One of the most technically challenging things about reconnaissance satellites is dealing with the high speed at which the satellite moves over the target. A balloon flies much lower and vastly more slowly. It can loiter over an area, sucking in electronic signals and taking photographs with extremely high fidelity.

I don’t think the Chinese meant for this balloon to cross the United States. I believe they were testing it for use over other countries or perhaps for use during wartime. Their apology was way too quick for this to have been anything other than a genuine accident.

Did they actually apologize? I thought all they said is that it was a weather balloon. Regardless, I'm very interested in what hardware was actually on this thing. Hopefully the public gets a summary of what USN pulls up during recovery.

“… the uncharacteristic speed and contrition of China’s statement as indications that it was probably a genuine error…”

https://www.economist.com/china/2023/02/03/how-a-balloon-bur...

They put out a statement a few hours ago whining that it was shot down so I wouldn't take that "apology" for much.

Can you share a link to the statement?

The "how we use data" popup, on the article about surveillance, was awkward

The route is almost impossible to be a coincidence though

It has to be along a jet stream, so you would be correct. It isn’t coincidentally along that jet stream, since it’s a balloon, and maneuverability is extreme limited to going up and down to catch different streams.

Wouldn't that be much more convenient to just use those passenger planes?

...but a satellite is a stable platform, and a balloon is anything but.

After your "weighing paint" comment I think you should probably stop talking.

But according to some comment in this thread, it has happened several times before.

If true, that's unlikely to be a mistake.

Turnaround/prototyping. Getting a sensor onto a spy sat is a multi-year process of testing and validating. But a new balloon can probably be built and flown in a matter of weeks. So any country trying to learn how to spy from above might want to build up the relevant corporate knowledge using balloons.

Why did they need to test it over the United States though? If the purpose was prototyping you’d think they could have done that locally

Who is to say they already have? And they felt it was time to put the thing to use.

Testing acceptability?

Probably also why such a dramatic response from the US.

Before satillites flew over enemies no one was too sure if they'd be attacked immediately (they weren't).

Chinese doesn't need to learn how to spy or build up knowledge, and they surely have plenty of satellites at this point.

Significantly closer to the ground, so can capture better resolution pictures. If browsing Google Earth, the high-resolution data around cities originates from airplanes, not satellites.

Hey does that mean we can soon buy high-res, balloon-altitude imagery at low-priced China-rates?

We can already do it better with drones, but those don't fly high enough to be used this way

LiDAR, plus it could be a dry run for more advanced balloons with offensive capabilities.

The precursor to a strategic balloon arms race that it chills the blood to contemplate. All it takes is one push of the button and, 14 days later, death comes drifting in from above.

I know it's a joke and I laughed, however now consider that large balloons are very cheap compared to anything that can reach 60,000 feet, or even a single TOW anti-tank missile provided to Ukraine.

Now imagine having to deal with 10 million balloons launched at the same time with various capabilities.

Imagine 9 million decoy balloons, 900,000 cheap instrumented balloons, 100,000 weaponized balloons. Mix in some differing sizes. Go nuts with it.

Good luck defending.

It's 11 miles vs 350+ miles. Certainly you have the ability to get dramatically better imaging than from a satellite.

Radiometrics - being closer than orbit and having a much longer linger time drastically increases the signal count to any gamma spectrum gear that might be on board.

Whether or not that reveals any non usual background signal of interest is an interesting ponder.

It can pick up other strategically useful info than just photographs such as radio comms and relay it back to home via satelite.

The one advantage it really has over satellites is how long it can stay on station and still be relatively near to the target. I'd personally guess it's a signals intelligence platform rather than anything telescopic.