Chinese balloon gathered Intel from military sites despite efforts to block it | Hacker News Reader

Chinese balloon gathered Intel from military sites despite efforts to block it

nbcnews.com

32 pointsironyman15 comments

I remember some of HN users saying the chinese balloon was nothing to worry about because their satellites could gather more sensitive information anyways.

I guess this proves them wrong?

Low altitude platforms like this excel when it comes to forms of ELINT and SIGINT. Interestingly, SIGINT these days refers to more pedestrian forms of radio communications and in certain cases radars. ELINT in many cases cannot be collected via satellite since ionized regions of the atmosphere occlude signals before they could even reach sensors.

Information on this incident is obviously heavily manipulated, but what I found interesting was once the US divulged a U2 was orbiting the object for some time (primarily because it was one of our only known platforms that could loiter at such a high altitude) TheDrive reported that as we were attempting to collect ELINT from the balloon the transmitters on the balloon were too powerful to jam [0].

I'm not a fan of politics here on HN, but I still maintain this as one of the biggest blows geopolitically to our national security in decades.

0 - https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/u-2-spy-planes-snooped...

>collect ELINT from the balloon the transmitters on the balloon were too powerful to jam

No need to to disrupt the transmitters on the balloon that are up-linking data to the satellites.

Simply overload the balloons' C&C receiver front-end, given the closer proximity of the shadowing aircraft.

I've talked to a fried who works on these kinds of systems (ex-defense industry). He claims that the reports of the US having trouble jamming are pretty accurate.

Of course, when I asked him to elaborate he said "yeah, can't really tell you the specifics haha"

yeah, it is very easy, and I'm trying to be very non-specific.

The govt fabricated bullshit about WMDs in Iraq, I don't see why they wouldn't lie about a baloon.

Terrorism was used to pass the patriot act, anti-Chinese sentiment is being used for The Restrict Act and god knows what else is in the pipeline.

I guess every crisis has its early deniers. Why would China risk this move if it does not gain anything from it.

Lots of Five Cent Army here on HN.

Capitalizing Intel in this title probably isn't the correct thing to do for an abbreviated headline. In my head I had an image of the balloon stealing Intel CPUs from military sites.

>The balloon had a self-destruct mechanism that could have been activated remotely by China,
but the officials said it’s not clear if that didn’t happen because the mechanism malfunctioned,

or because China decided not to trigger it.

OR if US blocked the C&C downlink to Balloon?

Marine Salvage : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_salvage

Note that aircraft are not considered "maritime property" (the exceptions being seaplanes or aircraft transported by ship as cargo), so they aren't covered under marine salvage laws.

https://www.perthilj.com/blog/2019/2/19/aircraft-salvage-in-...

Does that cover?; An Airship (aka) Dirigible Balloon : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship

An airship is a type of aircraft, so yes.

The definition of "maritime property" is inclusive, not exclusive. Balloons or aircraft would have to be specifically included on the list, but they're not.

PRC wouldn't trigger a explosion where debris could land over US soil or even 12nm territorial waters where balloon was shot down. Realistically, only PRC on recieving end would know the effectiveness of US EW efforts. If USG is admitting PRC managed to gather some info then it was probably not as comprehensive as most thinks.

A self destruct doesn't need to blow up the entire ballon and airframe. It could just fry the key electronics in place and turn them into slag. You'd also imagine that there'd be some sort of dead mans switch so if remote access was jammed or if somehow the US was able to capture it intact, that whatever destruct mechanism would trigger.

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