He's claiming they're all balloons, and that recovering them has been an intelligence windfall for the US - and Schumer would be in a position to know that. Then again, Schumer has seemed to have an obvious anti-China bias in recent years.
These balloons are significantly cheaper to manufacture and operate than the stealth warplanes that are being used to shoot them down. Instead of manning AWACS and defending them, China could flood the airspace with thousands of these balloons and it would be too expensive to take them all down with our current technology.
By publicizing the F22 mission to shoot that balloon down, we kind of showed our hand and it's a really bad hand. Hence the obfuscating language now being used by officials on the matter.
Eg, retaliation in kind.
There's zero difference, as said balloons could have any manner of nefarious purpose. Chemical/bacterial/viral, or just plain spying, airspace is airspace, protecting it is a thing, and China has the bad hand now.
What they were/are doing is well thought out, and technically a good way to spy. But the political aspect shows (again) just how poorly China understands the West.
To burn so much political capital, over so little gain, is immensely stupid, a diplomat's nightmare, and completely incompetent.
I feel for China, I do. A huge chip exists on its shoulder, it spent centuries bowing to the West. The betrayal during WWII likely still stings.
So it wants to flex, to be the big man, to strut its feathers, but wings made of wax only take you so far...
The US can retaliate in other ways, sanctions, actually bombing China or perhaps the factory making these, going to war, etc.
The US can also easily develop a weapons platform to destroy these balloons.
The US can't bomb anything that has air defense.
Aerial warfare (which is the US doctrine) is hard to conduct when there is a proper air defense. I'll be happy to be proven wrong by a specific example.
Now it's:
> Has the US ever bombed a country with GOOD air defense, give a specific example
You should probably provide a timeline because I would just give examples from World War II or something and that would effectively "prove you wrong".
But my response was to your initial statement that the US can't bomb anything that has air defense, which is incorrect, as you know. Secondly you are probably thinking about bombing strictly in terms of aircraft bombing things, but you're neglecting that the US can launch missiles and take out air defense elements and so wondering whether the US can bomb a country with good air defense probably isn't the right question to ask because the US would destroy the air defense elements and then bomb the country.
But even so, yes the US can bomb a country with good air defense because the US has developed weapons platforms that can do so.
Oh, don't get snarky. "Functional" air defence, whatever. It's just worth to filter out anything with the kind of air defence that's just dude with a machine-gun shooting in the air or something that wasn't operational or whatever.
Providing an example is always good for a substantial discussion.
> You should probably provide a timeline because I would just give examples from World War II or something and that would effectively "prove you wrong".
I don't suppose it's worth discussing anything that cannot be relatively safely considered as "modern warfare".
> which is incorrect, as you know
I don't, that's why I am asking.
> the US can launch missiles and take out air defence elements
Air defence is kinda also supposed to protect from missiles.
> the US has developed weapons platforms that can do so
Are you implying hypersonic missiles? They are relatively new and poorly tested, not even in serial production AFAIK.
Besides, no one's going to run out of missiles, balloons, or money before this escalates in another fashion. This is a rather short stage, not an indefinite future.
Not convinced this is true for the large balloon. The helium alone will have cost 6 figures, which is comparable to the cost of the flight time of the F-22.
Also, it's not like the US has a shortage of F-22s and air to air missiles.
Did you mean “agenda” or “strategy” or “vision”? It is possible to see the CCP as an opponent that should be mitigated without distorting one’s thinking.
Many US politicians have a bias against China due to racial animus and/or populism. Many US politicians have a well-reasoned belief that China poses security and economic threats to the U.S. and should be contained and managed. Some US politicians are in both groups.