85 comments

    1. @Stephen Kershaw Traitor Joe didn’t shoot down Chinas balloon until the mission was complete!!! Guess that’s why China gave $30 million for the Biden Center! It’s all becoming clear!! Traitor Joe is a traitor AND gutless!!!!!

    2. Depends on your strategy.. you dont know everything the desk of the president knows.. china could have done that with permission to vette a putin lie..

    3. @crushnev nikita no, the ballon was sent to test our air defenses. China already has spy satellites looking at all our missle silos

    4. In Russia, they created hypersonic missiles to deliver a nuclear charge to the United States, but it turns out that this can be done in balloons😆

    1. It is 12,192 meters (40,000 feet)
      Or 50,000 feet which is 15,240 meters
      but the Balloon flew at 18,288 meters or 60,000 feet.
      Sneaky Chinese got us by 3,048 meters or 10,000 feet or 3.05 kilometers or 1.89 miles.
      Joe Biden – A day Late amd a Dollar Short like always.

  1. Thanks China for letting us know that there’s a gap in that altitude. Now we can address it. This will just make our defense even better.

    1. I vote instead of filling the “spy balloon gap” that we develop lasers we can fire at high altitude balloons. We’d probably be able to recover more if we can carefully control how much we blow holes in it 😉
      China should demand that it’s “private” weather balloons mount transponders on them like, well, EVERYTHING ELSE that flies at altitude?

  2. FYI: The main wreckage is only 6 miles off the coast and the ocean is only a couple hundred feet deep there. The steep Continental Shelf drop off does not occur until around roughly the 35 mile mark off the coast in that region.
    Whatever is there will be relatively easily recovered by the US Navy.

    1. @christopher smith
      A spy balloon crossed not only Alaska, but entered the US again through Montana, rode the jetstream undetected by neither aviator nor enthusiast…then, after all it could enjoy of the purple mountain majesties and the fruited fucking plains for a goddamn week, hit Myrtle Beach before sending its last data cache THREE TIMES BEFORE?

      No. No, of course not. You’d have to be a duck-lipped simp for B!den to believe the Lefty mockingbird media wouldn’t devour that story every meal for months and sh!t-spray it daily into your wide open cakehole!

      “Uh, we can brief youse now if you want. Yeah. T’ree! I swear ta God, I saw t’ree spy balloons! I mean, naw, I didn’t report it or nothin’. But on my muddah’s life, I swear this happened t’ree times! Youse can axe anybody…except, well, y’know, the DNI. Or the Secretary of State. On. My. Muddah’s. Life! T’ree spy balloons. Hand ta God.”

    2. @Jack Riddance sleepy joe was told not to shoot it down yet so the wreckage could be maintained in the best condition in an isolated area where no chinese spies can recover said wreckage

  3. It was a balloon therapy for stress

    In this stress reduction exercise, the client will write down negative thoughts and feelings on a small strip of paper. Once these thoughts are placed on the inside of a balloon you get the client to try to burst the balloon.

  4. They should be able to trace the route of that balloon exactly with the use of radar. Did it show up on Airport radar on at the control tower? I hope so. Did the airline’s Pilots mention it at all. How can these things be going all over America when we’re supposed to be so well protected by the trillion dollars we spend every year?

    1. Naaaaaaah…. you see..???
      Chinese technology is awesome.
      It took off from China as a weather balloon but became a spy balloon when it entered American territory. Like a Transformer. !!
      👇👇👇
      The threat was so serious that the Americans had to use a half million dollar missile to blow it up after it has left the American landmass.
      🤣🤣🤣
      The paranoid US will next :
      👉start shooting down birds accusing them of being Chinese dive bombers, or the fish being organic mini submarines.
      👉start shooting Chinese tourists with binoculars walking around touristic places in Usa..
      Indeed…
      The depths of stupidity goes to a whole new level that its laughable. !!
      Let’s go Brandon..!!!
      🤣🤣🤣

    2. @Jody
      🤣🤣🤣
      It was reported extensively in western media that Blinken had a date in China.
      In actual fact, there wasn’t any. It was a made-up by US-influenced and paid propaganda.
      And now, the balloon was merely an excuse to call it off.
      🤣🤣🤣
      Believe it or not…
      You will see another ridiculously gimcrack drama out from the US DoD.
      🤣🤣🤣

    1. This job is too easy for SEAL’s. The Navy has salvage divers that are the most appropriate group for this operation.

    2. @Mike Massino that was a shot at seals lol 😆 there is a running joke that they all want to write a book.

  5. Thought it was carrying something the size of 3 city’s busses they said! It looks like just a small frame lol.

    1. I think the payload fell off after crashing. The field reporter said they had a crane and trucks standing by. That sounds like they are expecting a large payload to me

    2. Once the balloon failed and the payload started falling the solar panels started breaking up among other things. You could see parts of the panels shinning as they fell.

    1. I’m sure they’ve already published other high definitino images, but that one has got that sweet HDR and they seem to have converted it into SDR for once–which they usually wouldn’t do because that makes them look oversaturated.

  6. I don’t know anything about this stuff but I wonder – do these balloons have capabilities of spying that satellites don’t? I can’t imagine what the sensors would pick up at ~60k feet that satellites from space can’t see. But again, I know nothing of this it’s just my thought.

    1. Mate ,You can bring up your back yard with your computer by satalite imagining by clicking on world and asking your request . . Do you think we are not censored ??? . Have a nice day . Andrej Kondisenko Cairns Australia

    2. Slower movement than a satellite surely allows it to take pictures over a longer period of time? Shows a higher degree of activity that it’s keep an eye on?

    3. I’m sure that China got a lot of great pics of roads and bridges and backyard barbecues. No one could ever have suspected that picture could be taken from the sky!

    4. @Matt Nichols
      *Comparable or better camera? No need as distance and geometry mean a lesser imager works just as well. Plus no need to make it nearly as radiation hardened as for space vehicles.
      *Stability?: Frame stacking using digital x-y shifting and rotation algorithms (same as astronomers have used for last 20 yrs.)
      *Fogging?: “Good enough” thermal design and a small heater (same as used by amateur astronomers)

  7. “domain awareness gap” – simply put, ” we missed it😆😆😆”. the most powerful country in the world missed to determine and act timely and appropriately on several occasions until this last incident. what a shame.

  8. I think the US military not only waited for it to be safe to avoid civilian injuries or property damage, but also intended to shoot it down in the shallowest water possible for the purpose of recovery. Also, let’s keep in mind what shooting it down over land vs water would do – destroy more components on impact vs water. That’s not what you want when you’re going to examine something after it is shot down. You don’t want it falling 60,000 feet and bursting into pieces on the ground, you want pieces intact. In water, that’s possible.

    1. @Uruz7Laevatein .. it was not free falling it was going much slower.. a skydiver is falling around 160 Mph normally,. this balloon was, due to all the stuff behind it, was going maybe 80 to 90 mph.. when it hit water… less damage then hitting land. Plus less people ,houses, cars, or roadways.

    2. @Carl Newton terminal velocity of objects varies greatly based on aerodynamics/ air resistance. A big draggy flapping sheet is going to slow it way way down.

      In the pictures posted today you can see the plastic braces in the satellite structure were still mostly in tact. Probably hit the water at less than 60 miles an hr which basically guarantees that the US got every bit they need or wanted. Big L for the CCP. But they are certainly used to that

    3. The excuse people give for a failure is incomprehensible. They could have shoot it down in Alaska, so what if you injure a Polar Bear. Damn!!!

  9. I’ve got to hand it to the Pentagon wordsmiths : Awareness Gap. In other words, we didn’t see them. That’s like me saying I had an awareness gap when I ran a red light. Too funny.

    1. In Ugledar, when Polish mercenaries tried to kill the retreating Ukrainian soldiers, the Ukrainians returned fire and shot the Polish mercenaries! Polish mercenaries are shooting Ukrainians,, so that Ukrainians would not retreat!! The Poles are a barrage squad, like in prison!!:%

    2. No, that’s a false equivalent. That’s like the cops saying they didn’t see you run the light but knew you did when you fled the scene and got in accident in the intersection later proved on camera. You knew you ran it, china knew they flew it for surveil, etc. The aware gap is from the detection side, not the offender to use as a defense.

  10. The “expert”lost me when he called it a dirigible, which it most certainly wasn’t. It was simply a helium balloon with a solar powered bunch of instrumentation. One report said it had propellers which, if true, could have given it some limited maneuverability. Hopefully all the shrapnel from the Sidewinder and the impact with the ocean left something useful to examine.

  11. There must have been a way to bring it down in one piece, like shoot it down with a few aircraft bullets (not a missile) and let it slowly lose altitude.

    1. Isosceles, That is why they should have done exactly that over land.
      A sparsely populated area like Montana/Nebraska would have been
      ideal. That way components would not have been drenched in salt-
      soaked seawater.

    1. Yes. Now that they have discovered that it is possible to take photos of the ground from up in the air they may choose not to store top secret things outside in the open air !

  12. Excellent remarks from J. Clapper. Much more is likely to be learned from the reverse engineering of this balloon and it’s payload, most of which is likely to be recovered given the shallow depth. Hopefully it won’t be too damaged by the missile intercept and the impact on the sea surface.

    1. That is not the point. It’s mission and purpose was accomplished for the CCP. They have seen and recorded what they intended to see and found out what they needed to know.

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