Other news sources have a lot more detail about this.
1. There's a high risk of debris falling on people on the ground.
2. Any sensitive information collected would have been sent home already, so shooting it now isn't going to do much good.
So Pentagon leadership recommended not taking "kinetic action". What's interesting is that they have been tracking it for several days over the US mainland. You'd think the strongest military in the world could do something other than...just watch.
The US moved Iran — the country simultaneously providing cruise missiles to Russia and modern anti-tank missiles to forces in Yemen — back a few hundred years? The 1700s must have been wild.
Iran's history is quite an interesting one if you're not familiar with it. In the 1950s Iran was a relatively secular democracy. They had a mixed relationship with the West, but it was workable. When they discovered that the West was not fairly paying oil royalties as agreed upon, they moved to nationalize their oil.
This was unacceptable to the West, so we covertly overthrew their democracy and installed an unpopular autocratic monarch in 1953. This Monarch would then rule for the next 26 years until in 1979 they would have their own "real" revolution. It was largely led by Islamic extremists, and they replaced our puppet monarchy with an Islamic theocracy. And this theocracy not only has a pretty negative view of the West, but for some reason always thinks we're trying to engage in covert actions to try to overthrow them! Go figure.
Iran's F-14s come from the Shah era, though the Reagan administration did secretly sell Iran spare parts during the 1980s, as part of a scheme to fund fascist militias in Central America without having to ask Congress for the money.
"Just watching" what they're calling a "surveillance" balloon continue to collect (somehow) information sounds unwise. That they watch it crossing the Atlantic onto U.S. territory seems especially asinine. It's as if we're more beholden to Disney shareholders than national security at this point, under the "Biden-Harris Administration".
You can go drive past them, even stop to use the porta-potty. (ok, maybe not recommended) I've antelope hunted over there a lot. (East of Harlowtown) and it is as empty as it gets in the contiguous US.
They could probably shoot it down without making much debris. And even if it made debris, at most it would hit a cow. The reality is it's not collecting anything of value.
Are the silos even a secret anymore? With ubiquitous satellite coverage, I assume that anything even possibly a launch site is extensively monitored. To say nothing of traditional mechanisms of gathering intelligence.
It's like a fly sitting on the windshield of your car parked in the driveway or something. It's there, it might be annoying if you think about it, but it isn't actually doing any meaningful harm.
I haven't yet seen a compelling reason to think it is either Chinese or an espionage craft anyway,other than news reporting "the Pentagon sure thinks so"
"Letting it sit", the "it" being what they're calling a "surveillance" balloon, seems absurd. If we have an ongoing MITM attack, we need to stop the attack, not simply observe it like idiots.
Apart from the question why it wasn't shot down before entering airspace, sensitive information it collects is altitude wind patterns over missile sites and inability of administration to make a decision.
They mention in the article that the balloon only provides a marginal increase in surveillance capability when compared to LEO satellites. Considering the US pioneered a lot of satellite surveillance technology I imagine they have built everything accordingly since the 1960s and there's not much the Chinese can see from space or a balloon or I'm guessing even from a low flying Cessna.
> There's a high risk of debris falling on people on the ground.
In Western Montana? Rather doubtful. Just wait 5 minutes until it is over national forest land, which is the vast majority of the area, and then shoot it down.
There's more strength in demonstrating "Hey, do you want this silly balloon back?" after retrieving it without incident at negligible effort/cost.
Which is not at all what is occurring. Having flight tracks of multiple refueling tankers demonstrates far more resources have already been expended on this "not a concern to us" than was spent on deploying it...
I understand why the State Department hyperventilates over "Chinese offensive capabilities" but no normal person ever needs to. China is not a threat to everyday Americans.
We have a “consequences taxonomy” we only show our hand depending on level of threat
Some bean counters decided this was low threat. And, more likely, China told us it was coming, and probably to just count silos like we’ve been doing back and forth since the 70s
> what's the point of capability if you're never going to use it.
The point is to use them on a real danger. Accurate or not, the Pentagon clearly doesn’t see this ballon as a threat in any capacity. Why would they do anything other than keep an eye on it?
I don't understand it here. If it's detrimental to national security shouldn't it be dealt with immediate action? I think it's a propaganda with a lot of self conflicted information.
It’s quite likely that was an extension of the joke, the repurposing of a comercial off the shelf item that already does the job the young inventor set out to do.
Military intelligence gathering is so common that countries basically agree to not start a shooting war for overflying each others country gathering military intelligence.
If every military intelligence balloon, satellite, aircraft, drone, etc, was considered an act of war and destroyed, the world as we know it would have ended a long, long, long time ago, and none of us would be here having this conversation.
Official explanation is BS (danger to people in sparse rural Montana) so Im guessing they dont want to create a precedent for any of their own "projects" flying around the globe.
I wonder how easy it would actually be to shoot down. Are rockets actually designed to track something like this? And do they have planes that can fly that high and shoot something so slow.
Also, the negative effects of a failed attempt to shoot down could be worse than the threat of the balloon. Both in terms of embarrassment and spent ordinance getting dropped.
Also military expansion in the region (e.g. the Philippines base) and direct aid to Taiwan. The problem for hawks is what everyone sober is already aware of: there aren’t many ways to contain a nuclear power with a large advanced economy next to its borders which don’t quickly end up in a pretty dark scenario.
Not that China needs to be contained anyway. The only worldwide threat to national security is the country with 800 military bases worldwide and a hundreds-of-years-long history of invading someone every few years.
You’re overstating the case somewhat but there’s definitely merit to that point. I think it’s a trap though to assume there can only be one aggressor in the situation: China isn’t a global military power but it has been quite aggressive around its borders and the current actions against the Uighurs, Tibetans, etc. are on a scale reminiscent of 19th century American campaigns against the native inhabitants. If you live around the South China Sea you’re quite understandably going to be worried to an extent that someone in Africa is not.
Most of those "actions" are reported to us by our government, whose ability to report objective fact has not been demonstrated. To take Xinjiang, in particular: do a deep dive into the reporting and see where it comes from. You'll discover that it all boils down to a report by one guy, a fellow of the Victims of Communism org named Adrian Zenz. His report has been responded to in various places, and whether you take the responses at face value or not, they bring up good points worth investigation that call Zenz into very serious doubt.
That’s a serious citation needed on all points, starting with the claim that only the U.S. government is reporting that and we somehow collectively imagined all of the non-governmental and non-U.S. coverage. I note in particular that the “various places” phrasing makes it hard to know what you’re talking about or how you determined those sources are credible.
It's worth reading the response from a person in China. That's not to say you should believe it _more_, but that you should hear what the objections are and whether they make sense (and whether that critique calls into question anything else in the original report, which, by the way, you should also read http://english.scio.gov.cn/xinjiangfocus/2020-09/14/content_...).
That said, "non-governmental" and "non-U.S." coverage can be suprisingly illusory. Pay attention to the sources next time you see a Xinjiang story, whether in or out of the U.S., and report back if you find out that it ultimately sources someone other than Zenz (of course, make sure to do this recursively).
It's also worth pointing out that non-governmental organizations get their funding from somewhere, and, surprise, the places most critical of China tend to get their grants from sources that are ultimately government funds. The National Endowment for Democracy and Radio Free Asia are particularly infamous for distancing themselves from their government ties (Allen Weinstein, a founder of the former, famously said in a 1991 interview that "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.").
Not the way America is, no. China gives loans with minimal terms to build infrastructure, and has a record of forgiving the debts when they become unpayable. The US (via the IMF) lends money for infrastructure under terms that require concessions in government policy like "repealing wage laws" and "spending less on healthcare", and rarely discharges debt, instead lending out more money at worse interest with even more austerity concessions. If a government pops up thay doesn't like the terms, we coup them. China does nothing anything like that.
