First it’s a weather surveillance balloon traversing the United States and a good chunk of Canada. Since then two additional flying things have been shot down over Alaska and Canada. Amazing what a o little embarrassment will do. I say “things” because details on what they actually were have not been released as of this writing. They seem to be smaller than the balloon and they’re flying but that’s all I know.
I think there are some things we really need to know. First, how long has this been going on? Weeks? Months? Years? Forever? Are we only learning about it now because some passenger on a commercial flight saw that balloon fluing above the flight he/she was one and took a picture of it with his or her smartphone?
And, related, has their frequency increased?
My speculation about it being a “probing attack” (with no actual attack) is looking less likely.
Update
There’s something I wanted to mention in this post but neglected to do so. A high altitude weather balloon can be purchased for on the order of $1,000. Let’s conjecture that the Chinese balloon cost ten times that. The Sidewinder missile used to take it down cost $400,000. Floating balloons over the U. S. could turn into a reasonably cheap, easy way to sap U. S. strength and inflate our costs. We should probably figure out a different way of dealing with them. We should probably take them down but we probably shouldn’t spend a $1 million per balloon.
Well, Moon of Alabama thinks all the balloons are weather balloons. The head of NORAD also said that when they spotted the first balloon over the
Aleutians, he didn’t think it posed a threat. Likely he thought is was just another weather balloon, a common visitor from China, Russia, Japan, et al.
There is some evidence the second shoot-down over Alaska was an American weather balloon launched from a station near Nome. We will never know for sure.
Also, my least favorite subscription, the WSJ, has an article on China’s weather balloon business, which apparently has lots of customers, and which routinely launches balloons into the jet stream from Tibet.
There is no reason to believe any story coming out of the regime in Washington, so the Pentagon’s identification of the balloons as spy balloons doesn’t mean that they are. And it is entirely possible that the USAF did shoot down a NOAA balloon.
Remember, these balloons cannot be steered, and merely drift passively with the wind. That makes them useless for photo-surveillance of the ground surface, although they might be useful for monitoring radar and radio transmissions. China has at least 100 satellites devoted to ground surveillance, so balloons would only provide some marginal benefits.
All in all, I think all the targets are weather balloons. Once again we see how easy it is to panic and stampede members of congress and the news media and the bulk of the American people.
The real issue is why Blinken wanted to cancel his China trip. He must have known the Hersh report on the Nord Stream bombing was about to come out, and he didn’t want a public tongue lashing face to face. China has now made a big issue of the bombing, and is demanding an explanation from the US.
The data from the past week is pretty conclusive there’s lot of “high altitude†junk out there, and it’s been like that for a long time. There’s a lot of valid uses for high altitude balloons. And it’s not particularly hard; the technology has been around for 100 years.
The Chinese went on alert to what was a balloon over some sensitive sight — likely another piece of junk.
Unless there’s a multilateral agreement to restrict and beacon every balloon; finding the surveillance balloon vs junk will be the equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack,
“Near space” is pretty awful and SpaceX has made matters significantly worse.
Its been pretty well reported that Canada tried to shoot down a balloon not too long ago and after about 1000 bullets it was still flying. I think the UK took a shot at it also without success. Flight time is expensive. Trying to investigate every balloon will cost a bunch.
Steve
The missile was likely only a portion of the total cost considering flight hours (most aircraft cost thousands to tens-of-thousands per flight hour), supporting elements (aerial refueling, AWACS), etc.
That’s why I’ve been guesstimating it as a million dollars a pop rather than $400,000/balloon.
It might be an underestimate but it’s probably the right order of magnitude.