Some good advice to residents of South Carolina:
What a difference a couple of days can do in politics:
Shot down by a F22 with a single missile, just off the coast,
Debris being recovered, looks like it came down with the instrument package largely in one piece. Wonder if Huawei is written on any bits ?
Chinese fully pissed.
An efficient US intelligence gathering operation:
- Recognize that an unguided balloon won’t collect any data that Chinese satellites, commercial planes, and agents on the ground are not already gathering. (Yes, they have agents here, just like we have agents in China. Get over it.)
- Intercept all its transmissions. Decipher them.
- Ignore all the hysteria about shooting it down. It will be easier to study in one piece.
- study what else is going on in Chinese military and intelligence spheres at that same moment in time. A magician works by distracting his audience.
- Shoot it down over water. A little less damage from impact. Recover it. Take it apart.
A big, bright slow moving balloon is the stupidest way imaginable to covertly gain intelligence. It’s like a spy wearing a yellow tuxedo to the Superbowl, with a baseball cap that says “I’m a Chinese spy”. It’s bound to provoke outrage and distract people. So why did the Chinese go to all the trouble?
A stage magician works his tricks by distracting the audience. So while the balloon is driving people out of their minds on certain cable channels, what else are the Chinese up to elsewhere in the world at that moment ?
Whatever it was, if it did occur, would have been quite subtle. Nothing world changing, but new and different. So better for the US to quietly look for it at that moment, and not let the Chinese know we are looking for it.
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To provoke outrage and distract people is not a bad guess. What better way to help American society along on its downward spiral than to contribute to the ubiquitous nitpicking and fake outrage that is its new national sport. I doubt the Chinese are the only ones laughing at America’s continuing shit show.
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It is certainly possible to carry out FAS with commercial tankers. A single receiver on the delivery ship hooked up to an AKE or AO’s probe can get the job done. Not as quick as refueling the MSC ships in port but saving the travel time to and from port makes it worth while.
And if it shows up to be just a weather balloon, stamp the report “TOP Secret” and put it into a garage, or somewhere. Nobody will ever know.
I’ve heard that keeping an aging Corvette in the same garage makes stuff more secure
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First hostile shootdown by an F22
At a fully instrumented target with sat coms
You get ELINT:
Radar search mode
Radar aquisition mode
Bay opening noise
AIM 9X seeker cooler noise
engine ignite ping
Warhead ranging
Det signature (maybe)
If running on imaging IR you may get rmin or rmax (not likely)
Probably worth it probably being fed into Chinese RWRs as we speak
The information is probably already well known by our enemies as some of our politicians like to store documents with that kind of info in their wives’ underwear drawers or in think tank offices they share with tasteless Chinese art collectors. 
I’ve heard that the surest way to get something spread to the public is to mark it “Classified”.
Or just have them laying on the floor in their Club to impress their visitors?
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Further to my above:
Source: www.washingtonpost.com
From BBC News:
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/
It is solar panels, “not propellers”.
PS> Looks more like a ceiling fan, though.
I would expect an Admiral and former chair of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff to know the difference or at least know who to ask.
The entire thing is silly. Yep, the Chinese sent a balloon over just as they have apparently done for many years. They spy which is not a surprise. The Soviet Union spied on the USA for decades and the USA did the same to them. Both governments knew that these things were done. Best advice for a happier life? Turn off the TV. Quit watching MSNBC, Fox or any other outlets. I didn’t realize how true that was until I moved out of the USA. TV, talk radio and internet nut jobs prey on the uneducated and incurious and they make a LOT of money out of it.
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You can listen to the balloon’s side of the story here:
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An Ultra Long Duration Balloon (ULDB). It can stay up there for 100 days and circumnavigate the earth several times, if the wind is right:
PS> This one doesn’t make jokes, it just float around high up in the stratosphere,collecting whatever data it’s equipment packet is designed to obtain.
The door to another quagmire opens wider
https://www.reuters.com
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Good news for folks who don’t want to get shot at: China’s military is riddled with corruption, and there is now an indication that China’s military could be a paper dragon. Recent reports lead to doubt that an attack on Taiwan is physically improbable.
Bloomberg report on rocket fuel being replaced with water:
Very good breakdown of the situation:
