Chinese Spy Balloon Flying Over the U.S.

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Llewtrah381 said:
LOL - are you serious?!? They ARE illegal under the right circumstances. Impeachable, even.

And even if believed, they’re still lies.

And I can see this is pointless. And, frankly, scary, when people can’t tell the moral difference.
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I'm against lies, I thought you could tell, but my point was different, and I guess you missed that. Just like the real question of course is: why are lies wrong?

I was trying to point to the idea that this is all about morality, and that goes to not whether, but which morality?
 
wanttaja said:
Me and some of my fellow space-engineer retirees had our weekly Zoom meeting today, and the balloon was a prime item for discussion. One of the guys came up with a *perfect* explanation of what the balloon was doing.

That wasn't a solar array on the bottom of the balloon: It was a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).
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Assuming that to be correct, then how on earth did the previous ones go undetected?
 
RyanShort1 said:
Assuming that to be correct, then how on earth did the previous ones go undetected?
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You don't think that just maybe we had sensors looking at the balloon and analyzing any transmissions to or from that array? Do you really think that if anyone in the DoD suspected that important sensitive data was being collected and transmitted back to China that that balloon would have popped long before it did? What nation with an ounce of sense would commit an act of war by floating a BALLOON over a superpower where it could easily be shot down and it's sensor array analyzed? I know it doesn't sound sexy but in all probability this was a weather balloon. Sometimes the obvious answer is also the correct answer.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
LOL - are you serious?!? They ARE illegal under the right circumstances. Impeachable, even.

And even if believed, they’re still lies.

And I can see this is pointless. And, frankly, scary, when people can’t tell the moral difference.
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Who gets to determine truth?

IIRC, Galileo was imprisoned for a “lie” that later proved to be true.

We have recently had speech suppressed because it was “untrue,” “misleading,” “promoting an agenda,” and it also later turned out to be true.

I don’t think we need a Minister of Truth.
 
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Lindberg said:
You only see where I pointed out that one part of his post was incorrect.
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Because that was all you wrote.
Lindberg said:
In my experience, people who say they're all for free speech, "but...," actually aren't.
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I don't know anyone who wants totally free speech. The question is where to draw the line. I generally like to err on the side of more freedom. If nothing else, I know who provides good information and who is a BS artist.
 
Half Fast said:
Who gets to determine truth?

IIRC, Galileo was imprisoned for a “lie” that later proved to be true.
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It wasn't a "lie". It was suspicion of heresy. Heresy is an opinion contrary to religious doctrine.

Half Fast said:
We have recently had speech suppressed because it was “untrue,” “misleading,” “promoting an agenda,” and it also later turned out to be true.

I don’t think we need a Minister of Truth.
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What speech was suppressed that turned out to be true?
 
Witmo said:
You don't think that just maybe we had sensors looking at the balloon and analyzing any transmissions to or from that array? Do you really think that if anyone in the DoD suspected that important sensitive data was being collected and transmitted back to China that that balloon would have popped long before it did? What nation with an ounce of sense would commit an act of war by floating a BALLOON over a superpower where it could easily be shot down and it's sensor array analyzed? I know it doesn't sound sexy but in all probability this was a weather balloon. Sometimes the obvious answer is also the correct answer.
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I'm not sure that matches up with this article.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/military-chinese-spy-balloon-00081371
 
Cap'n Jack said:
It wasn't a "lie". It was suspicion of heresy. Heresy is an opinion contrary to religious doctrine.
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It was said to be a lie, but it wasn’t. The heresy was stating that the earth moved around the sun, which it does. That went against what the Church said was truth.

You ducked the question. Who gets to define “truth?”
 
Half Fast said:
It was said to be a lie, but it wasn’t. The heresy was stating that the earth moved around the sun, which it does. That went against what the Church said was truth.
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Who said it was a lie? The charge was "vehement suspicion of heresy"

Half Fast said:
You ducked the question. Who gets to define “truth?”
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Damnyankees, of course. I did ask you what speech was being suppressed that turned out to be true.
 
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Witmo said:
Do you really think that if anyone in the DoD suspected that important sensitive data was being collected and transmitted back to China that that balloon would have popped long before it did?
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I'd bet a few locations probably broadcasted fake data with old encryption.
 
Llewtrah381 said:
LOL - are you serious?!? They ARE illegal under the right circumstances. Impeachable, even.

And even if believed, they’re still lies.

And I can see this is pointless. And, frankly, scary, when people can’t tell the moral difference.
Click to expand...

So much of this comes down to intention.

A misguided hack who doesn't know their ass from their elbow regurgitating XYZ "thoughts" because they believe it's true isn't the same as the hack who knows they're lying but does it simply because "free speech is protected".

The former is an ignorant savage. The latter might be able to fly under the cover of "free speech" insofar as their recitation of BS doesn't cause harm to others. But once the lies snowball into something bigger, resulting in negative externalities spread to others -- congratulations -- you just unlocked a whole new level of deserved scrutiny.

And in the end you're going to have to answer to God (if you believe in such a thing). And if you do, you're going to have to explain why you thought it was such a great idea to be such a deep well of lies and misinformation. And I doubt the answer that earns you passage beyond the Pearly Gates is "free speech is protected". Just my $0.02.
 
wanttaja said:
Me and some of my fellow space-engineer retirees had our weekly Zoom meeting today, and the balloon was a prime item for discussion. One of the guys came up with a *perfect* explanation of what the balloon was doing.

That wasn't a solar array on the bottom of the balloon: It was a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).
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I thought about that, but scanning the ground with a radar wouldn’t make sense if you wanted to be unobserved or if you wanted to claim it was “just a weather balloon.” Passive sensing seems more logical.

Beats me. Maybe we’ll get to read about it in the history books after WWIII is over. Of course we’ll have to learn to read Chinese....
 
Half Fast said:
I thought about that, but scanning the ground with a radar wouldn’t make sense if you wanted to be unobserved or if you wanted to claim it was “just a weather balloon.” Passive sensing seems more logical.
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But...who is observing?

If you're painting the ground with a radar beam from a balloon over the US, who is going to detect you? Do we have assets scanning DC to daylight 24/7 over the US?

I really don't think we do. We have plenty of satellite assets that might be able to detect the activity, but Federal law severely restricts how much we can use them in the US itself.

Once something was suspected, I am sure the DOD could put together plenty of terrestrial and aerial assets to attempt to detect what was going on. There are also provisions in the law that allows use of such systems in the US under specific conditions. But routine, random searches? No.

I'm not that familiar with SAR, but *could* it be done passively? Have a satellite transmit the signal, let the balloon collect the reflections, like a bistatic search?

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Me and some of my fellow space-engineer retirees had our weekly Zoom meeting today, and the balloon was a prime item for discussion. One of the guys came up with a *perfect* explanation of what the balloon was doing.

That wasn't a solar array on the bottom of the balloon: It was a Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR).

That snaps EVERYTHING in place. Running a SAR at 60,000 feet vs. a satellite at 150 miles gives you better resolution. Toodling along in a 15 knot wind at 600 is much better than shooting by at 18,000 MPH 150 miles up.

What's more, you *can't* do it from the ground. Even better, it's difficult to do covertly from a modified GA aircraft; not only do you need a lot of power, but you'd need a phased array antenna across the bottom of the airplane that'd attract a lot of attention.

What would you do with radar mapping of the surface down to centimeters? Perhaps finding buried cables...such as the USAF might use for backup C&C of missile operations.

An argument against this is the waviness and uneven lines of the array seen in the picture shot from Montana. However, that was taken through ~60,000 feet of atmosphere. It's quite possible the distortion was caused by the atmosphere, and the array itself was straight.

Where's the solar array then? Could just be on the opposite side of the panels for the SAR. Or on the very top of the envelope, probably the best place for them.

It's an interesting theory....

One of my friends has a relative that works for Worldview, a company that builds high-altitude balloons. Much smaller than the Chinese balloon, but sounds like it could do similar missions.

Ron Wanttaja
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Interesting theory, but way off base on this one.
 
wanttaja said:
I'm not that familiar with SAR, but *could* it be done passively? Have a satellite transmit the signal, let the balloon collect the reflections, like a bistatic search?
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In theory, it could be done, but remember that the "A" in "SAR is aperture. Remember that the angular resolution is approximated by ɵ= λ/D, where λ is the wavelength if the light (or RADAR), and D is the aperture diameter. The balloon is moving slowly, so the aperture is small for a given period of time. Remember that the "S" in "SAR" is "synthetic", caused by moving your receiver to make a larger effective aperture than what can be carried by a plane, satellite, or whatever.

I used to teach this stuff at Woods Hole, but anyone can make claims about education and experience, so although using microscopy terms, here's a reference about aperture size and resolution from my employer:
https://www.photometrics.com/learn/microscopy-basics/resolution-and-numerical-aperture

However, it is a clever idea that you posted, they would do better by using a plane with just a receiver flying around while a satellite transmits. They would get a larger aperture because the plane is faster. They might not even need to use their satellite- just use our own SiriusXM, Dish Network, GPS, or any number of other satellites. It would look normal and no one would notice. In fact, those satellites might make a good method for detecting stealthy objects that scatter the RADAR instead of reflecting it back to the receiver. Just have ground receivers looking for scattered satellite transmissions.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
They might not even need to use their satellite- just use our own SiriusXM, Dish Network, GPS, or any number of other satellites. It would look normal and no one would notice.
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Interesting thought. We used passive RF sensors in some instances to image the ground for navigation in adverse weather and GPS-denied environments. But the resolution tends to be poor compared to IR or visible imagery. Would the Chinese gain much intel that way? I guess they could be creating terrain maps for future use in navigation.
 
Half Fast said:
Interesting thought. We used passive RF sensors in some instances to image the ground for navigation in adverse weather and GPS-denied environments. But the resolution tends to be poor compared to IR or visible imagery.
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With SAR, the resolution is still limited by the wavelength used- look up Rayleigh criterion. I don't know if you were doing a type of SAR, but if not, the resolution would be lower. What wavelength were you receiving? Whatever it was had sufficient resolution for your needs. IR and visible light has a much higher wavelength and so will have higher resolution.

Half Fast said:
Would the Chinese gain much intel that way? I guess they could be creating terrain maps for future use in navigation.
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That's assuming they were gathering intel. None of us know that at this time. For terrain, they can just just get digital maps and charts from any number of sources sufficient for navigation and if needed, reverse engineer the data format. I have the world downloaded into ForeFlight, but I can only see them via Foreflight. Someone who cares enough to want the data can access it through other means.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
With SAR, the resolution is still limited by the wavelength used- look up Rayleigh criterion. I don't know if you were doing a type of SAR, but if not, the resolution would be lower. What wavelength were you receiving? Whatever it was had sufficient resolution for your needs. IR and visible light has a much higher wavelength and so will have higher resolution.
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Can’t discuss specifics, but you know the range of wavelengths for MMW and microwave you and can make some guesses. And of course, even LW IR (8-12 um) is a much much shorter wavelength and will have proportionally better resolution.

Passive RF is good for seeing large geological features like a bridge over a river or a harbor, which made it useful for navigating into the correct region. It isn’t good enough for end-game targeting in most instances. But if you need to fly above clouds for a long distance, it’s a very acceptable nav solution.

It works best if you have RF terrain maps to use, and you do need to spend time collecting lots of RF data in the correct wavelength to train the system what a lake or town look like in an RF image. It could be that the Chinese were doing that sort of data collection. I know we collected lots of RF terrain data in different geographies all over the world to build up our database and tune the system.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
For terrain, they can just just get digital maps and charts from any number of sources sufficient for navigation and if needed, reverse engineer the data format.
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It’s really not that simple. You need RF imagery for the system to correlate to. You can’t just give it a FF terrain map.
 
Cap'n Jack said:
However, it is a clever idea that you posted, they would do better by using a plane with just a receiver flying around while a satellite transmits. They would get a larger aperture because the plane is faster. They might not even need to use their satellite- just use our own SiriusXM, Dish Network, GPS, or any number of other satellites. It would look normal and no one would notice. In fact, those satellites might make a good method for detecting stealthy objects that scatter the RADAR instead of reflecting it back to the receiver. Just have ground receivers looking for scattered satellite transmissions.
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Neat stuff, thanks. It's funny you mentioned using it to find stealthy objects, because I got the idea of using a bistatic search from the 1997 near-future Science Fiction novel "Choosers of the Slain", by James H. Cobb. In it, the bad guys try to locate a US stealth destroyer using an aircraft-based bistatic search.

The book is dated, but is a great read with one of the best sea-combat finales I've read. It's old enough that the choice of name for the destroyer is, uhh, kind of ironic. At least it *is* named after a pilot....

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
.... As it is, the US will emphasize balloon detection and interception, making it less possible a balloon attack will occur unchallenged and making it a less-useful attack method.

Ron Wanttaja
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Yes, for sure. But perhaps it will be done with resources that would otherwise be available in the South China Sea? Maybe that's their point.
 
wanttaja said:
Neat stuff, thanks. It's funny you mentioned using it to find stealthy objects, because I got the idea of using a bistatic search from the 1997 near-future Science Fiction novel "Choosers of the Slain", by James H. Cobb. In it, the bad guys try to locate a US stealth destroyer using an aircraft-based bistatic search.

The book is dated, but is a great read with one of the best sea-combat finales I've read. It's old enough that the choice of name for the destroyer is, uhh, kind of ironic. At least it *is* named after a pilot....

Ron Wanttaja
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I came up with it simply due to the equations for waves (light, radio, SONAR) and interference. @Half Fast is sharing information that someone more knowledgeable than I am can use to determine the details of what he was doing.
 
jbarrass said:
Yes, for sure. But perhaps it will be done with resources that would otherwise be available in the South China Sea? Maybe that's their point.
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Very good point. Every U-2 watching for balloons in Montana is one less U-2 collecting intelligence over the South China Sea.

Reminds of the Zeppelin raids on Great Britain during WWI. Damage was scant, but the political blowback was bad enough for the Home Office to withdraw RFC fighter squadrons from France to "protect the homeland." According to one source, the cost to construct the Zeppelins used in the raids was five times the actual damage they caused.

Also, this is a reminder of how militaries are formed by past events. The British military/navy still acts like the Widow of Windsor still owns 'alf of creation. Russia, having been invaded by everyone from Armenia to the United States, is focused on overcoming invaders by massive counterattacks by marginally-trained soldiers. The US, since Pearl Harbor, has piled trillions of dollars into intelligence to prevent such an attack from happening again.

In 1929, the US shut down our only office working on decryption of foreign messages. According to the then-Secretary of State who cut off the funding, "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail."

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Neat stuff, thanks. It's funny you mentioned using it to find stealthy objects, because I got the idea of using a bistatic search from the 1997 near-future Science Fiction novel "Choosers of the Slain", by James H. Cobb. In it, the bad guys try to locate a US stealth destroyer using an aircraft-based bistatic search.

The book is dated, but is a great read with one of the best sea-combat finales I've read. It's old enough that the choice of name for the destroyer is, uhh, kind of ironic. At least it *is* named after a pilot....

Ron Wanttaja
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Well...someone else thinks satellites are a good source of signals for RADAR...Maybe I'm not so mad :)
https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA455641.pdf

This part is an interesting read and pertinent to the thread:
Using radar terminology we are dealing with bistatic radar sensors with GNSSs as a non-cooperative transmitter (NCT). The receiver can be stationary positioned on a surface or on an aerial (aircraft, unmanned vehicle, balloon, etc), or any other platforms. The main applications for these systems were specified for meteorological purposes, land and surface monitoring, change detection, etc. Some of these applications require a high resolution that can be achieved by the aperture synthesis, some utilise only specular reflections from particular surface points, or the use of the directional antennas or analyse the direct signal analysis for various atmospheric study (i.e. forward scattering).
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I looked up the book and I'll try to get a copy. It looks like an interesting read.
 
wanttaja said:
Very good point. Every U-2 watching for balloons in Montana is one less U-2 collecting intelligence over the South China Sea.

Reminds of the Zeppelin raids on Great Britain during WWI. Damage was scant, but the political blowback was bad enough for the Home Office to withdraw RFC fighter squadrons from France to "protect the homeland." According to one source, the cost to construct the Zeppelins used in the raids was five times the actual damage they caused.
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Same deal with the first Tokyo Raid - seems that disproportionately affected Japanese planning.
 
There are enough aggregated elements of information in this thread sometimes I think the blinking red light for classified briefing needs to be turned on.
 
Piperonca said:
There are enough aggregated elements of information in this thread sometimes I think the blinking red light for classified briefing needs to be turned on.
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So THAT's what they were really doing! They do something strange so people speculate based on their experience and post parts of secrets that the Chinese can then assemble ;):)
 
Piperonca said:
There are enough aggregated elements of information in this thread sometimes I think the blinking red light for classified briefing needs to be turned on.
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If you rub shoulders with Chinese students, like, uh, say, from SMU, they don't need our help to figure things out. I'm sure the Chinese have thought of most everything mentioned in this thread.
 
RyanShort1 said:
If you rub shoulders with Chinese students, like, uh, say, from SMU, they don't need our help to figure things out. I'm sure the Chinese have thought of most everything mentioned in this thread.
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Except the secret sauce you will never find in a Chinese recipe...
 
Cap'n Jack said:
So THAT's what they were really doing! They do something strange so people speculate based on their experience and post parts of secrets that the Chinese can then assemble ;):)
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Nah, that's what an American would do, by accident.
 
Piperonca said:
There are enough aggregated elements of information in this thread sometimes I think the blinking red light for classified briefing needs to be turned on.
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I *think* my IPad is TEMPEST-approved…. :)

Ron Wanttaja
 
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