Ever since it was spotted last week, a high-altitude balloon apparently from China has created quite a stir in the U.S. That balloon has since been shot down, and now intelligence officers are gathering up what they can from the wreckage to see what the Chinese were trying to do or did.
Ok, granted, we should be concerned about spying, especially when the spying is on very sensitive locations like a missile silo. What is interesting or not interesting or possibly interesting is what has been happening up to now. The U.S., for all its technical capabilities, has not had a stellar record when it comes to finding these crafts. Domain awareness, as the military puts it, is not great when it comes to detecting balloons that fly above 50,000ft or about 15 km. Here is the funny part below 50k systems can detect objects in the sky. Above that, up to a certain height, they can not. Also interesting is that NORAD had to get permission to track the balloon in U.S. airspace.
The amount of coverage of this story has been surprising. Sure, it is a newsworthy story, but the level of attention given to it seems a bit over the top. I say that because if we step back and look around, we can surely see that besides China, there are other countries that use balloons to spy, including the U.S. This is a thing, but at the same time, not a thing. in other words, it is a story that should have a short shelf life. However, since a second object, as the U.S. military puts it, has been shot down, this story plot thickens. Revelations that the PRC has a fleet of these balloons and has floated them over a number of countries are quite alarming.
The PRC (People's Republic of China) insisted that the balloon was used for weather and that the action taken, shooting it down, was a hostile act. Time will tell if the balloon was really just a floating weather watcher or a sophisticated piece of gear intended to gather intel on the U.S. and other countries' military capabilities. So stay tuned. There is more to come from this story.
