The Ongoing Chinese Spy Balloon-Unknown Aerial Objects Thread

[Webster]

The Guardian: Pentagon says it is monitoring Chinese spy balloon spotted flying over US

The Pentagon has said it is tracking a Chinese spy balloon flying over the United States but had decided against shooting it down for safety reasons.

Defence officials said the balloon has been watched for a couple days since it entered US airspace, flying at high altitude. It has been monitored by several methods including manned aircraft, and has most recently been tracked crossing over Montana, where the US has some of its silo-based nuclear missiles. As a precaution, flights out of Billings Logan airport were suspended on Wednesday. “The balloon is currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

“Instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years. Once the balloon was detected, the US government acted immediately to protect against the collection of sensitive information.”

Pentagon officials said there was “high confidence” that it was Chinese, and that Joe Biden was briefed on the situation. The president asked for military options, but it was decided that there was too great a danger of debris harming people on the ground were it to be shot down.

Another factor in the decision was that, although it was flying over sensitive nuclear sites in Montana, it did not appear to be gathering any intelligence that could not be collected from satellites, so it was judged to be of little benefit to the Chinese.

Military experts say that use of high-altitude balloons is likely to increase over the coming years. They are much cheaper than spy satellites, are hard to spot by radar and difficult to shoot down, sometimes lingering for days after they have been punctured. They can “steer” by changing altitudes, using computers to calculate how to use winds going in different directions at different layers of the atmosphere. As well as surveillance, they could also carry bombs, in times of conflict.

In 2019, the US military used up to 25 experimental solar-powered high-altitude balloons to conduct wide-area surveillance tests across six midwestern states. The balloons were equipped with hi-tech radars designed to simultaneously track many individual vehicles day or night, through any kind of weather, and were intended to be used to monitor drug trafficking and potential homeland security threats.

 

[Nebulous]

Seems like a waste of their time. Like the article said, they could see all the same stuff through satellites.

 

[Webster]

Seems like a waste of their time. Like the article said, they could see all the same stuff through satellites.

Or they could ask their friend Eric Swalwell to tell his Chinese girlfriend to knock off the spying...

Eric Swalwell denies wrongdoing in Chinese spy scandal

Rep. Eric Swalwell is denying he did anything wrong after a suspected Chinese spy reportedly got close to him during his 2014 reelection campaign.

www.foxnews.com

 

[Webster]

(USA Today) WASHINGTON – Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed an imminent trip to China because a Chinese surveillance balloon drifting over the U.S. is a "clear violation" of sovereignty and international law, Biden administration officials said Friday.

Blinken will reschedule the trip when conditions are right, officials said. Although the trip had not been officially announced, Blinken had been set to leave Friday night, a day after the Pentagon announced it had spotted what it identified as a spy balloon flying over the U.S.

China disputed that characterization, calling it a “civilian airship” that blew off course. Later Friday, the Pentagon acknowledged reports of a second balloon flying over Latin America. "We now assess it is another Chinese surveillance balloon,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said in a statement, declining to offer further information such as where it was spotted.

Some lawmakers criticized the Biden administration for how it has handled the situation, and for not taking stronger action against China. Sen. John Tester, a Montana Democrat and chairman of the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee, said his committee will hold a hearing on the matter. “China’s actions are a clear threat to those values and to America’s national security, and I’m demanding answers from the Biden Administration," he said in a statement. "I will be pulling people before my committee to get real answers on how this happened, and how we can prevent it from ever happening again.”

The airship over the U.S. is used for meteorological and other research, the Chinese government said in a statement in which it expressed regret for the balloon's “unintended entry” into U.S. airspace.

U.S. officials stand by their assessment. “We know that it’s a surveillance balloon,” Ryder later told reporters.

The balloon seen over U.S. air space is likely to remain over the United States for a few days, Ryder said. Shooting down the airship poses too high a risk to people and property from debris, two U.S. officials said Friday. Other options are being explored, according to the officials who were not authorized to speak publicly.

The incident comes at a time of rising tension between the superpowers. "It’s very difficult for the U.S. to take a position which shows restraint; it’s going to require the Chinese to do so as well," Scott Kennedy, an expert on China at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said in a recent public discussion about Blinken's trip and the state of relations between the nations. "I think for both foreign policy reasons and domestic political reasons, we are at a place we were not at 10 years ago."

 

[Webster]

Well we finally shot the fucker down over the weekend....

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) 'High-altitude object' taken down over Alaska, says Kirby
John Kirby confirmed that a second “high-altitude object” was taken down over Alaska, during today’s press briefing.

Kirby confirmed that the Department of Defense was tracking the flying object, which could be a second balloon, and that the object posed a “reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight”.

Kirby said that Biden ordered the military to “down” the object within the last hour.

---

More details are emerging on the high-altitude object that was taken down within the last hour.

Kirby confirmed that Biden ordered the object be taken down at the advice of Pentagon leaders and that a fighter aircraft was used for the operation.

The object is being called an “object” as officials are unsure of who owns it. Kirby added that officials are unsure if the object is state owned or private owned, and that the purpose of the object has not been determined. Kirby also noted that the object is “much smaller” than the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down last week.

The object that was taken down within the house is “roughly the size of a car”, said Kirby.

---

Kirby also added that the the object was at 40,000 ft, noting that the object could have posed a threat to civilian aircrafts.

Kirby also said that the object did not appear to have maneuvering capabilities, compared to the Chinese surveillance balloon, and was largely steered by the wind.

Unlike the object that was shot down, the Chinese surveillance balloon was on a flight path that took it over sensitive military sites, added Kirby.

 

[Nebulous]

Aliens!

 

[Webster]

Aliens!

 

[Webster]

 

[Webster]

@Nebulous, I went ahead and merged a couple of the spy balloon threads into one large stickied thread.

 

[Nebulous]

@Nebulous, I went ahead and merged a couple of the spy balloon threads into one large stickied thread.

Thank you for your fine community service.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) A year ago almost exactly, in what can only be described as a coincidence driven by news demands and certainly no foreknowledge of events to come, the Guardian’s Adam Gabbatt took a close look at the issue of UFOs in America’s skies. You could say recent events have given the article new relevance: Last year was a breakthrough time for UFOs, as a landmark government report prompted the possibility of extraterrestrial visitors to finally be taken seriously by everyone from senators, to a former president, to the Pentagon. But 2022 could be even more profound, experts say, as the clamor for UFO disclosure and discovery continues to grow, and as new scientific projects bring us closer than ever to – potentially – discovering non-Earth life.

In June, the Pentagon released a highly anticipated report on unexplained aerial phenomena (UAP), the now preferred nomenclature by some in the extraterrestrial community, which found more than 140 instances of UAPs that could not be explained.

The report came after leaked military footage documented seemingly otherworldly happenings in the sky, and after testimony from navy pilots helped to somewhat destigmatize a subject that has long been defined by conspiracy theories and dubious sightings.

All in all, the newly sincere approach to UFOs has longtime sky-watchers excited.

“I’m confident that 2022 is going to be a seismic year for UFOs,” said Nick Pope, who spent the early 1990s investigating UFOs for the British ministry of defence.

 

[Webster]

Spy balloons, unknown aerial objects, UFO's...

(The Guardian) White House experts to study UFOs
The White House will have its experts sit down to try and understand the unknown objects discovered flying over North America, John Kirby announces.

“The president, through his national security adviser, has today directed an interagency team to study the broader policy implications for detection, analysis, and disposition of unidentified aerial objects that pose either safety or security risks,” the national security council spokesman said.

 

[Nebulous]

Spy balloons, unknown aerial objects, UFO's...

Welcome to 2023!

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) We still don’t know what the three objects American planes shot down over the continent in the past days were, though the White House said they were not extraterrestrial in nature. Senators from both parties are clamoring for details, and will receive a classified briefing on the topic today. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Richard Luscombe reports the navy has managed to recover quite a bit of a Chinese spy balloon shot down earlier this month off South Carolina’s coast: The US military has recovered “significant debris” from a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon shot down this month, the Pentagon has said, after the White House claimed China had been operating a high-altitude balloon program spying on the US and its allies for many years.

The US Northern Command said in a statement: “Crews have been able to recover significant debris from the site, including all of the priority sensor and electronics pieces identified as well as large sections of the structure.”

The balloon, shot down off the coast of South Carolina on 4 February, was the first of a series of mysterious objects shot down by the US military over an eight-day period in North American airspace.

---

One of the UFOs shot down by an American jet appeared to be a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it,” CNN reports, citing a memo from the defense department to lawmakers.

The object “subsequently slowly descended” into Lake Huron after being struck by a missile, according to the memo, which also said the object had also crossed near “US sensitive sites”.

Another detail from the document: the first missile fired at the object missed, and it’s not clear where it ended up.

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) Biden says downed UFOs likely not for surveillance
Joe Biden says the intelligence services haven’t determined the purpose of the three objects American planes shot down in recent days, but there’s no sign they were used for surveillance or connected to China.

“Our intelligence community is still assessing all three incidences. They’re reporting to me daily and will continue the urgent efforts to do so, and I will communicate that to the Congress,” Biden said in an address from the White House.

“We don’t yet know exactly what these three objects were, but nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program, or they were surveillance vehicles from other any other country. The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were most likely balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions, studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”

---

Biden says the government is coming up with practices to better detect and deal with unknown aerial objects in the wake of the recent shootdowns over North America.

“I’ve directed my team to come back to me with sharper rules for how we will deal with these unidentified objects moving forward, distinguishing between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not,” Biden said.

“But make no mistake: if any object presents a threat to the safety, security of the American people, I will take it down. I’ll be sharing with Congress these classified policy parameters when they’re completed, and they’ll remain classified so we don’t give our roadmap to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”

He also addressed why the United States found itself suddenly responding to three unidentified objects in its airspace just days after shooting down a confirmed Chinese spy balloon.

“We don’t have any evidence that there has been a sudden increase in the number of objects in the sky. We’re now just seeing more of them, partially because the steps we’ve taken to increase our radars, to narrow our radars, and we have to keep adapting our approach to dealing with these challenges.”

 

[Webster]

(The Guardian) US finishes recovering Chinese balloon
American authorities have retrieved all the wreckage of the Chinese spy balloon a US fighter jet shot down off South Carolina’s coast, the Associated Press reports, which sparked a diplomatic incident with Beijing and kicked off a unusual spate of military action against unidentified objects in North American skies.

According to the AP, “Officials said the US believes that Navy, Coast Guard and FBI personnel collected all of the balloon debris off the ocean floor. US Northern Command said in a statement that the recovery operations ended Thursday and that final pieces are on their way to the FBI lab in Virginia for analysis. It said air and maritime restrictions off South Carolina have been lifted.”

The military shot the Chinese balloon down on 4 February when it was over the Atlantic Ocean, after it had traversed the continental United States. Defense officials argued that if the balloon was downed over land – as Republicans had called for – its wreckage could harm people or property below.

In the days that followed, American jets shot down three more objects flying over the United States and Canada. The objects have yet to be retrieved or identified, but on Thursday, Joe Biden said there’s no evidence yet that they were connected with China, or used for surveillance.

 

[Gizmo]

Like I told @PGen98 it wasn't a spy balloon it was me in a UFO coming from the future. Us future people are great at tech.

 

[Webster]

Like I told @PGen98 it wasn't a spy balloon it was me in a UFO coming from the future. Us future people are great at tech.

But of course...