I like to think we are feeding the ccp a rickroll through it.
If we shot it down the ccp would just be like why you shoot down our weather balloon we launch to stop global warming?

long overdue

You can't poke it. Chinese Barroons are of da highest Qwarritty.

Much technorrogee. Indeestructuhbrrrrruuuuu

I remember using an aircraft to grab a balloon cable to extract sof guys. Maybe somebody can find a vid, might make a good meme.

POP QUIZ TOUGH GUY:  Chinese Intelligence Gathering Device, or The Last Of Us Episode 4???

I would want to get the thing intact to study it. I think they need some sort of AIM9X missile without a warhead to pop a hole in the balloon. Heck the balloon is three football fields wide how hard can it be to hit it?

CHINESE SPY BALLOON MOVING EASTWARD AND IS OVER THE CENTER OF THE UNITED STATES -PENTAGON

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) February 3, 2023

CHINESE SPY BALLOON IS A SURVEILANCE BALLOON, VIOLATES INTERNATIONAL LAW -PENTAGON

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) February 3, 2023

There's a picture of an MC-130(?) with the Fulton Recovery System whiskers earlier in the thread.

Good idea, than grab it on its way down.

Why spend the money on an aim9? 2.75 ffar will do.

Pfft.  Buy one of those purple handheld lasers off Alibaba, one of the ones that are wayyyy more powerful than the specs and tape the fucking thing to a jet and go fly by it a couple times slicing holes in it. We have military jets that can go that high, everybody knows this.

Have a few aircraft to track it fall or maybe even catch it on the way down.

Use their shit to shoot down their shit.

The excuse of "well it might fall on someone" is goddamn stupid. It's chinese. Of course it might fail on it's own, in which case IT WILL FALL ON SOMEONE.  So we have no additional risk by bringing it down over what we already have.

The response so far is just a chickenshit response to signal more weakness to china by the Obiden administration. We should shoot anything they send over our land down. PERIOD.

Anyone want to start a pool on how close they will allow it to DC?

It’s prob dropping presents to President shitty pants.

Bringing this down intact would be a treasure-trove of information, especially learning exactly what data it was capturing.  Not a trivial task but not impossible.  I'm sure some NSA and Air Force teams are researching options for this.

Ellen my effin balloon knot off !

And worse

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2017-09/19/content_32187279.htm

Maybe if the Biden Administration wasn’t so worried about banning your gas stoves, they would have seen this Chinese spy balloon coming.

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 3, 2023

Cowboy Dan's a major player in the cowboy scene,
Goes to the reservation, drinks and gets mean,
Goes to the desert, fires his rifle at the sky,
Says "God if I have to die you will have to die!"

Monkey Werx has a live stream going, started about 10min ago

And full of Chinesium...think of the environmental impact...

President Trump has entered the discussion on Truth Social:

"SHOOT DOWN THE BALLOON"

PENTAGON SAYS IT WILL NOT DISCUSS EXACT POSITION OF CHINA BALLOON, PEOPLE CAN LOOK UP IN THE SKY

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) February 3, 2023

Well this Administration is known for accepting the unacceptable.  I know it’s at 60,000 feet, and they don’t want it to fall on people on the ground.
Wonder what China would do with our balloon over their territory?

If it drifts over Florida they have it covered

There is a rumor that in big letters across the ballon is written “Epstein didn’t kill himself”

We are truly doomed at this point. The US military can't or refuses to defend our airspace.

How many could it kill if it is full of Fentanyl and they burst it over a major population center? There are a bunch of pussies at the highest levels and I am embarrassed and ashamed of what my country has become.

“Let’s just leave it at that”.

What a fag.

Seems like the proper course of action.

IT IS BALLOOON!

- Chief Wild Eagle Hekawi Nation

Wait, there are really people who think this is from China?

If that’s truth then we are fucked. A group of five year olds with those balsa wood planes where the propeller winds up via a rubber band could gain air superiority over the US.

Do you guys really think Jina snuck that in?

“We” know exactly what it is, where it came from, where it’s going, who launched it, and what that person wiped their ass with this morning.

We are getting played. Again.

Attached File
That's no balloon.

I know a couple guys at whiteman. I bet they could come up with something creative to put on the runway before it floated over.

They do everything they can to bow down to the Chinese, the real rulers of the USA.

Sport, Politics, Defense, Technology, etc.

Might be worth looking into. You have to detach from what you’ve been programmed to believe though.

A Balloon Is Spying on the U.S. From the Sky. Here’s Why China May Be Using Old-Fashioned Surveillance Technology When Satellites Exist



Why use balloons when satellites exist?

China has an extensive satellite network. In a Nov. 2022 report, the Defense Department said China’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance-capable (ISR) satellite fleet had more than 260 systems, second only to the U.S., as of the end of 2021. A senior defense official noted on Thursday that, for China, the balloon flying over Montana “has limited additive value from an intelligence collection perspective.”

Yet even with satellite technology surpassing some abilities of balloons, James Char, a research fellow with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, tells TIME that spy balloons have some operational advantages. For example, balloons can weather extreme conditions, he says, and are less expensive to deploy and operate compared to satellites. Chinese Academy of Science scholars found in 2020 that, despite harsh environments at more than 68,000 feet above ground, “the high-altitude balloon has long endurance time, which can achieve sustained and wider coverage for regional observation and detection.”

“It is harder to be spotted by radar as well, given the fact that they’re simpler in terms of technology,” Char adds. U.S. officials admitted the balloon flying over North America this week was first spotted by civilians on a plane.

High-altitude balloons can also be “trucks for any number of platforms, whether it be communication and data link nodes, ISR, tracking air and missile threats — and without the predictable orbits of satellites,” Tom Karako, senior fellow for the International Security Program and director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Politico.

And though the technology is old, says Bec Shrimpton, director at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, balloons can complement surveillance technology in orbit, while they can be built and deployed at a fraction of the cost. According to a 2020 analysis in defense publication Armada International, the development, launch, operation, and insurance of a single satellite can cost up to $300 million.

Another potential edge for balloons, Shrimpton tells TIME, is how unlikely defense officials may have been prepared for it to be used, especially by China. “It’s probably better because it’s unexpected,” she says. “It’s not that we haven’t seen this before, but we are expecting far more from Chinese surveillance efforts.”



If it’s caught, what’s the point?

“It is bold, in that it was always likely to be detected, it was always likely to be seen,” says Shrimpton. That’s what military experts like her find most notable about the balloon, especially given the timing of its emergence—just after the U.S. reinvigorated its military alliance with the Philippines and before Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s scheduled trip to Beijing, which has now been postponed.

“I think it’s another demonstration of the Chinese military’s adherence to operations below the threshold of war, that’s number one,” says Char. “Clearly for reasons that are known to everyone,” he adds, “the U.S. and the Chinese don’t want to escalate matters above.”

“It is a threat, no doubt,” Char says. “But how serious is it? I think it’s pretty clear: if it’s serious enough, I’m sure something more drastic would have been done by the U.S. establishment.”


Continued

I just watched the whole Pentagon briefing, and here's my summary:

We can't tell you anything, because we don't know anything. And, even if we did know something, we couldn't tell you because Intelligence.  

Maybe Jina is going to start dropping oversized condoms over the US. You know, psychology warfare and all that.

May I propose the creation of a Terminal High Altitude Area Balloon Defense (THAABD) system?

Imagine the conspiracy theorists if the balloon started transmitting on some AM frequency "Epstein did not kill himself, Joe Biden traveled to Epstein's island, Hunter Biden is on Putin's payroll etc" continuously. And was then shot down.

Kharn

We don't have global hawk tow drone technology?

Is there a towdrone gap?


Heck, shackle a couple of RATOs to it and send it into space on a random vector

Also MTG just posted:

Chinese Spy Balloon. pic.twitter.com/C8NqSKUhhV

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene\uD83C\uDDFA\uD83C\uDDF8 (@RepMTG) February 3, 2023