Is this a joke - so it's not a spy balloon? Seems fishy.
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/02/politics/us-tracki…
"US national security officials have constantly warned about Chinese espionage efforts and the balloon’s presence in the US comes at a sensitive moment with Secretary of State Antony Blinken expected to travel to Beijing in the coming days, a significant trip meant to follow up on President Joe Biden’s meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping last year.
Josh Lipsky, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s GeoEconomics Center, said it is clear the US wanted to make China aware that it knew about the balloon before Blinken landed in China.
“It sets the stage for an extraordinarily tense meeting between Blinken and Qin Gang,” Lipsky said, referring to the Chinese foreign minister. “It puts Chinese officials on the backfoot heading into the meetings.”
If it’s on CNN, it must be true.
I needed a good laugh. Thank you.
If the TLAs are saying it's not a spy balloon, then you know it's a spy balloon. Look at how they reacted to a Russian ship off of Hawaii though. And when they come out trying to claim "it's too high to shoot down anyways!", we have air launched anti-satellite missles that you've gloated about and used before dropping a satellite 345 miles in altitude jerks. Not to mention the F15 aircraft that delivers that weapon has a ceiling of FL600, and the F22's that were scrambled have an even higher ceiling of FL650! Either model could just pop off an AMRAAM and that balloon is gone.
And Blinken said he's postponing his trip given the circumstances.
A few more thoughts: The CCP said it "veered off course" and wound up in Montana. Except...that means it either came over the north pole and through Canuckistan who would've known about it's presence. Or across the Pacific North West, where again it's presence would've been known and dealt with. This thing didn't just teleport magically over the ICBM air force base. So many more questions than answers and with this current state of affairs? Not shocked, just disappointed...again...Like the parent who knows their kid is probably going to come home with a failing report card, wants to be proven wrong, but here we go again.
Flipside is that apparently they're taking it more seriously now with more jets and recon aircraft trailing it over NC/SC and a navy salvage recovery ship en route implying they might be going to shoot it down after all. But then it becomes the whole hassle of if they do it in international waters versus US territorial waters, yada yada.
Update 2:
They shot it down.
If anyone believes it’s a weather balloon I got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell ya
Eh
Lol, I actually think it was a weather balloon. So that way, after it was blown up, they can act all innocent and make the USA look like the bad guys for shooting down their innocent weather balloon.
Where was our commander in chief? Asleep?
Actually wouldnt surprise me lol. Im pretty much middle of the road for politics, but feel like this admin has given the most lukewarm response on this incident. I mean a foreign government has invaded our airspace.
All the more reason to bring back manufacturing or at least move it to nation’s that don’t actively plot our downfall.
They've known about it since at least Tuesday, and it was electronically jammed by the US / wasn't posing an imminent danger - sounds like the payload inside the balloon was quite large, why risk shooting it down over civilians/structures when they could just wait for it to go near the ocean.
Now that it’s shot down, the recovery effort begins. All of that debris (3 busloads worth) is going to be picked apart and reverse engineered like the Jawas from Star Wars.
Intelligence says that they were able to electronically jam the balloon during its flight, so most of the intelligence gathering has likely been mitigated. Now I’m interested in the one in South America.
From its flight path and demonstrated ability to maneuver, it’s clearly a sophisticated craft.
Other things China has said:
"Communism totally works"
"Tank man never existed"
"Your mom is an upstanding woman with respectable morals"
So many more I want to add on, but we had that whole speak the truth as fetid as it was that got threads and people yeeted off here a while back, I will hold my tongue.
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