inform PRC on constraints relevant in IndoPac scenario. If US has to break out asat tier weapons, ASM135 cost 5B for ~15 missiles then PRC can start developing capabilities to accordingly to shift strategic math. Imagine if balloon threat forces US to reorient billions on homeland balloon defense, that's potentially billions not going elsewhere.

E:over post limit but Streak Eagle was high performance preproduction airframe specifially designed to hit 100k for a few minutes. Hard to say if current blocks can do the same or reliable prosecute mission at 100k, finding out is value itself.

> knowing the US would use it to undersell capabilities

Simultaneously capabilities can be prodded, i.e. PRC start testing counter measures on balloons, and if successful reveal gaps / cause more drama - US domestic politics may constrain how much US can undersell. Ultimately getting US to change ROE and consistenly enagage with live weapons is opportunity for both sides.

US has flown F-15 (and F-104 for that matter) to over 100K feet MSL. China knows this already.

Of course, if the US expects that the Chinese are using this to test our capabilities, then they could use that to undersell their capabilities.

And then the Chinese, knowing the US would use it to undersell capabilities…

Yeah. I'm kind of flabbergasted by 99.9% of the comments on this topic, which assume the US is just chasing these things blindly without taking countermeasures.

The F-22 and other "stealth" jets can carry radar reflectors to intentionally make themselves EXTREMELY visible on radar.

https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/82798/how-does-...

Why would they carry such a thing? For one, it helps reduce the risk of accidents during training and other situations where they are flying in friendly skies. Two, helps prevent nosy enemies from learning about the true radar cross section of these planes.

It's hard to find concrete information on the USAF's practices here, for the obvious reasons.

The following is speculation, but: one imagines that the F-22/F-35/etc carry these as standard practice when not flying combat missions/patrols. One also imagines that they can be jettisoned midflight (like drop fuel tanks) in case e.g. a patrol turns into a spicy situation. That's a guess, I don't know if that's true.

Tangential, but you may also want to fill the skies with noise when flying a stealth mission.

The rationale being that you may be able to hear a cat's claws on floorboards in the middle of the dead night, but you'd never hear it in the middle of a rave party. So pairing F-22s with eg F-15s becomes a valid strategy.

> Tangential, but you may also want to fill the skies with noise when flying a stealth mission.

Obviously simplifying, but that's the essence of what ECM is.

They could be observing specific things about the planes sent to intercept them, such as their heat signatures and radar cross sections.

But also, don't assume that the US was naive here. The USAF is pretty good at electronic warfare. It's very possible they were jamming the object's sensors in various ways.

Higher would be more expensive to shoot down, but given that we have missiles designed to shoot down satellites - at least in LEO - I don’t think it’ll be possible to use altitude as a means of evading response.

US switching platforms itself has information value. If it takes expensive ASAT tier platforms to take out balloons then saturation with higher ballons might be viable. Like if US has to start trading 5M USD SM6s to hit 110ft ballons, then 100K USD balloons might be economic way to trade sap US advanced missile inventory in future war.

These balloons could be an economical counter to the American Low Earth Orbit Military Constellation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency

You could just pop them with a laser instead of bothering to scramble jets and missiles, I’d think.

You could but confirming US has that capability is significant. The purpose is to gather intelligence after all.

E: Lunar ranging = ground stations. Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. If anything, balloons will try to bait responses from SHiELD/air based laser ABL interception (YAL1) that can be extrapolated to IndoPac theatre.

Considering the lunar ranging experiment of fifty years ago, it seems like it shouldn’t be some big surprise?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experime...

Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future.

It is also not feasible to keep using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar balloons.

I kind of doubt that the planes are cheaper than ground based lasers. Even so, a mobile ground station could avoid giving away the US position and allow them to cover more area. Not sure how feasible that is.

Even if eventually technically feasible, imo it will take multi decades to acquire finish program and acqure platforms in sufficient numbers. Missiles feasible short term because there's airframes and stockpiles. It's a function of what's available. I think PRC can mass weaponize balloons to drope guided munitions much sooner than US can build up economic counter measures. Silly as meme is, balloon gap might eventually be real.

I don't think they can send a balloon the US can't shoot down, but the problem with using ground or sea based interceptors, or longer range jet-launched missiles launched from below is identification and proper targeting. The US might not want to take the risk of hitting the wrong thing/a misidentified object.

Bug reason why PRC aviation / airspace is stressed is because PLA has priority intercepting US recon. If balloons cause comparable stress on commercial US aviation then problems with ID becomes part of the strategy. Exposing CONUS vunerability and fallout of domestic politics might be the point.

I actually wonder why not burn holes in them by laser… maybe the US doesn’t want to show their capabilities, but that was the first thing that came to mind