More on why possibly the balloon:

The flight itself, he said, could be used to test America’s ability to detect incoming threats and to find holes in the country’s air defense warning system. It may also have allowed the Chinese to sense electromagnetic emissions that higher-altitude satellites cannot detect, such as low-power radio frequencies that could help them understand how different U.S. weapons systems communicate.

And why supposedly it wouldn't necessarily be shot down immidiately:

As for intelligence value, the U.S. officials said the balloon’s voyage across the U.S. gave experts several days to analyze it, gather technical data, and learn a lot about what it was doing, how it was doing it and why China may be using things like this. They declined to provide details, but said they expect to learn more as they gather and scrutinize the debris.

Basically it was a civilian aircraft or a weather balloon that lost course due to winds and the US overacted and China reserves the right to respond.

Lmao "civilian aircraft"

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Yeah, weird.

My “non-expert” understanding is that it isn’t necessarily easy to detect these type of aircrafts, those that are slow moving and probably “non-emitting” in this case. This is the reason why Ukrainians were able to hit Sevastopol a couple of times and Russian airbase before Russia “adjusted” it’s air defences; at the same time, Ukrainian fighter jets were shot down, sometimes hundreds of kilometres away from the start. And why we don’t hear about the “bayraktars” (is that how you spell it?) anymore. The same reason Patriots and other US-made air defense units failed miserably some years ago in Saudi Arabia when their oil fields were attacked (was it oilfields? or a refinery and oil storage facilities? I don’t remember, but surely everyone remembers the event?). Likely the same reason that drone was able to fly over a few European countries without being detected before the actual crash.

Edit: Seems crazy, if you think about it, right? The most advanced radars cannot see something, yet a guy can point a finger from the ground and say “Hey, it’s right there!” I am not saying this was the case here, by the way.

Maybe they let it fly over Canadian and US airspace, and shot it down after it collected all it's spy data. Now, they can retrieve the hardware, and see how much it actually obtained. Find out about all it's capabilities for spying.
Because I cannot find a reason they let it loiter around in all that North American airspace. I mean it was allowed to go from Alaska, across Western Canada, into Montana. Across the Whole of The Continental USA, And then they finally took it down just off the Atlantic coast of the Carolinas. Very strange, indeed?

Political theatre, they're all in on it together. To think otherwise would be very naive.

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I don't have a subscription, but I was able to read the first paragraph.

I'm open minded, found it interesting that the balloon followed the jet stream as projected on Global's weather report , to Alaska, down the west coast of Canada and a curved track across the US, says meteorological balloon to me. :confused: Paranoia is the word of the day unfortunately.

Grizz

Yup and when cleared out over populated areas used as target practice....

^Absolutely.^

Whatever guidance the missile uses can't track the blimp section? I have no idea.

I was wondering that too. Why a missile? Why not just guns?

And just like that, we will hear about this damned balloon for the next week or more, while all the other issues are placed on the back burner.

We have seen this rodeo before...:)

Lyrics:

Panic bells
It's red alert
There's something here
From somewhere else......

Squirrel. Yes.
But I’m able to focus on more than one squirrel.

I have a problem with the size of the payload.

Apparently, they have time for that

Payload lolz , they should have captured it instead of shooting it down, then they can analyze the payload , now it all become a War of words . another huawei princess saga . Also The us debt ceiling is coming up .

Well so much for all that money we spent on that thing called NORAD.

Salt Team 6 reporting from Bannada, home of the silver spooned twit and his cult of idiots and liars. Peace out.

The yanks like shooting stuff Canada just lets it blow over like a fart in the wind.


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Plausible deniability
 

Rumour has it they were so sure of their capabilities they had the stencil made up prior to take off. ;)

OT- Besides the claim of public safety, if they had shot it down over land, China would know the US would recover all the components. Leading to escalating political demands for the return of their wayward weather balloon.
By shooting it down over the ocean, the US can conveniently claim most of the payload was lost; China cannot prove otherwise.

Uh huh.

I guess even espionage has gone green.:sHa_sarcasticlol:

lol

It's all about race

The white kid popped the Chinese kids balloon.....

Should get the parents involved.......

My understanding of radio waves is that yes, they could indeed have jammed any electronics on the balloon if they were only RECEIVING. But it would have been virtually impossible for them to jam the balloon, if the balloon was TRANSMITTING.
Block transmission on every frequency from 120000ft? How?

Considering the ever increasing number of reports coming out about Chinese circuitry being used in almost all sensitive civilian and military infrastructure in North America, something like this sure does make one think about, you know, what if??

Although I guess, considering how saturated the planet is with gps/glonass signal, this thought experiment becomes mute, UNLESS it's on a frequency that doesn't travel well through the ionosphere...

Harder to shoot down than one would think

In 1998 Two Canadian CF-18 fighter jets caught up with the balloon off the coast of Newfoundland and took aim, firing more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition at it.

But the balloon survived the assault, soldiering on over the North Atlantic.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/wea...hina-1.6737831

fired a 1000 rounds but did they hit it?

Guess this isn't the first one either. There have been 3 other reported balloons that flew over the US, that weren't shot down. Those were during the Trump administration.

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This has been proven as disinformation, or fake news as the big orange haired buffoon so accurately called it all so many years ago.
The fact that every news station in the land ran with it, though, is what's really news, or not, to anyone that's been paying even the littlest bit of attention.

Disinformation that has been debunked at many levels. China Joe makes up his own reality every day. Next thing you will hear on CNN is that China Joe personally flew an F15 and shot down the balloon all by himself.
All this drama does detract from his son Hunters problems, the border chaos, energy shortage, food shortage, his memory shortage, etc. China has enough info on the Biden family to do whatever they want whenever they want. US is now a laughing stock in the world.

Actually it is not the US that is a laughing stock............it is the Dems and Biden, just like Canada, it is not a laughing stock it is the Liberals and Trudeau.

I read news daily from a few sources, almost religiously. Read today. This thread is the first I hear about the three balloons. I must be doing something wrong.