Video of America shooting down suspected Chinese spy balloon

Well said.

If it was indeed tracked in the Pacific even before it hit the Alaskan coast then why on Earth was it not shot down over that State even before it crossed the Yukon and British Columbia and then entering into Montana. Many Questions to be answered here.

No they would have shot it down, and it does show that Biden is seen as weak (and feckless). Why is he still president?

Biden IS weak. Telling Putin if he invaded Ulraine the US wouldn’t get involved(better leaving it ambiguous, better still matching every threat in kind. Boris said the same rubbish), pulling out of Afghanistan with empty Taliban promises. Trump is far worse, being a Putin fan boy & threat to democracy.

Come on, be realistic here. If the US really thought it was a threat they would have shot it down, the second it crossed into US air space they had full right to deal with it. Instead they let the story build and then made a public thing of shooting it down with their most flashy jet. It’s not about weakness or otherwise it’s about PR. Admittedly doing it earlier would have looked better. I assume they wanted to hack into the signal and test the Chinese electric warfare defenses. Would guess they were debating bringing it down in one piece to take it apart Vs the pr of shooting it down.

Bidens scared of his own shadow. When ukraine kicked off all he could cry at the thought of taking on Russia was “that would be world war 3”. A stronger US president might have killed the whole thing off before it even started by leaving mad vlad under no illusions the world would not stand by and just watch.

Look at his hesitation in supplying tanks. At supplying jets. He likes to portray himself as leading from the front, sure he can donate bigger numbers by virtue of being a superpower, but the US ain’t leading anything, they are just followers.

Whilst I don’t want to see a war with China, the best chance of avoiding one is through appearing to have an unbreakable iron will to not be pushed around. As always, peace comes from strength, not weakness.

Except the pentagon has stated that this practice by the Chinese of flying these balloons over the US has been going on for years including during the last administration.

But imagine if that 90 foot long structure of solar panels, batteries, radio transmitters etc etc had by chance hit someone on the ground.

Extremely low chances, but the political fallout of people being killed because the President was ‘trigger happy’ would have been immense.

So would you like trumpski in power instead? the very man who congregated Putin on the invasion of Ukraine calling it a genius move 🙄

Biden gave the order to shoot it down on Wednesday, it was the USAF that deemed it should be shot down over water.

One reason might be that it offered the US an intelligence gathering opportunity as they could easily monitor transmissions from the balloons payload.

Ummm, there would be a massive stink by the US security establishment and the armed forces if it really were any threat. And yet there’s only been messaging that they are fine with how it has been handled.

The only ones making a stink are the Republicans and the Chinese…

And despite all that the Chinese are still acting all pissy. Pray tell, how that makes Biden look weak?

Or, you know, they knew it wasn’t a threat and an opportunity to gather some intel on how Chinese systems work?

Only the Chinese and Republicans are upset with how this has been handled.

I am surprise this wasn’t laser’Ed. We have the supposed flying lasers that can heat things up, ground based ones as well. And none of that was tried first?

If it’s a manufacturing fault, the Aircraft Carrier Alliance can pay for it.

More OT

General Sir Richard Barrons, who formerly served as the Joint Forces chief, said spending cuts have so weakened the British military that the UK would run out of ammunition and artillery shells within a single day of hot war with Russia. According to The Sun, the UK would need a year to produce the amount of shells that Ukrainians currently use in the conflict.

They can. But their orbits are known, so sensitive items would be brought inside. Maybe they thought this would be missed? And Sats time on station is limited, this can remain eyes on longer. They will also be dirt cheap to use compared to satellites and can be launched easily.

People like you are insufferable and add nothing to the discourse.

Just bog off.

I think the anti-Biden views are fully justified, as are the anti-Boris views. Add Macron and a fair few others. At least the socialist Jacinda jumped ship. Perceived weakness suits the likes of Putin and Xi. Like them or loathe, the likes of Reagan and Thatcher had a pair. You are right, there is no statesmanship. The greased piglet THINKS he is Churchill. Trump is dangerous. The French Canadian is a WEF shill. Only Modi strikes me as having any leadership skills atmo. His refusal to be dictated to as to what stance India should take is admirable. It is frankly a bugger’s mess, the political dross that passes for leadership in Europe and beyond will lead one way.

Some other interesting news from a Sky news article which also explains the difficulties to shoot down such a high slow moving object, but also that the area of the Atlantic it has been shot down over is also pretty shallow water, and they have a good weather window for a few days to run a salvage operation. Nothing is as simple as it seems, and a huge amount of thought will have gone into this before deploying those two F22’s.

Aside from the physical challenges that the article speculated on I was against shooting it down for the other reasons. A few post mentioned that this made Biden look weak but I think caving to the public uproar was a mistake as it basically gives China or any other country an excuse (They already have the right) to shoot down any balloon or similar aircraft, military or scientific going forward. This sets a bad precedent where every country can just go all wild wild west and shoot down other countries aircraft without seeking some diplomatic solution first. What’s to stop China or Russia from attacking western aircraft that often fly right on the edge of their air space and claim the aircraft drifted into their territory and they shot it down. For the record I don’t buy the story that this was a scientific balloon that drifted out of control but the US had already stated that this balloon could not give them anything extra that their spy satellites don’t already do. It’s also worth mentioning that these balloons are a new capability that the US is maturing and is most likely operating somewhere already. Don’t be surprised when we hear about these balloons now being targeted and the west has just lost the ability to claim the other side overreacted.

Exactly. It was being jammed the whole time anyway. Shooting it down over shallow water means they can recover the surveillance pod largely intact and after they observed its capabilities and activities. Terrbily foolish comments on the article attacking Biden as Europe would PLAINLY be facing an existential threat if Trump was still in office.