U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by rationalist on Saturday February 04, 2023 @04:24PM (#34658460)

Is there any proof that it wasn't discovered earlier? It's difficult to prove a negative. It could have been discovered earlier but monitored differently and then when it became news, monitored overtly for different reasons.

If it isn't an immediate threat that you have to stop, why let an adversary know your capabilities (that you can detect them).

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by mrtksn on Saturday February 04, 2023 @04:31PM (#34658531)

Well, these were reported by civilians over landlocked states and there's no indication that the balloons were spotted earlier.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by rationalist on Saturday February 04, 2023 @04:33PM (#34658557)

The military is unlikely to report their surveillance activities to the media.

There was no overt indication that the balloons were spotted earlier.

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by sandworm101 on Saturday February 04, 2023 @07:18PM (#34660048)

Except the statements from Canada that are very suggestive.

https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/20...

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by tristanj on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:52PM (#34659810)

>there's no indication that the balloons were spotted earlier

No, the balloon was tracked when it entered Alaska on Jan 28 https://abc7news.com/where-the-chinese-surveillance-balloon-...

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by mrtksn on Saturday February 04, 2023 @06:54PM (#34659829)

Thanks!

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Re:U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance ... by TheOtherHobbes on Saturday February 04, 2023 @07:30PM (#34660139)

There was a thread on Twitter - which I didn't bookmark - which suggested there was a DoD statement that they'd tracked a number of these back at least as far as Trump's term.

And there were suggestions they might also have been used elsewhere, not just in the US/Canada.

As for what intel they could collect - a payload of that size would be equivalent to an airliner full of ELINT systems, rather like the US Rivet series. So that would include possible decryption of comms, and potentially precision mapping, analysis of traffic patterns, tests of local backdoor access, and so on.

Not all of that is easily done by satellite.

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