Even more likely, why would they not jam anything the balloon was trying to transmit.
So much of the public assumes this thing was just talking freely to Beijing. In reality, it probably wasn't getting anything out.
Jamming the thing would not have been that easy. You'd have to point your jammer at the receiver. If it was a satellite, you'd have to track the satellite; not sure if our jamming infrastructure supports that. Remember, it should be along the same vector as the balloon-satellite link. The other possibility, as I've mentioned in a past post, is that it was "phoning home"....using the US cell network. Probably could detect that it was doing that; interfering with it would again be problematic since you'd be taking down huge swaths of ordinary civilian communications. They could probably determine what user ID was being used and get the cell companies to inhibit it. Though, if *I* were designing such a system, I'd send it up with hundreds of "numbers" and use a different one for each transmission.
It’s possible that some things may be well shielded in lateral directions, and located a fair distance from public roads, but more exposed vertically. And the airspace might be restricted or prohibited, limiting what a wandering Cherokee could do.
But I won’t speculate further.
That's my job. Or it used to be, before I retired....
The thought that the sites might be shielded horizontally but not vertically is intriguing. However, it does seem a bit of a stretch that the people involved with approving nuclear sites would approve such an approach. "Why are the pigeons on the roof glowing?"
Ironically, though, this harks back to my first post-Air Force job: Working on the original "Shell game" basing system for the Peacekeeper missile (then called the MX). They were going to build hundreds of launch sites around a big racetrack, and use a special truck to deposit the actual missile in one of the sites, moving it occasionally. They had mass simulators, etc. so the truck would still look like it was fully loaded when it didn't have a missile.
But a system that could detect the radiation from the warheads carried by the actual missile? Might have worked.
Of course, we never built the system. But fixed sites like we're talking about don't spring up overnight. Satellite imagery will note the facilities being built, and unusual features such as heavy shielding. Classic intelligence work would uncover the contractors, and gain insight into the design of the facility. The balloon would only be useful if we WERE running some sort of "shell game". But if that's the case, now that the balloon is splashed, what prevents them from moving the "pea" to one of the other sites?
Finally, I am reminded of the kerfuffle in Australia, recently, when a very tiny, very HOT radioactive source "fell off a truck" somewhere along a 1000-km road. If I recall, they used vehicle-based sensors to find it. Seems like aircraft would have been better, but (of course) a helicopter might have blown the thing off the road.
Ron Wanttaja
