> The only reason to allow these drones/balloons to operate freely is if we already have effective anti-drone measures that we're keeping secret, in order to goad an enemy into a false sense of security -- which the article also considers but then dismisses as unlikely.

My question is what do we gain from showing them we can shoot them down? how much more detailed of info are they getting from these drones that they aren't getting from LEO satellites? Shooting them down just gives whatever opponents test data for getting past our defences when they potentially actually need to in the future when they're actively hostile.

> what do we gain from showing them we can shoot them down

Nothing. But if we can't jam and retrieve, shooting them down is a next best option.

The article explains they could be collecting "extremely high-quality electronic intelligence data on... America's most capable air defense systems... that is very hard to reliably obtain otherwise. These radar emissions, and the datalink communications that go along with them, underpin highly networked counter-air architectures that are unmatched anywhere on earth. By gathering comprehensive electronic intelligence information on these systems, countermeasures and electronic warfare tactics can be developed to disrupt or defeat them."

That's the stuff you don't get from LEO satellites.

I know that the Soviets had radars that were not normally on - they were only on when defending against an incursion or attack. I do not know, but I wouldn't be surprised if the US also had such radars.

If they're here to try to assess our air defense network, then a reasonable response is don't turn it on. Don't turn on the best radars. Don't turn on the data links from the air combat control centers to the air force bases (or to the planes in the air).

Sure, they can see the vanilla stuff better than they can from a satellite. But if the good stuff is off, they don't find out much about it.

You need to turn that stuff on in order to test it though. To run drills and exercises and make sure people are using it correctly and build experience with it. No?

Of course. But you don't need to run those drills while there's a foreign surveillance drone in the neighborhood.

Search and acquisition radars. Or, most of the time, the same radars as always but with a lot more power. But more power => more noise for the neighbours, more heat, less operating time, yada-yada.

> don't turn it on

There is no need to? It was detected long ago and was followed both with radio and visually.

There’s always an imagination that China is better than us at this and from reading between the lines at what the TLAs are able to do they aren’t even close.

I don't think underestimating your opponent has generally proven to be an effective military strategy.

If these spy drones and balloons exist, then you can sure bet they're doing something of value. Militaries don't design and fly these things for the fun of it.

And why are you assuming it's only a problem if they're better than us at it? We could be spying on them even more effectively, but that's not a reason to not prevent them from doing the same to us.

You're making the assumption that the intelligence apparatus of foreign countries is some purely rational actor. You can bet they are doing something of value, but that doesn't make the bet correct.

For all we know, China may have decided that every Baptist church is a possible nuclear launch site and that they all need to be priority #1 for surveillance. Particularly on Wednesday nights when all the folks in the surrounding community come in early in the evening and sometimes don't leave until late at night.

> But aside from that hypothesis, I fail to see why destroying invading military technology would be "exactly what your opponent wants".

You got it. There is no "aside". That is it.

Imagine you want to defeat a big powerful attack dog. You know the dog can only hurt you if it sees you. You send tiny mice towards the dog and you measure carefully how far they get before the dog kills them. If the dog is in the habit of killing every mice it sees then you can check exactly how well it can see, better than an eye-chart. And with that knowledge you can outmanoeuvre the dog.

If the dog chills out and only snaps at the mice which gets too brazen then the dog retained a strategic edge. Using this strategic edge during a real conflict the dog can surprise the attackers when the dog suddenly starts using their faculties to their fullest extent.

Except that's only the case for attack drones.

If these are surveillance drones trying to find weaknesses in our radar and comms then we should be destroying these things as quickly as possible.

I don't know how to respond to you. You just repeated the same thing.

If you do that, you destroy every surveillance drone you detect, then you just shipped your radar's specs to the enemy. Because you can not destroy drones you can not see. So every time the enemy's drone survives they know it is because it was small enough, or far enough, or stealthy enough to not be seen.

If you do that you might as well invite your adversary to the proving ground and currier them the design specifications.

I know this isn't a useful position to have on a discussion board, but I honestly don't think any of us are privy to the required information to even have a useful discussion about this and the whole conversation probably would play as a joke to people who are actually involved in the situation.

That was exactly my thought when I saw this. There is no good move (for the usa) that doesnt show your hand, and no need to play. No one on hn will know the whole story for a long time and by then few will care.

So you develop a new anti-drone measure. Opponent drones comes in, you light up your brand new anti-drone measures, opponent drone gets telemetry, beams it out before it gets blown up. Opponent repeat it enough times, develops counter-measures to your anti-drone measures.

You're now back to square one.

If you deploy this anti-drone measure anywhere else, your opponent now knows how to counter them wherever you deploy them until you find a new way to counter it.

This is exactly what US and Russia did in Cold War I. Probe, see responses, hope that they won't blow you up, develop counter responses. Repeat.