Joe Biden may have ordered the US Air Force to shoot down a hobbyist group’s small balloon by mistake, it has emerged.
It came as US officials said on Friday that the military has finished efforts to recover the remnants of the large balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, with analysis of the debris so far reinforcing conclusions that it was a Chinese spy balloon.
The officials also said the search for the small airborne object that was shot down over Lake Huron has stopped, and nothing has been recovered. The US and Canada have also failed to recover any debris so far from the other two objects which were shot down over the Yukon and northern Alaska.
But there is another balloon that has not yet been accounted for.
The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB), a group based in Illinois, say one of their pico balloons went “missing in action” on February 11.
A member of the NIBBB said on Friday: “When I heard that [it was a] silver object with a payload attached to it, that could be one of our balloons.”
Back a few days I recall reading that the defence type people had reacted to the big Chinee balloons by turning up the sensitivity of the watch systems. So, obviously, they were finding more things as the sensitivity of the system was turned up.
Shrug and haha, right?
But we can go further. You know all this stuff about how terrible air pollution is these days? The levels of grims in our waters? The shockers about this and that found in soil? Much – not all but much – of this is about finding stuff in ppb and some even in ppts. When up to about 25 years ago we never measured anything beyond parts per million.
We’ve increased the sensitivity of the detection systems so we’re finding more. Shrug. And at least some of what folk are saying we should spend billions on cleaning up is, in fact, the bottlecap balloon that we’re spending half a million on a missile to blow up.
It’s Sowell all over again – compared to what?
It is also the “something must be done” syndrome.
Having let one balloon take pictures if all their Minuteman silos, the govt decides to “get tough” and suddenly finds the sky full of balloons !
Oh Nena, we did not listen to you and now look what’s happened.
Well yes. I’d always understood that because of the great flying saucer—–oops weather balloon fuss so many years ago, the Yanks had turned down the sensitivity of their detection systems.
So when they turn it up again, lo and behold, more balloons!!
For the Lake Huron object, delete ‘half a million’ and insert ‘a million’.
The first Sidewinder failed to guide.
Still – only taxpayers’ money, eh, Joe?
A nice comment I saw online said that from the hobbyists’ viewpoint it could be regarded as a good thing for street cred. After all, which has more cachet? “My balloon got stuck in a tree” or “my balloon was taken out by a Sidewinder misile”?
Also, the Chinese probably weren’t lying.
“Who throws a shoe?”, asked Austin Powers. Might as well ask “who sends a balloon?”
Trying to spy on America with massive stratospheric balloons you can’t steer is the plot to an episode of M.A.S.H., not a plausible threat. China already has plenty of spy satellites and probably thousands of human agents living in the US, so the only reason to add balloons to the party would be to deliberately fuck with the USAF.
That’s possible, but seems more likely to me that it actually was an atmospheric weather station, the initial response of the Americans was the correct one, and the subsequent political and media circus is what turned this into a real life Ealing comedy.
2023: Nena releases new song: “99 Red Barroons”
It feels to me like a classic hysteria of the American 50s and 60s. Rather sweet.
– Also, the Chinese probably weren’t lying.
Just Lol.
– Trying to spy on America with massive stratospheric balloons you can’t steer is the plot to an episode of M.A.S.H., not a plausible threat.
Even the probably-not-lying CCP said their balloon was partially steerable; it can make use of favourable winds by changing altitude and it has propellers and a rudder. It can loiter to some degree.
– China already has plenty of spy satellites and probably thousands of human agents living in the US, so the only reason to add balloons to the party would be to deliberately fuck with the USAF.
China also has spy ships and cyber snooping. Apparently spying benefits from multiple, non-exclusive vectors. Sensor balloons are way cheaper than satellites and more effective at signals intelligence, especially when your target lets you get away with it as the Americans have done up until now (and would have done again if civies hadn’t noticed the thing). Having an enemy blasé about large payload balloons in their stratosphere is probably the most useful asset of all – a nuke at the right stratospheric height is the perfect blinding EMP attack, and if you can just float it right in there . . .
PJF – Even the probably-not-lying CCP said their balloon was partially steerable; it can make use of favourable winds by changing altitude and it has propellers and a rudder. It can loiter to some degree.
Yeah, I heard about that. ‘Partially steerable’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting in this theory. It looked about as steerable as a rubber dinghy caught in some rapids.
But if we’ve convinced ourselves Fu Manchu sending EMP nuke balloons is a realistic possibility, spy balloons seem pedestrian by comparison.
It’s all a bit too silly for my money.
What did the CCP spy balloon see over North Dakota? Some nuclear silos with the lids on.
It reminds me of the time the KGB got hold of details of our nuclear fall out shelters – the tube map of London.
It’s perfectly reasonable to suppose that the primary purpose of the Chinese balloons was meteorological. But it’s also perfectly reasonable to suppose that the Chinese wouldn’t waste the opportunity to piggyback some sigint kit onto the platform. One of China’s problems in intelligence gathering is that it lacks the global capabilities of the ‘five eyes’ alliance.
But if we’ve convinced ourselves Fu Manchu sending EMP nuke balloons is a realistic possibility, spy balloons seem pedestrian by comparison.
Says the man who thinks the CIA bombing Nordstream is a dead cert in the bag.
If you can’t accept that the honest communists would be so stupid as to waste money on useless, redundant clown technology, you’ll no doubt slurp up the (old) news that the filthy, evil Americans are fully committed:
https://test.nstxl.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/S2MARTS-C4ISR-SCOS-RFS.pdf
“The Department of Defense (DOD) desires to enhance strategic mission capabilities by exploring Machine Learning (ML) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to enhance autonomous stratospheric technology. Since 2006, the DOD has invested in stratospheric platforms, sensor technologies, and payloads. Developmental testing in the last five years has been focused on operationalizing the stratosphere by demonstrating a higher Operational Tempo (OPTEMPO) with persistent, longduration stratospheric balloons and solar Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). These platforms offer the opportunity to enhance the mission for persistent operations in non-permissive environments.”
If the floating nuke EMP has occurred to me you can be sure it has occurred to the militaries, even if they haven’t posted it on the internet. One of the limitations of a nuke EMP has always been that the launch of the weapon by ICBM largely negates its use; the enemy has already responded before it goes off. Can you think of a better way to get one over a target than by a silly balloon that the enemy is complacent about? Other than, maybe, a solar stealth plane the enemy can’t see?
Your attitude reminds me of the haughty giggles from Steven Fry & co about Japanese fire balloons in WWII, ridiculous paper contraptions as a feeble response against massed formations of American bombers. Neglecting that what the Japs (who had a rather nasty germ warfare program) were really after was feedback on routing and launch sites. Fortunately in those days the media was able to keep sufficiently (tho’ not entirely) quiet and the enemy concluded their attack vector wasn’t viable.
PJF – I think the balloon threat is overinflated.
Apart from the operational difficulties and limitations of something with virtually no control surfaces, that’s pretty much completely at the mercy of the weather, there’s quite a few major practical and doctrinal problems with the notion of putting nuclear warheads on something that takes weeks to get vaguely near its intended target.
Why wouldn’t you just use submarines, ships, planes, or any of the other better ways to deliver a nuke?
Stephen Fry was right to pooh pooh Jap fire balloons. They proved to be militarily irrelevant in WW2 (though perhaps not as big a waste of resources as the V1 and V2). I think the US is making the same strategic mistake the IJN did, btw. China is a sleeping giant and we’d be fools to get drawn into a war against their industrial production capacity. It’s their factories we should be wary of, not their balloons.
Taken from one of my slides on misinformation…
Duff Beer is 99.9% pure (0.1% impurities)
1 g/l (0.1%) is a few seconds in one hour Salt in seawater
1 mg/l (ppm) is a few seconds in one month Natural nutrients in freshwater
1 µg/l (ppb) is a few seconds in a lifetime Natural trace elements in freshwater e.g Cu and Zn
1 ng/l (ppt) is a few seconds in 1000 centuries Pesticides and pharmaceuticals in urban rivers
1 pg/l (ppq) is a few seconds in 100 million yrs Dioxins in urban rivers
Analytical detection limits improve by ca 1000 time every decade
Steve – thankfully, I think the balloon threat just got popped.
Why wouldn’t you just use submarines, ships, planes, or any of the other better ways to deliver a nuke?
See comment above. Those are expected and planned for vectors. And now the balloon vector is expected and should get planned for. There will now be a quiet stratosphere arms race, which the Chinese will lose.
Stephen Fry was right to pooh pooh Jap fire balloons.
No, he was a sneering ignoramus. The fire balloons were trial runs. If the US had publicised the impacts the Japs would have been able to refine their techniques to be able to target general urban areas. Then the ordnance would have been replaced with something more interesting. Still not war changing but then most military operations aren’t, in isolation.
– China is a sleeping giant . . .
Some say, but I’m more leaning towards the “China’s fucked” viewpoint. As with Russia, it’s the fuckedness that makes them dangerous in the short to medium term.
PJF – what do you reckon would’ve happened if the Japs had perfected the intercontinental arson balloon?
I think their Chinese lanterns would’ve been easily defeated by gusts of wind, men with buckets, and probably a bunch of asbestos tiles. Certainly wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference to the outcome of the war, which was never seriously in doubt after Pearl Harbor. (The brilliant Yank victory at Midway certainly shortened the war tho).
Remember – strategic bombing had a devil of a time disrupting German industries, and that was with the benefit of actual planes that could carry slightly more than a firecracker.
The Japs made two fatal errors in misunderestimating their enemy:
1) They picked on an enemy that could mobilise a lot more men and materiel than they could
2) They thought the roundeyes were too fat and happy to fight the kind of savage war WW2 in the Pacific ended up being
We’ll find out if the Chinee are up for a fight in the next few years, but we already know they’d easily outproduce us. (Because they easily outproduce us.) Cold War doctrine assumed WW3 would quickly go nuclear, but what if it doesn’t? What if it’s another 5 year knock-down, blood-in-the-gutters war of industrial attrition?
That’s why the Japs never stood a chance. They could never hope to replace their losses while the United States could churn out warships, tanks and planes for fun, and had no shortage of strong young patriotic farmboys to feed to the meat grinder. 2023’s United States no longer has those advantages.
History doesn’t repeat, but it does do crappy reboots. (This one is the sequel to Pixar’s Up)
I was thinking of a magic trick and the use of distraction, the question being who is trying to distract us and what from
China doesn’t outproduce the West.
It makes more than *individual* members of NATO, and then mostly only mass produced cheap stuff.
It also has a LOT more enemies, and no worthwhile friends.
If nothing else, this episode has demonstrated that no matter how stupid Joe Biden may be, the U.S. military establish is right there in lockstep with him.
I’m starting to suspect that a war between Russia and the U.S. would be close to an even match.
Chester – “mass produced cheap stuff” is exactly what you need to win wars.
I might also add, I don’t think any country in history has ever managed to win a war while deliberately shrinking its own energy base. It’s usually your enemies who want to do that to you.
. . . what do you reckon would’ve happened if the Japs had perfected the intercontinental arson balloon?
It would have been converted into an intercontinental germ warfare balloon.
. . . which was never seriously in doubt after Pearl Harbor.
Hindsight. The relative industrial capacity was fairly well known at the time and yet war was still considered worth the gamble by the Japs, and the outcome much doubted by all. Signals intelligence was at least as important as industry in WWII; we had a distinct advantage by knowing all the Axis strategy and most of their tactics.
. . . strategic bombing had a devil of a time disrupting German industries . . .
Nonsense, it was massively disrupted. The fact they kept output fairly level isn’t an indication of lack of bombing effectiveness, it’s an indication of how much more production they’d have managed if we hadn’t disrupted them. Possibly a tide turning level. That’s why they had over a million men and vast materiel dedicated to anti-aircraft.
– We’ll find out if the Chinee are up for a fight in the next few years, but we already know they’d easily outproduce us.
How? They have the same basic problem Imperial Japan faced – to support their industry they need to import most of their energy and raw materials. Unlike Imperial Japan, they don’t have a sizable deep water navy to secure those resources; only a few of their ships can sail more than a few hundred miles from shore. The US, with a little help from their friends, can shut down Chinese industry within a month without going near China.
Dennis:
. . . no matter how stupid Joe Biden may be, the U.S. military establish is right there in lockstep with him.
I was astonished to see that twat Miley announcing that Russia has already lost the war in Ukraine. Not so much his predictive powers (it’s a reasonable guess), just the inappropriateness of a general throwing those kinds of political pronouncements around. Stick to the facts and leave that shit to the Sec Def, you fat goon.
– I’m starting to suspect that a war between Russia and the U.S. would be close to an even match.
Russia massively outguns the US on tosspot, corrupt military leadership, so the US still wins hands down (nuclear or conventional).
Philip,
But you need a man om the ground to spot the difference between the nuclear-vulnerable cut and cover lines and the deep tunneled lines that might protect you from a 5o megaton direct hit.
Several Eastern euro metros have even deeper lines, for the obvious reasons.
Incidentally I guess I agree with Steve that nordstream was a US job.
I mean, seriously, who else? NATO knows every time a dolphin farts in that part of the baltic. Who else could have dunnit?
And we have POTUS on camera saying he’d do it not long before, er, he did it.
I mean, seriously, who else?
The chief non-Russian candidate is Poland. They have the underwater military expertise to do it; it was effectively in their waters; and they were seriously motivated in seeing both Germany not kowtow to Putin (“there, you are no longer reliant on Russian gas”) and Russia being fucked over some more. They fucking hate the Russians and they’re badass enough.
If it had been the yanks they’d have completed the job (one of the pipelines is still available) and it would have been leaked by some bloke-in-a-frock admiral by now. This latest Seymour Kersch bullshit about Norway being involved is preposterous. The backbone of that country’s economy relies on undersea pipelines; they ain’t gonna be the one upsetting Russia in that direction.
Based on their almost complete passivity over what is effectively an act of war, I still primarily suspect the Russians. Seriously, if someone else blew up their pipeline they’d have been absolutely ballistic hopping mad and they’d have retaliated by now.
And we have POTUS on camera saying he’d do it not long before, er, he did it.
He said he’d end Nordstream 2, not blow up Nordstreams 1 and 2. Nordstream 2 was the big illustrious project about to come online. He had waived Trump’s sanctions on the project and was probably talking about reinstating them. And if he was making an open threat to destroy them if Russia invaded, why take so long to do it? All of a sudden we’re supposed to take Biden seriously?
@Steve, February 18, 2023 at 10:57 am
Ballon tech is very advanced now. Steerable, altitude change, hover, solar power, thrusters…
The CCP balloon was really an airship
I do think that, if the US was going to shoot down that balloon, they should have done it over land so they could easily check whether there was any real spyware in the thing. I suspect there was a real screaming match over what to do about it.
As for the Japanese attack, the UK and US had put sanctions on the Japs which, among other things, cut off their oil. The Japs could either surrender or attack. Where I think they were in error was to attack the US as well as the UK. After all, Britain was involved in a major war in Europe, and since the US hadn’t attacked them previously, there was a reasonable chance they wouldn’t do so if they attacked the UK.
Of course, Adolf was an even bigger idiot not to keep his mouth shut. Since the US was at war with Japan, which had opened with a major disaster for them, there was an excellent chance that they wouldn’t declare war on Germany as well.
Must admit I wouldn’t send nuke-armed balloons floating around the sky, just to use as an EMP weapon. Seems a bit too uncertain for me. But perhaps I’m just a wimp!!
Are we supposed to assume that one particular statement was a unique moment of lucidity?
Personally, I still think the shit Russian maintenance leading to catastrophic “oops” is the likeliest candidate. With the Poles currently in second place due to the “cui bono” scale.
I’m not sure I understand how poor maintenance causes explosions to go off in different pipelines sufficiently distant from each other at exactly the same time?
“Cui bono”
The US certainly believe they gain from all of this, economically and strategically – a proxy war against Russia with no American bodies on the line, breaking what had been increasing economic cooperation between western Europe and Russia, etc. Some of their senior politicians are not exactly being shy about saying it either.
And – purely for the sake of argument – if Poland did *do the deed*, then I struggle to believe they did it without US direction, approval or support – be that tacitly or directly. Hence, to my eye, it would be the same thing in practice.
IIRC there was an hour or so delay between explosions, which to my mind supports the cascading fuckup theory. Were all explosions simultaneous then I would be more likely to believe sabotage.
BiW
Interesting.
When the 3 later explosions took place (17 hours after the 1st one that was to the south), I was led to believe that the Swedes had logged it as a single explosive event (~2 on the Richter)? Maybe I read it incorrectly? The distance between the 3 explosions at that point (on three separate NS1 and NS2 pipes) was presumably enough to rule out immediate cascade, but close enough to have responded at the same time to a sonar buoy dropped overhead?
The Swedes said they found evidence of explosives at the incident sites, so (assuming it’s not more lies) the “Russian maintenance” theory is sunk. Which is a shame because it had the least WWIII threat and the most comedy value. Life is rarely that generous.
. . . if Poland did *do the deed*, then I struggle to believe they did it without US direction, approval or support – be that tacitly or directly. Hence, to my eye, it would be the same thing in practice.
I suspect the Poles could have done it without the prior knowledge of the US but I doubt they could keep it secret from them afterwards. A subset of Poles, maybe. And that’s another possibility – that this wasn’t a nation state operation.
Russia’s passivity is still very suss.
Most likely sabotage then. Shame, if only for the lack of lols as you say.