Chinese spy balloon

Did you happen to read the post directly above yours? Rubio says there a twitter pics showing the balloons from Trump's era ...

 

Exclusive: US intel assessment documents Chinese spy balloon incident under Trump

I suspect that even if the evidence of the incursion of Chinese balloons in US airspace that occurred when Trump was in office is declassified and made public you and your fellow Trumpers still wouldn't believe it.

 

Well there you go from over a year ago. Think the nattering nitwits will shut up? LOL.

Let’s face it the Trump admin was a bunch of losers who had no idea what was going on I mean they even let Melanie in to the situation room during intel briefings.

 

that was DoD and if they aren't finding them then it isn't political, it is operational failure and a major hole in our air defense system

this current balloon flew right over one of our stations int he aleutians designed to defend us and nobody saw it. that is a problem.

apparently Canada hasn't been detecting them either

 

So, report from April of 2022, over a year after Trump was out of office, now says that a Chinese's balloon crossed Florida. But all the folks from Trumps admin, some that really don't care for him now, says they were never briefed. We are to believe a CNN reporter from an anonymous military official, that this happened, but no report was done, and no one was notified.
I get that they might have not detected them. Which should scare the hell out of all of us, but how can Trump and his admin be held to anything the same as Biden when nobody knew this happen until after the fact and went back and viewed satellite imagery, I guess?

 

they are refusing to identify how they discovered the previous flights.

Chinese spy balloons under Trump not discovered until after Biden took office | CNN Politics

The official said that the intelligence community is prepared to offer briefings to key Trump administration officials about the Chinese surveillance program, which the Biden administration believes has been deployed in countries across five continents over the last several years.
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CNN reported on Sunday that the Pentagon had briefed Congress of previous Chinese surveillance balloons during the Trump administration that flew near Texas and Florida.

Rep. Michael Waltz confirmed in a statement to CNN that “currently, we understand there were incursions near Florida and Texas, but we don’t have clarity on what kind of systems were on these balloons or if these incursions occurred in territorial waters or overflew land.”

Another Chinese spy balloon also transited the continental US briefly at the beginning of the Biden administration, the senior administration official said. But the balloon that was shot down by the US military on Saturday was unique in both the path it took, down from Alaska and Canada into the US, and the length of time it spent loitering over sensitive missile sites in Montana, officials said

 

CNN is reporting that the Pentagon notified Congress back then. see post above this one

 

In 2022? I don't see anything that they realized it happened during Trump's actual term. It was discovered some time later that they are claiming it happened in his term. Am I wrong in my understanding?

 

Just a guess but I suspect our air defense system is focused on detecting aircraft flying at certain altitudes and velocities. A balloon flying at high altitude at a very slow speed was not among the type of aircraft that our radars were calibrated to detect. Also keep in mind that airships/balloons have very few flat surfaces from radar beams would reflect giving them an inherently stealth capability. Anyone remember when Marcus Rust, an 18-year old German flew his Cessna into Red Square in 1987? He was able to evade detection by the Soviet air defense system, a system intended to protect the city with the most robust air defense system in the world because the system wasn't concerned with slow moving aircraft flying at low altitude. Similarly NORAD wasn't focused on detecting very slow moving balloons flying at very high altitude. Although the recent Chinese balloon was flying at 60,000 feet it's likely that the previous incursions were by balloons flying at higher altitudes.

 

understood. but after previous incursions and documented threat, why has nothing been done to close the hole in the system? Didn't the balloon have a fairly significant payload hanging under it? Shouldn't AI be able to detect it from satellite images if difficult to detect with radar?

 

Incorrect! In the link I posted earlier we tracked the balloon starting on Jan 21 way before it was close to The US.

 

It's also very possible that we let the balloon enter US airspace while simultaneously jamming transmissions from the balloon limiting the ability of the Chinese to actually acquire intelligence while intercepting transmissions from the balloon to determine its capabilities.

 

Umm giving that we saw it from the 21st it’s 100% certain we did.

 

From the linked article:

"White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan also said on Monday that past surveillance balloons were discovered at the beginning of the Biden administration because Biden directed the intelligence community “to increase both our vigilance and the assets that we were deploying to be able to detect Chinese efforts to spy against the United States.”

“Because the intelligence community made this a priority at the direction of President Biden, we enhanced our surveillance of our territorial airspace, we enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect,” Sullivan said.

The question you SHOULD be asking is why Trump didn't ask for increased vigilance to detect Chinese spy operations? It's easy to claim you didn't see anything if you close your eyes.

 

it’s because Trump wasn’t at all interested in doing the job of President and everyone around him knew it.

 

This balloon issue is good as it can show us gaps in our coverage and possible detection issues.

Learning experience.

 

Hmmmmm. So Biden did not know about the first Chinese spy balloon.

>>Previous Chinese surveillance balloon incidents that occurred during the Trump administration and early under the Biden administration were not spotted by NORAD at the time, Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command and U.S. Northern Command, told reporters Monday.

"We did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out," VanHerck said.

VanHerck said that U.S. intelligence made NORAD aware of the threat posed by the surveillance balloons after the fact through "additional means of collection and made us aware of those balloons that were previously approaching North America or transit in North America."<<

..........

VanHerck's acknowledgement that NORAD had not spotted those incursions would help explain why several former senior Trump to previous brief incursions denied having been aware of any balloon incursions.


Chinese surveillance balloons during Trump, early Biden admin not spotted by NORAD, commander says - ABC News (go.com)

 

My concern is that China sees this an opportunity to do the exact same thing.

 

I can't believe we have a thread devolving into finding someone to blame. Is this all that US democracy has become? Yeah, there have been earlier spy balloons during other administrations. So what? That doesn't mean all incursions should be treated the same or had a similar impact. This balloon was shot down and is now in the hands of US intelligence services for review and assessment. I don't think China is now in possession of some great information that will lead to the ability for them to make a first strike on the US and take over the world. China is playing the long game.

 

While Navy recovery teams continue their search, debris from the downed balloon beginning to wash ashore ...