> Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false. It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 countries across 5 continents.
... which strikes me as odd; we (the USA) ain't got nothin floating in the upper atmosphere in asia? or are they pinning their squirm on "surveillance" and how that gets defined?
The USA prefers to use space instead for our spying. There are treaties that make it less likely to cause an incident. This is why we have space planes and recon satellites. We also fly over international waters collecting signals intelligence using planes like the Growler.
The USA may fly stuff over China, but it will probably be a balloon from some University or NOAA. Also it will probably have an ADS-B transponder or some sort of GPS tracking with notifications to airspace controllers. We don't really need spy balloons. As China is learning, they are more just a way to piss other countries off without much payoff. Especially since the end of the Open Skies Treaty.
IMO this is all a PR exercise to build momentum against China and urge the US to begin some kind of trade and/or cold war, or even worse, military action around Taiwan.
A week or so ahead of all this a US general was saber rattling[1] about war with China, it just seems convenient that in close succession we have this balloon crisis.
I just don't buy any of it. I've been lied to by governments so many times it's hard not to see anything as a big propaganda campaign now.
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[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 23.3 ms ] thread> Any claim that the US government operates surveillance balloons over the PRC is false. It is China that has a high-altitude surveillance balloon program for intelligence collection, that it has used to violate the sovereignty of the US and over 40 countries across 5 continents.
... which strikes me as odd; we (the USA) ain't got nothin floating in the upper atmosphere in asia? or are they pinning their squirm on "surveillance" and how that gets defined?
The USA may fly stuff over China, but it will probably be a balloon from some University or NOAA. Also it will probably have an ADS-B transponder or some sort of GPS tracking with notifications to airspace controllers. We don't really need spy balloons. As China is learning, they are more just a way to piss other countries off without much payoff. Especially since the end of the Open Skies Treaty.
A week or so ahead of all this a US general was saber rattling[1] about war with China, it just seems convenient that in close succession we have this balloon crisis.
I just don't buy any of it. I've been lied to by governments so many times it's hard not to see anything as a big propaganda campaign now.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/02/us-general-gut...