I saw it from my car today while driving before I knew it was going to be in my area. It was very visible to the naked eye. It was large enough that the perspective made it seem a lot lower altitude than it actually was.

I think it was at 60,000 ft. It’s got to be pretty damn big to be so obvious to casual ground observers.

It will be very interesting to see, to the extent that details are released to the public, the parameters and specs of this thing.

Not sure what the CCP is thinking. Are they simply trying to instigate a response with such a brazen display?

As a data point: previously spotted surveillance blimps in the Asia Pacific theatre use a clear balloon. Either China wanted to see if it would be detected, or is woefully behind the US equivalents.

equivalents such as: the U2 spyplane, the BlackBird and all of the satellites they have. Oh and all the GlobalHawks.

U2: 1955 BlackBird: 1964 GlobalHawk: 1998

I wonder where the cutting edge is today?

Its not like USA have never violated other nations air space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_aerial_reconnais... but I guess we quit doing it to China https://www.nytimes.com/1971/07/29/archives/us-spy-flights-o...

Indeed, this kind of thing used to happen half a century ago before the invention of spy satellites and before Gary Powers got shot down over the Soviet Union. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident

Even the types of arguments made for this kind of thing are the same.

> Initially, American authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose a few days later after the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases.

Claiming "weather research" is basically one of the oldest lies on the books you can make which kind of concretes the fact that it wasn't for weather research.

And until a couple of years ago, we also allowed it.

    >The Treaty on Open Skies establishes a program of unarmed aerial surveillance flights over the entire territory of its participants. The treaty is designed to enhance mutual understanding and confidence by giving all participants, regardless of size, a direct role in gathering information about military forces and activities of concern to them.
    >[...]
    >On 22 November 2020, United States official sources [...] announced that the six-month period was over and the U.S. was no longer a party to the Treaty.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_on_Open_Skies

Important Note: China was never part of the treaty

To me it seems like it could also be a very cheeky response to the US declassifying all those UFO sightings and going "well, we really don't know what this is. Could be from China."

I am equally puzzled. But the recent aggressive statement by China [1] makes me think they are testing Biden's resolve. If you fly something in a foreign country's airspace, you don't get to complain that it has been shot down, particularly if it's just hardware. It looks like some sort of provocation to see how confrontational the US gets beyond cheap speech on TV. And I can't help suspecting that what made the US wait so long to shoot it is indecisiveness. It flew over huge areas of empty fields, it certainly isn't safety.

[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/chinese-sp...

>It flew over huge areas of empty fields, it certainly isn't safety.

Ok, but having it drop into water should increase the chance to retrieve less damaged parts to investigate then. I'd call this thoughtful, not indecivise.

Water will behave like concrete to an object of the size and weight of a car dropping at high speed (which seems to be the payload minus the solar panels). You can just see what happened to planes that crashed into water head on.

And they are claiming it was for safety purposes.

Pictures from the ground showed structures like solar panels. If anything, the panels would act as sails and slow the fall and impact into the water.

Even if they had the strength, it would rotate to minimize air resistance.

If it was built as a balloon, none of those panels have any structure to support significant wind loading (balloons above 40k feet feel zero appreciable wind). They would come apart like confetti a few seconds into free fall.

Russia frequently has military jets head for the UK, as I understand it just to test reaction time. (E.g. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/raf-ukraine-... as a search result, I haven't read)

I assume this is something similar, just more to assess what the response is than how quick a known response is.

But to be fair, this sort of game is going on since the cold war in both directions.

Sure, I didn't mean to be 'unfair' or to make too much of it (it hits the news every time, as though it's at all likely it would've been a genuine threat) - just to offer another example of something I assume is similar in motive.

When I first heard of the balloon I thought it was brilliant. I am always amused at relatively cheap ideas that cost your opponent a lot. I figured this would cost the U.S. a lot. Even the President might waste 20 minutes with 15 highly paid experts being briefed on the balloon. It sounds like I was wrong about that. News reports stated the President was receiving regular ballon briefings.

I'm sure resources were diverted to get close video of the payload. Rooms full of people were tasked to analyze whether object 47 was a camera and if so what type of lens it was fitted with and what were its capabilities. Could object 117 be used to inject colored smoke into lower altitude air streams? What effect might that have on our already reduced chicken population?

How much did th U.S. spend to shoot this thing down, or even just to make the decision whether to shoot it down?

If we take the names out of the story, it might look different to U.S. fans. If one country could spend, say, $5000 on a toy project that would cause a $5000000 response, that seems like a great strategy. For instance, Ukraine would love to spend $5000 on the edge of Crimea that would be this distracting to Russia.

Real sneaky spy stuff. I wonder what's the angle of US institutions for pushing this story when the spying is obviously happening from satellites, not huge weather balloons visible from the ground.