Chinese Spy Balloons

Chinese Spy Balloons are being spotted all around the world. The US DoD just shot one down over the US which they've been tracking for the past two days. Please post any additional information you find on this developing story. China insists the balloons are private industry balloons. If that's true then the odds of launch photos existing somewhere on the internet are relatively good. If anyone can find launch photos of these balloons they'll win the internet for the week. Note that these balloons look a lot like Google Project Loon telecommunications balloons. But they are not Google balloons.

"An Air Force jet shot down the suspected Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast Saturday afternoon, after it drifted for five days across Idaho, Montana and the continental U.S. before reaching the Atlantic. An F-22 Raptor jet fired a single missile that sent the balloon into the ocean at about 2:39 p.m. Efforts to recover its surveillance equipment were underway. The Pentagon had been tracking the balloon, which appeared over Billings, Montana, Wednesday after passing near an American missile launch site." https://www.usatoday.com/story/graphics/2023/02/03/china-spy-balloon-path/11174459002/?gnt-cfr=1

Apparently sightings of these particular balloons go back over three years, at least.

This American amateur APRS balloon (NU7B-21) just passed over china and then passed back to America and nobody made a big deal about it. http://lu7aa.org/wspr.asp?other=nu7b&launch=20221017161000&SSID=21&banda=20m&timeslot=4&tracker=zachtek1

Does anyone here have any theories on what these could exactly be? I've been seeing more and more conspiracy theories online discussing about the possibility of an EMP attack with them.

>>20928 I personally think there's a bit of reverse psychology involved. Nobody expected a country to spy on its rivals in the 21st century, hence China went ahead and did exactly that. My country shares a border with China and we regularly hear reports of balloons flying into villages and around military installations.

Either I'm overestimating the capabilities of modern spy satellites or a few hundred million retards are overestimating the significance of this thing.

>>20928 >>20930 The benefit of spy balloons is they are a low cost surveillance tool, and you can probe enemy defenses while you are at it. They look like they are covered in antennas, so I wouldn't put it beyond being a signal exploitation platform. China has already tried buying property next to military bases to harvest data transmissions, but governments have caught on. The whole idea is you get a cheaper surveillance platform with cameras and radios than an expensive satellite that everyone knows what it's for, and you can always say "teehee it's just a weather balloon, take your meds schizo" if anyone calls you out. The other part involves occupation of air space, seeing how far they can push the envelope before reacting. Someone pointed out that had the military shot it down immediately, they would have divulged weapons and telemetry capabilities that they actually have. Like the general said when people asked why it was being kept a secret, he replied anyone can look up at the sky and see it. That doesn't mean the military will let their adversaries know that they know.

>>20923 >China insists the balloons are private industry balloons. If that's true then the odds of launch photos existing somewhere on the internet are relatively good. If anyone can find launch photos of these balloons they'll win the internet for the week. >China insists the balloons are private industry balloons >China insists Imagine taking anything the Chinese government releases at face value. The same way they insist that everything they say about covid is true and accurate. Even if there were pictures, they would likely be staged anyway (at least nobody could confirm their accuracy). >>20930 It isnt difficult to calculate the capabilities of spy satellites tbqh. based on launch vehicles you can calculate payload size, and based on payload size you can calculate maximums for optical devices.

>>20932 The opposite is way more common, why would you assume that everything they say is a lie? It wouldn't surprise me if it was actually the case. Not everything is a conspiracy.

Did any defense agency think to capture one of these balloons in tact to analyze it? Shooting it down and playing the blame game seems like something a bad actor would do.

>>20933 The Chinese government is known to only release statements that correspond with it's narrative. they claim that everything is civilian in nature, but their military has a hand in every civilian enterprise. Their space and scientific programs are no exception. Give a bunch of military equipment to an "educational institution" for research purposes and government claims to data, and the research and equipment can be called "civilian" since it isn't being operated by people in military uniforms, although the end result is the same. >>20934 Capture is extremely risky, you would risk middair collision, given that the balloon was at like 60k feet iirc, there are not a lot of aircraft that could effectively engage it, and high altitude capture equipment is probably pretty classified. The only entity that might have such a capability is the CIA, since they used a similar recovery technique for film buckets that spy satellites dropped into the atmosphere. Since it was known that the Chinese balloon could change directions, it would have made a catch and grab difficult, but shooting it down and piecing it back together works too. they just had to know exactly where it fell down.

>>20935 >Capture is extremely risky Makes sense. Hopefully there was some recovery with analysis to come.

Why are you guys spreading mainstream psychological propaganda? The fact of the matter is that this balloon is extracting little to no valuable info that isn't already known or extracted by satellites. Fact is that military knew about it for at least couple of months before going viral in mainstream, yet they did nothing. Why don't the mainstream person know about secret operations CIA did on China soil? China spies US? BOO-HOO USA also spies the rest of the world. And everyone spies everyone else. I didn't think lainchan would drop so low to spread mainstream psyop.

>Capture is extremely risky you're making it out like they're going to fly a jet up to it, open the side door and grab it in. If its at 50 or 60k feet a b-1 can definitly reach it, probably trying to catch that truss while popping the balloon and attaching a parachute. The sat capture scheme was all about long tow cables streaming out the back of the plane, no need to get close enough to risk a crash. IDK why it couldn't be done in this case except that the hardware might not exist just this moment. letting it fall 50k feet will mean the debris is spread out over a huge area and any large or complicated parts are all smashed badly. Wouldnt be hard to slightly improve its landability. I don't see where the risk in doing this is unless the balloon tries to defend itself. >>20937 though this is a bad faith post there's a valid question of, of all the chink spying going on why make any deal about this in particular. US should throw out most of the chinks here, ban tiktok, and take up measures to interfere with foreign sat surveillance, among other things. yes, us spies on other countries. countries that don't want spying should resist it actively. Probably good to provoke a little bit just to keep everybody on their toes. what i really hate is us spying on itself lol. fugging glowniggs amirite.

>>20937 >The fact of the matter is that this balloon is extracting little to no valuable info that isn't already known or extracted by satellites. Balloons are able to gather much more information than satellites. >Fact is that military knew about it for at least couple of months before going viral in mainstream, yet they did nothing. This balloon has only been in America for a few days, not multiple months. >BOO-HOO USA also spies the rest of the world. And everyone spies everyone else. So? Do you not know where you are? Most lains hate spying regardless of who is behind it.

Yeah I'm sure they could have at least attempted to extract information from it that would at least give us more confidence that this is really a 'spy baloon'. As of now I couldn't find anything that would convince me of either. The US claims it to be it, and the Chinese are denying it. I see no reason to believe either side is being honest.

>>20937 >The fact of the matter is that this balloon is extracting little to no valuable info that isn't already known or extracted by satellites. Fact is that military knew about it for at least couple of months before going viral in mainstream, yet they did nothing. Only spook hands would be able type something this gay, especially considering you know "facts" without explaining what those are. Also China actively infiltrates US intel to thwart attempts at counter intel. Its interesting how few spies are active in totalitarian countries where everyone suspects everyone. The US might spy on people, but they don't do a good job of vetting who's doing it. A lot could be said about selective suspicion and stereotyping too. >>20938 >you're making it out like they're going to fly a jet up to it, open the side door and grab it in. Literally how catching objects in the sky works lain >letting it fall 50k feet will mean the debris is spread out over a huge area and any large or complicated parts are all smashed badly. Wouldn't be hard to slightly improve its landability. I don't see where the risk in doing this is unless the balloon tries to defend itself. in the video you can see the balloon pops, but payload appears unharmed

>>20941 >Literally how catching objects in the sky works lain fam there's just no way thats happening without a tow cable to catch it and bring it up to speed at the very least. The balloon is basically stationary with respect to the surrounding air. >structure appears to remain in tact hard for me to see on the videos I'm finding but there's clearly some shiny material breaking off and it almost looks like the truss folds, though this could be compression artefacts. Anyway its still got 49k feet of vibration and wind to go before it hits...apparently the ocean. Lol no way they're getting much from this.

>>20939 >Balloons are able to gather much more information than satellites. And Chinese spy prostitutes having sex with silicon valley billionaires also gather much more information than a "spy balloon", my point is that you haven't read a story about them in mainstream media while I have. >This balloon has only been in America for a few days, not multiple months. Non sequitur. Knowledge of such technology existing and being used (IN GENERAL, not on US soil) has been known in US military. That is my point. >Most lains hate spying regardless of who is behind it. Yet you will not post a thread about US spying on Russian undersea cables. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells Yet you will not post a thread about general spying technology and how to mitigate against it. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-23123964 NOOOOO, a fuarrrking balloon taking pictures is what peaks your fuarrrking interest. Please take the end of the short bus and stfu. You fell for the propaganda and generally have no knowledge of what is happening on international spying front outside of what the mainstream media tells you to think. >>20938 >Probably good to provoke a little bit just to keep everybody on their toes. What do you think why is USA using this story as its endgoal? >>20941 >Only spook hands would be able type something this gay, especially considering you know "facts" without explaining what those are. Pic related

>>20939 >This balloon has only been in America for a few days, not multiple months. PS In the same fuarrrking thread, you dunce >>20925

>>20944 I think you're lost

Them shooting the balloon down kinda fuarrrks with this idea buuuut https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Gorgon_Stare?lang=en https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/02/pentagon-balloons-surveillance-midwest Three years you say? 60k altitude you say?

>>20937 Mate, if US spy balloons were being spotted all over the world we would be talking about that. Get your whataboutism out of here.

>>20942 Here's an explosion webm of the best shot I've seen. At worst, it looks like one of the solar arms folds as it falls. >>20943 >Yet you will not post a thread about general spying technology and how to mitigate against it. There are many such threads. This is always one of the most popular topics on sec boards of various chans, including this one. Please start another one of these threads, by all means.

>>20943 >And Chinese spy prostitutes having sex with silicon valley billionaires also gather much more information than a "spy balloon", my point is that you haven't read a story about them in mainstream media while I have. So your point is that an object which normal people going about their day can look up to the sky and see is getting more coverage than something they can't? That's not a very astute observation. People discuss things they observe around them. That's no indication of a psyop. You complain that other forms of Chinese spying isn't covered by the media, but that's a flagrant falsehood. There are stories every other day about Chinese nationals buying land near places of interest to do signal analysis, Chinese spies stealing IP (either from seduction as you mentioned, hacking, extorting current employees, or just getting a job at the target company and exfiltrating the private info), China owned businesses sending private data back to China, China hacking private and government agencies, and Chinese apps being spyware. This isn't censored or obscure information. >>20943 >Non sequitur. Knowledge of such technology existing and being used (IN GENERAL, not on US soil) has been known in US military. That is my point. And? We've known for years that China likes to send spy balloons. Doesn't mean we can magically stop this one months before it's even in the air. >Yet you will not post a thread about... Let me clarify that I am not OP, I didn't post this thread, and I personally would have just posted this info in the /sec/ news thread instead of dedicating a whole thread to it. Nonetheless: >Yet you will not post a thread about US spying on Russian undersea cables. >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells A spy program from 50 years ago isn't threadworthy and certainly less relevant than spying that happened just this weekend. If you want a more honest comparison, maybe consider US spying on modern day Russia. We've had discussions here about, for example, American agencies hacking Russia and sharing that info with Ukraine, satellite imagery from the American private sector being used to spy on Russia military and civilian bases, etc. If you find a reliable source for any interesting spying going on, post a thread with a high quality OP and people here will engage. >Yet you will not post a thread about general spying technology and how to mitigate against it. There have been so many threads about mitigating nation state surveillance and about what the US government (and private sector) does to spy on everyone. I can only imagine you're very new to lainchan, or at least /sec/ since you're seemingly unaware of this. So, welcome to lainchan, newlain. >NOOOOO, a fuarrrking balloon taking pictures is what peaks your fuarrrking interest. Have you consider that the set of people who are interested in forms of nation state surveillance like the ones you've mentioned and the ones I've mentioned in this post would be interested in any information on nation state surveillance, including the active use of and capabilities of spy balloons? That doesn't seem farfetched at all to me. Interest in a spy balloon isn't mutually exclusive with interest in all other forms of spying.

I mainly just don't understand why they wouldn't just use satellites

>>20951 Low orbit satellites orbit the earth relatively quickly which means they're only able to take pictures of a specific place for a small part of time. High orbit satellites can better target specific areas over an extended period of time, but they're far away so the picture quality is lessened. Balloons address these issues, have better picture quality, and may be equipped with imaging technology and sensors that can't be efficiently used from space. We also don't know the extent of the USA's ability to interfere with foreign satellite intelligence.

>>20953 Theres more to spying than taking pictures. Studying radio transmissions for instance, not all of which can so easily be done so far away above the atmosphere, or so well localized. Also possible to do such observations unbound to the standard satelite orbit schedule of which your enemies are well aware... Its also possible the weight requirements on the balloon are more generous, and likely that the forces and vibrations it experiences less strenuous, so there's a different set of requirements for hardware going up thus.

>>20928 I'm very dubious that you could create an EMP pulse big enough to do much of anything on the ground from a balloon, short of detonating a nuke. >>20934 Probably they didn't want to reveal to the Chinese that they knew what was up. The balloon could have self-destruct features, e.g. securely erasing encryption keys, that may have not responded in time to the missile attack, while the wreckage could still be analyzed. >>20951 cheaper, easier to deploy covertly, gets much better signal from ground-based transceivers not intended to talk to satellites.

>>20955 >that may have not responded in time to the missile attack, while the wreckage could still be analyzed. well you see shooting it down with a missile from 50k feet over the ocean where its going to be basically irrecoverable is fairly secure erasure. Also you're overvaluing the importance of looking at data and not, you know, the hardware which will tell you fairly well what they were looking for/capable of seeing. besides, no reason to assume missile hit immediately turned off any computer on the vehicle, they likely had minutes to complete any self destruction plans before they hit the ocean at high speed.

>>20956 >well you see shooting it down with a missile from 50k feet over the ocean where its going to be basically irrecoverable is fairly secure erasure. Not necessarily. The missile just needs to pop the balloon, it can detonate just above the balloon and minimize the damage to the components you want to look at. The height is essentially irrelevant to the impact, the pieces would be moving at the same terminal velocity if dropped from 100 feet or 50,000. The pieces could easily be tracked and possibly recovered. I also think there is no reason to assume that the DOD has been completely honest with what they did. It is possible they hit the balloon with an EMP-warhead missile and then got an F35 to catch most of the debris with a net or something. >Also you're overvaluing the importance of looking at data and not, you know, the hardware which will tell you fairly well what they were looking for/capable of seeing. Indeed, that is another example of something you could learn from wreckage that might not be obvious from a controlled demolition. >besides, no reason to assume missile hit immediately turned off any computer on the vehicle, they likely had minutes to complete any self destruction plans before they hit the ocean at high speed. Would they definitely have that capability after the balloon has lost main power and can no longer communicate with base? I think the answer to that is a definite maybe, so it may still be worth to have the element of surprise.

>>20959 honestly, I had no idea there was any video of the event.

>>20956 >>20959 >>20961 According to one press release it was an F22 equipped with sidewinder missiles, If you watch the footage carefully, it does in fact resemble an F22 firing a sidewinder based on the missile trail. Pictures and what looks like a guy covertly filming the recovery are already all over the internet. Not to side with the government on this one, but there are good reasons to control the debris. Assuming it used explosives for fire suppression, or explosive separation, it could be dangerous to approach the debris. If it had an auxiliary or emergency power unit that used hydrazine (or even thrusters) that would also be dangerous to come in contact with. That hind of system is not uncommon in the aerospace industry. If I had to bet, msm will announce "nothing of value was recovered" or "all the important parts were destroyed on impact," but from past history, recovery of foreign espionage equipment is often downplayed

>>20923 Confirmed as electronic surveillance, US telecom allegedly tried to tell people that it could not get you cellular data, even if it could capture SIGINT from phones. >doubt.jpeg Pic related: ROUND 2 LETS fuarrrkING GOOOOO

>>20997 Read the thread. Balloons are cheaper and more effective than satellites. The only disadvantage is they're easier to shoot down. Even if they are exactly what China says they are, the US has every right under international law and convention to shoot them down.

>>21009 >that's what every propagandist says of other countries This, and fearmongers of their own.

A third has been shot down. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/us/politics/us-shoots-down-object-michigan.html It's hilarious how officious this article is, and how official it is trying to sound in the wake of something so ridiculous. Literally the president ordering military jets to shoot balloons and/or drones out of the sky. It's obviously taking with the public imagination (increase in talk about UFOs - the alien kind). But I want insight into what's actually happening, not this superficial garbage taking advantage of a popular news event. For example, the article mentions China is running a news story on its own non-identified floating thing. Why? What advantage does it have to run its own story like that, true or not? Lastly, the article is right about one thing. That a third was found was just the result of increased resources dedicated to finding these things.

>>21022 What's interesting is that China was trying to spread the narrative that shooting down the balloon was an overreaction even if it was a spy balloon. But now they're also shooting down a balloon over their own airspace. So I wonder if that's a result of factionalism or incompetence or maybe just backtracking.

>>21022 How long before someone flying in a hot air balloon gets shot down?

>>21031 Team Rocket goes blasting off again!

>>21031 Pretty sure nena made a song about this... >thread theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fpu5a0Bl8eY

>>20951 Satellites are expensive and cost a lot, also every satellite has a predictable path and is tracked by every space capable and many non-space capable countries. The price to build a balloon is like 10% of a satellite, and you can put a camera on it with 10x higher resolution. >>21001 The world is already fighting WW3, they just won't admit it because it would hurt the markets. Wars are good for business, but not for businesses that are built on businesses being business. It's like the saying about selling shovels in the gold rush. but companies sell data to companies that sell data to companies that sell data, that advertise. People won't buy that next iPhone or poop emoji hoodie worn by their favorite tiktoker if they are drafted to combat or practicing civil preparedness for war when resources are scarce. They will buy body armor, canned goods, and establish social capital instead of useless consumer goods. >>21026 Chinese media is a delicate beast. Actually, the whole Chinese aerospace industry is a circle jerk of insiders and insider knowledge. People who leave those circles would sell their services as "economic advisors" for $100000 per hour until the government realized that they were discussing sensitive political and social connections that financial forecasters and investors could exploit. Worse yet, while there are thousands of people who study and discuss US aerospace projects and achievements, most of what is actually said of china comes from a hand full of often times government or government affiliated sources. Even to Chinese industries, it is unclear who owns what or where the line is between the government and industry. Even high ranking party officials can't really clarify if they are policy leaders or business owners together, or both independently because of strict technology and workforce sharing rules.