I haven’t been able to verify it as of presstime, but rumor has it that this is the very aircraft flown by China Joe Bribem himself to shoot down that Gook spy balloon.
For his part, Bitter Centurion reminds us that, ultimately, this was about a heckuva lot more than some overinflated old gasbag.
I didn’t go too far in depth in one of my last posts on the Chinese ‘spy’ balloon debacle, mainly because I didn’t have enough information available to me to make a definitive call on whether or not it actually was what the media is telling us it was. I more or less wanted to address the fact that, regardless of whether the story was legit or not, China DOES have the west by the balls in many different ways and we have largely been paying lip service to the whole entire issue.
My own thoughts are that it’s certainly possible that the media is telling the truth this time *COUGH, COUGH* BULLSHIT *COUGH, COUGH*….whew, excuse me. Yeah, anyway, the balloon may well be a device that is Chinese in origin used to conduct aerial espionage or perhaps reconnaissance. I mean, it isn’t like they don’t already have several spy satellites in orbit that can obtain this same information far less conspicuously, right?
Actually, there are plenty of perfectly good reasons for using balloons rather than satellites, for one that it’s orders of magnitude less expensive to just float a balloon overhead than to lob a satellite into LEO (Low Earth Orbit). For another, you get a much more clear and detailed view of whatever you want to look at from angels 60 than you can from orbit. Loiter time also factors in to the equation, with balloons winning out there too.
The US uses balloons for these very reasons, as do many of not most other players on the multinational stage.
Aesop points out another aspect of this kerfuffle that most probably haven’t taken into consideration.
As I noted elsewhere, and as anyone from SAC Norad or the Silent Service from 1946-1990 can tell you, don’t tell your enemy how early you can detect him, and you frequently just sit back and watch what they’re doing, because it gives you more intel on what they can do and what they’re interested in, than any intel they think they’re getting from you.
We did that with Russian subs and aircraft for decades at the height of the Cold War, with far more at stake.
Similarly, the whole point of China’s gambit may well have been not to glean intel on the missile silos in Montana, but to test US capabilities and reaction time to such an incursion, which would be highly valuable intel in its own right. Back to BC for what I still believe to be the bottom-line issue.
So, no. I absolutely don’t think that communist China is going to launch an attack on mainland North America, or anything to do with North America. No ‘Chinese blue helmets’. No bio weapons (I mean, no worse than the ‘Coronapocalypse’, but I’m starting to wonder if that was a massive screwup judging by how things played out). They’re not gonna launch chemical weapons, or ‘nuke’ us, or fry our grid with an EMP or cyberattack. And IF they do this, it probably won’t be anything large scale and it wouldn’t be for any other purpose than to harass us and keep us occupied, while they do other things. If the Chicoms are gonna attack anyone anytime soon, it’ll be Taiwan. That could go either way, really.
China is more than content to watch us tear each other apart over manufactured ‘social’ bullshit like gender and racial equity or reparitions, or whatever ’cause du jour’ we conjure up (with some prods and nudges from certain influential folks getting bennies from the CCP) due to our society’s massive inferiority complex, developed because we haven’t actually accomplished anything worthwhile in a few generations because we’re lazy and spoiled. China is quite content to watch us squander our wealth and our children’s futures away in never ending, massive conflicts that further tear our social fabric and destroy our faith in the institutions that our forefathers initially granted permission and responsibility to in order to take care of everything. China is quite pleased to see scores of migrants and ‘refugees’ pouring over the southern border, and in some cases be flown or bused, right into the United States, causing massive issues domestically from rising crime rates and homelessness to stretching taxpayer funded government and social services – everything from nurses, to cops, to teachers – to the point where they’re almost ineffective. On that last point, I still strongly believe China has funded and driven much of that, as I believed they did during the massive migrant surge in Europe back in 2015.
The thing to keep in mind here is that China doesn’t need to hit us with anything in terms of conventional warfare. We’re far too busy kicking our own asses and we’re actually doing a pretty fucking bang up job on that. All the Chicoms have to do is fry up the jiffy pop, enjoy the show, and wait.
Pretty much, yep.
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Perhaps I’m missing something, but someone please tell me precisely what benefit it would be to the chinese to know our response time to a fucking balloon? A time they can not be certain of knowing we would know that’s perhaps what the reasoning is?
So the chinese are stupid enough to possibly create an incident in order to test our response time to a balloon? Even the russians aren’t that stupid.
I’m not buying that one. Reaction time to a missile, airplane, or other means of war I get. Not that they would know what it truly is since they know we know and we know they know we know, ad infinitum.
I’m pretty sure the russians were in the dark about how soon we knew there bombers were in the air and headed our way on one their typical probing excursions. I also have it from a russian expert (years ago) that the russians assumed we knew as soon as the bombers were rolled out of the hangar, and they would have been correct.
I like Joe’s attack airplane though. Nice pic. Ole potato head was a WW2 ace wasn’t he?
China’s political leadership may not care about US reaction times, probably don’t in fact, but I guarantee you their military planners do. It’s their job to know stuff like that; strategy and wargaming scenarios require every scrap of intel about OpFor capabilities the planners can get their grubby mitts on.
Not that I think there’s any likelihood at all of an attack, of course. As I always say, why would they bother?
Sure, they care about reaction times.
But not for balloons, which is my point. There is nothing, not one damn thing to be learned from our reaction to a balloon, save one possible:
They could float and EMP nuke right over the USA and we would just wait on it…
Also, no one knows what the real reaction time is. It’s a pointless and fruitless test. The f’ing russians knew this and the chinese do too.
Of course if anyone can tell me something I missed regarding balloon reaction times, I’m all ears.
So why does it matter?
Because it obscures whatever the real reason for the damn balloon was.
Following up:
A few military uses for balloons including an EMP strike:
https://redstate.com/bobhoge/2023/02/04/balloons-arent-just-for-kids-parties-they-can-launch-bombs-drone-swarms-and-even-emp-attacks-n698490
In that sense then the reaction to a balloon is worth measuring. Which would make me wrong in the sense that they want to know if we’ll let it float around.
They have the answer, at least as long as their puppet is part of the cabal running the show.
You got it with EMP.
Can we trust Joetato to just allow it to cross the US?
Yes, they can.
You miss-spelled in the head.
Should be a double “S”. Not “CE”.
And never forget the Ho!
Point of Racist Rhetorical Order:
It would be a “Chink” spy balloon.
“Gook” spy balloons would have to be launched by Koreans.
As Will Smith noted with Pintero’s goons in Enemy Of The State, it’s important to get the racial stereotypes precisely correct.
;P
Thanks for the quote, and as I noted in later comments, the balloon was just comedy relief.
So, meanwhile…what’s the magician doing with his other hand…?
The “other” hand is trying to convince us they’re going to invade Taiwan.
What are they really trying? Well, if they own DC then floating an EMP device would be…a game changer. As long as they could be sure Joetato stayed bought.