"The Balloon !"

[TheVat]

8 hours ago, exchemist said:

@toucanamentioned that. We know it seems important to them. We don’t know why, though. What does it do that satellites don’t, for instance?

I have read some speculation that the greater proximity to the surface allows the antenna array to pick up weaker signals - especially short-distance line-of-sight communications that are used by the military.  Even if they can't crack the encryption, just knowing the location and duration of the squirts, and their timing, can reveal a lot.

(from unidentified Pentagon source that spoke to CNN):  The balloon's spyware payload, the size of a regional jetliner, had "multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications."  

There is also this,  from David DeRoches, a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. --

He told Al Jazeera the Chinese balloon shot down by the US could also have been used to “gather information on what kind of signals [the US is] using to track it, so it could possibly identify and classify radar hits … which could be of interest if the Chinese wanted to actually launch an attack.”

Stuff you can't get from a Pine Gap + satellites type setup, IOW.  

And also, obviously, the relatively slow speed of a balloon v LEO satellite, and greater proximity will also yield clearer images of ground objects of interest.  (and geosynchronous satellites are at an even greater distance, and so their imaging can be pretty foggy)

Edited February 11, 2023 by TheVat
addendum

[iNow]

8 hours ago, exchemist said:

What does it do that satellites don’t, for instance?

Distance to ground matters when taking pictures. Resolution is vastly superior at 100,000 feet up than it is at 2 miles up, for instance. 

18 minutes ago, TheVat said:

The balloon's spyware payload, the size of a regional jetliner, had "multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications."  

Indeed.  This, too. 

6 hours ago, studiot said:

iNow already answered that

In truth, they’re still watching us right now today. Threads like this, what are people saying and speculating about. Which memes are rising to the top across social media platforms. What commentary is taking hold in chat rooms and engagement channels, which narratives are being pushed by influencers and aggregators. It really never ends.

Edited February 11, 2023 by iNow

[swansont]

42 minutes ago, iNow said:

Distance to ground matters when taking pictures. Resolution is vastly superior at 100,000 feet up than it is at 2 miles up, for instance. 

The other way around. Better resolution if you’re 2 miles up than ~19 miles up.

[exchemist]

57 minutes ago, TheVat said:

I have read some speculation that the greater proximity to the surface allows the antenna array to pick up weaker signals - especially short-distance line-of-sight communications that are used by the military.  Even if they can't crack the encryption, just knowing the location and duration of the squirts, and their timing, can reveal a lot.

(from unidentified Pentagon source that spoke to CNN):  The balloon's spyware payload, the size of a regional jetliner, had "multiple antennas to include an array likely capable of collecting and geo-locating communications."  

There is also this,  from David DeRoches, a professor at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Washington, DC. --

He told Al Jazeera the Chinese balloon shot down by the US could also have been used to “gather information on what kind of signals [the US is] using to track it, so it could possibly identify and classify radar hits … which could be of interest if the Chinese wanted to actually launch an attack.”

Stuff you can't get from a Pine Gap + satellites type setup, IOW.  

And also, obviously, the relatively slow speed of a balloon v LEO satellite, and greater proximity will also yield clearer images of ground objects of interest.  (and geosynchronous satellites are at an even greater distance, and so their imaging can be pretty foggy)

Ah yes, I can see the telecoms information would be harder to get by other means. It will be interesting to see what the authorities disclose about their findings from the debris. 

[studiot]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

Distance to ground matters when taking pictures. Resolution is vastly superior at 100,000 feet up than it is at 2 miles up, for instance. 

100,000 feet  up is 19 miles up  ?

Edit Xposted with swansont.

Edited February 11, 2023 by studiot

[MigL]

J Biden was blamed for taking too long to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon.
I wonder if he will be blamd for shooting down the Alaska UFO too quickly.

( yes, UFO, it was a flying object that is unidentified )

 

[swansont]

53 minutes ago, MigL said:

J Biden was blamed for taking too long to shoot down the Chinese spy balloon.
I wonder if he will be blamd for shooting down the Alaska UFO too quickly.

( yes, UFO, it was a flying object that is unidentified )

 

BINGO! You cracked the code. No matter what happens, Biden’s response is wrong.

[StringJunky]

5 hours ago, swansont said:

In the US, information is classified if release of the information is a threat to national security (that’s supposed to be the only reason)

That the public knows the information does not change this; if someone leaks classified info to the press, it’s still classified. And as I pointed out earlier, even if knowledge of the balloon isn’t classified, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t details that are. (about the payload, for example)

Right. 

On 2/5/2023 at 10:56 PM, iNow said:

The balloon collected intelligence about how the U.S. responds. 

They watched the ballon cross into Alaska and how we responded. They watched how the government and military responded the entire next week. 

They watched the news coverage and national freak out on social media. The conspiracy theories that were most cited. The anger and disappointment at Biden. They watched family members sniping at each other.

They watched what other things and places we stopped watching while watching this.

Now the next time when they want to deploy a virus against our banking system or energy grid, or just want more leverage in a negotiation over carbon credits and trade… they’ll just float a balloon across the continental US so we look up and watch it like wide-eyed children. 

“Oooohhh… shiny!”

Adverse and malign social engineering.

Edited February 11, 2023 by StringJunky

[MigL]

2 hours ago, swansont said:

BINGO! You cracked the code. No matter what happens, Biden’s response is wrong.

I thought you were going to complain about my use of the term 'UFO', as that seems to bring out all the wingnuts and conspiracy theorists.

[iNow]

4 hours ago, swansont said:

Better resolution if you’re 2 miles up than ~19 miles up.

4 hours ago, studiot said:

100,000 feet  up is 19 miles up  ?

Yes. I forgot how many feet in a mile with that earlier set of posts. 

Resolution gooder closer. 
Resolution badder farther. 

[MigL]

FYI

Luke Air Force base, as well as a statue in Phoenix, are dedicated to Frank Luke Jr.
Frank was a daring WW1 ace, who shot down 14 German balloons and 4 aircraft during a short combat stint in France. Because balloon shoot downs were considered suicide missions,he was regarded by E Rickenbacker as "the most daring aviator and greatest fighter pilot of the entire war"

The F-22 Rapto that downed the Chinese spy satellite used the call sign 'FRANK'

[iNow]

❤️ if true

[Genady]

Another one: Trudeau says unidentified object was shot down over northern Canada | CNN Politics

[iNow]

1 hour ago, Genady said:

Another one:

This is getting out of hand… now they’re even pre-announcing them in New Mexico!

https://balloonfiesta.com

[StringJunky]

I think ya gonna need all your planes out.  

 

 

[toucana]

12 hours ago, Genady said:

Another one: Trudeau says unidentified object was shot down over northern Canada | CNN Politics

You do wonder if the PLA (or its NK equivalent) is conducting a 'sieve' experiment. - i.e. Fly a sequence of dirigibles of decreasing size over continental North America, and see how small they need to be to slip through the NORAD radar EW screens.

[geordief]

2 hours ago, toucana said:

You do wonder if the PLA (or its NK equivalent) is conducting a 'sieve' experiment. - i.e. Fly a sequence of dirigibles of decreasing size over continental North America, and see how small they need to be to slip through the NORAD radar EW screens.

What is good for the goose is good for the gender.Is spying a good thing a priori?

If foreign countries keep secrets that are potentially  detrimental to one's own is it not natural to spy(and also to discourage spying)?

[toucana]

48 minutes ago, geordief said:

What is good for the goose is good for the gender.Is spying a good thing a priori?

If foreign countries keep secrets that are potentially  detrimental to one's own is it not natural to spy(and also to discourage spying)?

In his famous book The American Black Chamber (1931), Herbert O. Yardley the former head of the US Army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) in WW1 - and founder of its successor the Black Chamber in 1919 -  dryly describes how the new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson shut down the entire codebreaking unit in 1929 with the laconic observation ‘Gentlemen do not read each others mail”.

Henry L. Stimson later became the US Secretary of War during WW2, and relied heavily on the Army SIS team who broke the Japanese diplomatic ‘Purple’ codes, and the US Navy Combat Intelligence Unit who broke JN-25, the principal Japanese Naval ciphers and code system.

footnote - Stimson was later credited with having vetoed the idea of including the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto on the list of potential atom bomb targets, because he and his wife had spent their honeymoon there.

[geordief]

1 hour ago, toucana said:

In his famous book The American Black Chamber (1931), Herbert O. Yardley the former head of the US Army cryptographic section of Military Intelligence (MI-8) in WW1 - and founder of its successor the Black Chamber in 1919 -  dryly describes how the new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson shut down the entire codebreaking unit in 1929 with the laconic observation ‘Gentlemen do not read each others mail”.

Henry L. Stimson later became the US Secretary of War during WW2, and relied heavily on the Army SIS team who broke the Japanese diplomatic ‘Purple’ codes, and the US Navy Combat Intelligence Unit who broke JN-25, the principal Japanese Naval ciphers and code n

footnote - Stimson was later credited with having vetoed the idea of including the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto on the list of potential atom bomb targets, because he and his wife had spent their honeymoon there.

Living in the past seems to be  a near guarantee  of failure in warfare .(there must be exceptions but I can't think of anything obvious)

[toucana]

1 hour ago, geordief said:

Living in the past seems to be  a near guarantee  of failure in warfare .(there must be exceptions but I can't think of anything obvious)

"Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it." – George Santayana

[TheVat]

The Friday and Saturday objects were around 40,000 ft, an altitude that gets a lot of monitoring due to being in commercial airspace.  And heightens risk of an accident that would potentially spark war.   I would imagine any intelligence service that deserves the name would terminate that part of the experiment.  

4 hours ago, geordief said:

What is good for the goose is good for the gender.

Female geese are so self-serving.

[NTuft]

On 2/9/2023 at 3:10 PM, MigL said:

The F-35 is a very good interdictor/strike aircraft, but its networking capabilities give it great situational awareness and make it a good BVR ( beyond visual range ) figter also.

Shooting a sidewinder, or any other type of missile, from well below, will destroy the suspended payload, yielding no intelligence.
Better to attck it at similar altitude and taget the balloon.

Yes, and thank you. I need to catch up on the thread -- 
but of course I was joking, a little... hypothetically, Frank Luke continues flying the plane, AEGIS could guide the hook shot:

?

[NTuft]

-1 to 1st Lt post.

On 2/11/2023 at 12:01 AM, exchemist said:

@toucanamentioned that. We know it seems important to them. We don’t know why, though. What does it do that satellites don’t, for instance?

+1 @TheVat's response. Antenna/transceiver in the near-field vs. far-field for a satellite?

On 2/11/2023 at 8:07 AM, iNow said:

[...]

In truth, they’re still watching us right now today. Threads like this, what are people saying and speculating about. Which memes are rising to the top across social media platforms. What commentary is taking hold in chat rooms and engagement channels, which narratives are being pushed by influencers and aggregators. It really never ends.

Two-way street--this is a function of supercomputing power, and the U.S. and PRC lead the world, and are close competitors as far as I know. At least the mass of data is analyzed and distilled before intel assessment I reckon. FBI can hack back TOR layers and are dismissing cases without prejudice to not disclose the method. 

21 hours ago, Genady said:

Another one: Trudeau says unidentified object was shot down over northern Canada | CNN Politics

@Alex_Krycek,
"I want to believe." Tic-tac shape noted. Cf. orb over Mosul.

Edited February 12, 2023 by NTuft

[Genady]

They keep coming: US military shoots down high-altitude object over Lake Huron on Sunday | CNN Politics

[iNow]

The next one gets a free footlong sub