Would you like to spy with my beautiful balloon?

Looks like the F-35 is getting some anti-balloon weapons as a result of this.

Montana event seems to be a false alarm. Radar shadow but no actual visual contact (OR...steal mode engaged?)

4) what else has been going on in the news this week that didn't make the top stories?

just Iron Man investigating

They shot down something over Lake Huron this afternoon.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us...aska-canada-were-balloons-schumer-2023-02-12/

It was probably a goose. I hear the internet fears them because they are extremely dangerous.

So looks like this is all about the Biden administration being competent.

The new NORAD commander came in and got intel reports that the Chinese had done successful spying on the US with balloons that were tuned to be under the filter they use for radar in the US/Canadian air space.

So they removed the filter. And lo and behold, they caught the spy balloons that previously were passing undetected.

Why wait for the first balloon to pass over the US and shoot it down over the water? It was far more massive than the others they've engaged with recently and did pose a debris hazard. Dropping shards of metal from something the size of 3 buses onto people from 40,000 FT is dangerous.

As usual, the right wing bloviators lose their mind, but they are paid to lie, so anyone who gives a fuck what they say is a complete fucking idiot.

That is just wrong. Freedumb is giving bloon rides and guns to people who want to shoot these balloons. Bring them all up to 40k feet and since they hate masks do not give them any oxygen masks. Problem solved.

Biden: I never said it was definitely Chinese balloons we shot down.

glad I wasn't drinking anything.

https://twitter.com/space_osint/status/1628066492020391936?s=20


https://dragonladytoday.com/2023/02/21/the-u-2-and-balloons-some-history-and-some-thoughts/

The Chinese Spy Balloon Captured Sensitive Military Info After All

No shit.

Oh, radio surveillance. That makes much more sense. You'd definitely want something that could linger, unlike a satellite.

And apropos of nothing, at the nine-minute mark, this video talks about all the weather balloons that are launched each day, around the world.



Now, there's all kinds of civilian and military applications for such balloons (besides dropping an egg), so yeah, to think that what the Chinese did was somehow unique is a bit much.

https://twitter.com/nasa_wallops/status/1647281563439099905?s=46&t=iYW3foyqIA6Tn8VWwn3nwQ

Pentagon leaks confirm US officials knew of more Chinese spy balloons

Something that just occurred to me: By shooting it down, Biden confirmed that not only could the US detect such a balloon floating over the US but that it wasn't an American balloon. "Yeah, so?" you might say. Right, but we know what our balloons try to gather over other countries and it seems logical to assume that the Chinese would do the same. Which means that when we saw such a balloon we might decide to send out a bunch of fake radio chatter. Feeding the enemy false intel is a very old practice, after all.

Given that he's now told the Chinese they can expect to have other balloons of theirs shot down, that means the Chinese are going to switch to alternative means of intel gathering. How well can we monitor those channels and how much disinfo can we feed them?

Spy vs Spy is a lot closer to real life than real spies would ever want admit

Apropos of nothing, the Commodore 64 game was pretty damn fun, but damn the controls were janky.

Hmm, I should find an emulator and the ROM.