Why wouldn't we prioritize simply acquiring the thing for analysis of what sort of optics and other capabilities they're floating through our air-space?
Who cares what "limited additive value" we presume it to have over satellites.
It's a huge psyops value, and a huge opportunity to demonstrate we can trivially acquire and reverse such items if they'd like to send us more of their state of the art surveillance gadgets to take apart.
By not doing so we imply that's not something we're capable of. Not a good look at all.
I don’t think it’s trivial though. The slow speed makes use of aircraft tricky. The thing may have countermeasures, like a self-destruct mechanism for if it detects anything approaching it. Perhaps not an explosive self-destruct (flying explosives over a foreign country would be brazen indeed), but perhaps something electronic that scuttles the interesting equipment. And finally, perhaps the response to its presence is precisely what its owners have sent it to observe. An up-close streaming webcam view of a US Air Force operation surely has some value.
Because there's a good chance America's three letter agencies have that figured out already anyway and the thing is technically ten years out of date.
Conducting some potentially risky and costly shootdown of a balloon over US territory seems out of proportion.
Scrambling F-22s to intercept something harmless we understand so deeply makes no sense.
> Conducting some potentially risky and costly shootdown of a balloon over US territory seems out of proportion.
I didn't say anything about shooting it down. But if that's the US's only option, it speaks volumes to how incapable we are of handling such a threat without undue risk to ourselves. Embarrassing if so.
One hypothesis: because we got high-resolution photographs of it, identified it, and we already have comprehensive intelligence and possibly one or more captured examples of the model, so we don’t expect there to be any particular intelligence value of getting another one.
> By not doing so we imply that’s not something we’re capable of.
Or not something we need to do.
Similar balloons appear to have been photographed in Hawaii, India (Andamans), Japan. A different type was recently photographed over the Philippines and there is a comment about use over Guam.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinas-spy-balloon-ove... https://twitter.com/steffanwatkins/status/162136299808111001...
According to a Pentagon source, the balloon offers "limited additive value" over satellites.
More interesting excerpts:
>The incident, which occurred in the last two days, marked the latest aggressive Chinese intelligence gathering maneuvers in recent years. U.S. defense officials said the balloon loitered over the U.S. longer than in previous similar incidents, which made this “different.”
<snip>
> Mr. Biden was presented with options and proposed that the high-altitude balloon be shot down after it was spotted and reported by civilians in a commercial airliner, U.S. officials said. The Pentagon feared civilian casualties, and opted not to shoot down the balloon, U.S. officials said.
<snip>
> The balloon “was traveling at an altitude well above the commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground,” Gen. Ryder added.
<snip>
> The balloon was observed flying over Montana after flying over Canada and the Aleutian Islands, one U.S. official said. It was large enough for its debris to cause damage, and while the U.S. considered shooting it down over a sparsely populated area of Montana, the U.S. opted to not shoot it down. It also flew over sensitive sites, a senior defense official told reporters Thursday.