The bizarre secret behind China's spy balloon
www.cbsnews.com
Earlier this year America's military defenses were put on notice against a Chinese balloon believed to be on an espionage mission. Gen. Mark Milley talks about what we've learned from an examination of the balloon's wreckage.

Nobody could have predicted this. I have my doubts even when they call it "spying equipment" or whatever considering Chinese claim it was a meteorological balloon, certainly no doubt they would try to paint those tools as such.

    • KarlBarqs [he/him, they/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      And in the immense wave of paranoia afterwards they shot down three American weather balloons at the cost of 400k per missile plus fuel and maintenance and man hours.

          • Chump [he/him]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Not sure which balloon she’s referring to, but I imagine it’s the one from the Illinois bottle cap and balloon club (or whatever it’s actually called, they took the name lovingly from the movie Up). No one ever explicitly confirmed that’s the balloon that got got… but literally every piece of evidence points to one of them being theirs. Hobbyist balloon club, so at least no weather data was destroyed!

      • dRLY [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        They love to talk all that shit about "our missiles are so accurate that we can hit a ladybug" or some such level of nonsense. Which all of a sudden goes away every time that it is shown how many more people were killed while trying to get one person.

        • GarbageShoot [he/him]
          ·
          1 year ago

          Turns out they can only hit a ladybug because the heat from the blast fries the bug even if the missile misses by a wide margin