Posted on 02/14/2023 4:27:30 AM PST by Blueflag
I am posting this article, which isn't new news in order to illustrate two important facts: (1) the USAF and USSF have the means to both intercept telemetry from foreign intelligence assets AND the ability to stop said assets from 'phoning home.' (2) despite the junk news and pontificating by 'media experts' I am confident our military took the steps necessary to protect our nation.
In my professional life I work closely with USAF and USSF personnel and despite idiocy from political leadership, I know the Commands, Airmen and Guardians who work in the area of 'intel' are skilled and competent.
There are two quotes in the body of the article I want to highlight, and I am confident they are true and accurate. See below.
"I would also note that while we took all necessary steps to protect against the PRC surveillance balloon's collection of sensitive information, the surveillance balloon's overflight of U.S. territory was of intelligence value to us,"
AND
"Long before the shoot down, U.S. officials took steps to protect against the balloon's collection of sensitive information, mitigating its intelligence value to the Chinese."
Note also these assets were first tracked off the Aleutians and as they re-entered US airspace from Canada, or Canadia if you prefer.
Do NOT expect real details any time soon. Just don't.
(Excerpt) Read more at spaceforce.mil ...
An excerpt follows.
U.S. officials first detected the balloon and its payload on January 28 when it entered U.S. airspace near the Aleutian Islands. The balloon traversed Alaska, Canada and re-entered U.S. airspace over Idaho. "President Biden asked the military to present options and on Wednesday President Biden gave his authorization to take down the Chinese surveillance balloon as soon as the mission could be accomplished without undue risk to us civilians under the balloon's path," said a senior defense official speaking on background. "Military commanders determined that there was undue risk of debris causing harm to civilians while the balloon was overland."
An F-22 Raptor fighter from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, fired one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at the balloon.
The balloon fell approximately six miles off the coast in about 47 feet of water. No one was hurt.
Why didn’t they shoot it down over the Aleutians? Or over Montana? Why did they let it accumulate intelligence all the frikken way across the country?
As long as it was done “safely”. Why are military spokesmen sounding so gay lately?
Had it been shot down over Alaska, Canadia (hat tip to Karine Jean-Pierre), or Montana, it might have hurt a moose or a prairie dog.
our people are not with us
Did you read the article including the quotes I highlighted?
In the intel arena there is value in ‘observing’ an active foreign asset.
Furthermore I am confident certain tools were employed to prevent it from collecting and transferring quality intel.
Thirdly, if you’d like to collect and analyze several million dollars worth of PRC intel gear, it’ll be a lot more intact after a water impact than hitting the ground. Also there IS the possibility of damage and injury across the debris field, which includes rocket parts and the warhead rods.
The administration handled this poorly. The military did not.
Your OPINION may vary, but the facts do not.
“Furthermore I am confident certain tools were employed to prevent it from collecting and transferring quality intel.”
_____________________________________________________
What I understand was the order was given to these sites being surveilled to go silent so there would be no communications to be gathered.
That’s a far cry from preventing it from collecting and transferring quality intel. The spy balloon was obviously still able to receive and transmit data as it was still able to be steered/maneuvered.
I wish I had you level of faith in our military and intelligence community, but we have Generals who are bombastic that they would inform China if our Commander-in-Chief was going to “get out of hand.”
If you are on the inside, you are aware of the capabilities of the platforms which can be mounted on an orbiting, proximal U-2.
Sure the ground stations could go into a different EMCON status, but realistically ELINT and SIGINT satellites can capture RF from the ground.
It’ll be really interesting to the intel-weenies who get to crawl all over the photos, telemetry and physical guts of this thing.
And yes, flag/general officers are politicians. And we know what that means.
While the military may still be somewhat competent, I would be absolutely shocked if they made the effort to jam any and all signals this thing was sending to its controllers as that would have involved signal jamming on an large scale as well as potentially attempting to interfere with non rf communication methods as well
The article is filled with self-serving claims interspersed with a factoid here and there. Another example of spin, created at the direction of political leadership. Disinformation and ass covering - well known tactics of the bureaucracy. Gotta keep those defense dollars flowing. Nice try though.
Theatre-wide jamming would have been ‘spectacular’ eh?
Foot stomping here, but there may or may not be assets that can ‘interrupt’ or ‘spoof’ the link from the “object” to the various relay birds.
We will never know, most likely, exactly what was done and how.
From my experiences of working with the .mil folks, I am pretty confident they handled this well. Civilians? No.
I agree. I worked for Air Force NRO programs 62 to 94 off and on
The least likely solution would be something to ‘jam’ the transmission, be it RF or another manner, of a moving object in the stratosphere for at least 3+ thousand miles. However, the installed package did apparently have both RF receiving capabilities as well as solar cells, the two weakest avenues to provide an overwhelming energy source to disable the onboard systems.
Other options get a bit more fanciful, but fully shielded systems are such a rarity that they’d be options for also disabling the onboard systems. Easiest to take out the radios or batteries.
The biggest problem Americans have right now is not being able to believe anything that we are told by our own government.
I can do the same thing. Give me a lounge chair, 100 balloons, a .22 rifle and a 5th of Woodford Reserve. Save a few million.
Hah!
Heck of a powder load to get that .22 bullet to reach 10 miles up ;-)
That’s FOUR days.
If the balloon was 200 ft tall like reported, there’s no way it wasn’t detected until Jan 28th.
U.S. officials first detected the balloon and its payload on January 28 when it entered U.S. airspace near the Aleutian Islands.
Ya never know when the object was first logged. This is the information released.
“Ya never know when the object was first logged”
Exactly. But all the news reports and gov’t spokespeople would like the country to believe that they just saw it on Jan. 28th and that’s just impossible to believe. The head of NORAD himself admitted that they screwed up.
We are told it was a surveillance balloon, but the Chinese have tested balloons as weapons platforms. Could this balloon have also been a weapons test? The balloon covered the agricultural heartland of the United States and easily could have been spreading bio weapons aimed at the nations food supply.
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