How Much Data Did the Chinese Spy Balloon Collect? (nbcnews.com) 50
Long-time Slashdot reader schwit1 shared this report from NBC News:
The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration's efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official. China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said.
The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said. The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration's efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon's ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.
America's Department of Defense "directed NBC News to comments senior officials made in February that the balloon had 'limited additive value' for intelligence collection by the Chinese government 'over and above what [China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low earth orbit.'"
The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said. The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration's efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon's ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.
America's Department of Defense "directed NBC News to comments senior officials made in February that the balloon had 'limited additive value' for intelligence collection by the Chinese government 'over and above what [China] is likely able to collect through things like satellites in low earth orbit.'"
Perhaps the first question should be... (Score:3)
Re:Perhaps the first question should be... (Score:4, Interesting)
The first question should be, was it a spy balloon? The military has not released any details. You'd think if they had found signals intelligence or high resolution cameras they should have published some photos by now. Maybe even extracted some of the data that was captured, showing the images of US installations that were taken.
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While I don't like GP's politics and I severely dislike cultish projection, I fail to see how asking what the balloon really was is "covering for the leftists". Wasn't the trade war with China started by that guy that gives lefties "derangement syndrome"?
Though I don't think a lack of published stuff allegedly from the balloon says anything either way.
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Things to note: (Score:5, Informative)
Some things to note:
- Being close to a spread-spectrum transmitter (i.e. on a nearby balloon with tightly-focused antennas rather than working from a satellite) lets you separate a spread-spectrum out from the noise floor by signal strength, rather than letting it hide from any receiver that doesn't already know the spreading function's key and where to look for the synchronizing pilots. So a balloon-based system can definitely do some stuff that can't be done from a satellite with a less-than-continent-sized antenna system.
- "efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon's ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals", if done "within view" of the spy system, lets it eavesdrop on the command-and-control system telling the weapons systems to shut down, along with all the communication related to moving it away from its usual location, potentially revealing more than leaving it there.
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I haven't heard... (Score:2)
Balloons are nearly impossible to control, let alone control them at transcontinental distances with the necessary precision for a targeted spy operation.
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If you watched the NBC video linked in the summary, they revealed the balloon had both a propeller and rudder. In fact the video showed a still photo of the recovered payload that clearly shows a ducted fan arrangement that reminded me of the fan from a motorized parachute or paraplane. Spy balloon [nbcnews.com]
Some, most, all - pick one (Score:1, Insightful)
Good to know (Score:4, Insightful)
The Chinese put all that time money and resources into something that really doesn't accomplish much for them.
The article sounds more like US damage control. If it wasn't effective, the Chinese wouldn't be doing it.
More evidence. (Score:3, Insightful)
The article sounds more like US damage control. If it wasn't effective, the Chinese wouldn't be doing it.
To support this statement, note that right after they shot down the first one and figured out just "how little it could do" all subsequent balloons were destroyed immediately.
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I bet it's actual capability is more like 10 balloons a day. It'll probably be the low-permeability fabric that depends on a one-employee company in Nebraska that's the limit.
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No, we'll buy them from China, of course.
Re:Good to know (Score:5, Insightful)
For whatever the balloons cost the public freak out and cost to destroy them was far greater. The clever move would have been to launch 90,000 back at them, with most being completely worthless and containing no surveillance gear and labeled with serial numbers ending at 100,000.
Sigh. Want to know what has a lot of intelligence value? The balloon's cargo. Which will end up in a lot better shape when hitting the ocean. You can bet your dupa that the contents of that ballon are being looked at right now.
The second thing is that unless we knew exactly what was in that balloon, the payload might be a pathogen. They were happy to shoot it down over the water to avoid that possibility, even if remote
Re: Good to know (Score:2)
You'd have to launch then from a location west of China for the wind to carry them into China, but which country would be willing to host such an operation?
Callback (Score:1, Insightful)
Shout out to all the people that posting in older stories on this topic saying it didn't matter what the balloon could see cause the U.S. was "blocking" it the whole time.
Oops. Turns out it was able to transmit the whole time as well.
Now you know why they shot down later balloons quickly, and that also tells you how "limited" was the data it was able to gather once they knew more about how the first one worked.
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Your first paragraph is a complete fabrication.
Forensic analysis please (Score:2)
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The balloon contained a single 555 timer.
Should hack and repurpose. (Score:1)
I think destroying these balloons is a really poor solution. A much better solution would be to get your hands on a functional one and reverse engineer it. From there, figure out how to hi-jack the entire network of these things or maybe just feed disinformation back to China. This wasn't a one-off, this was just the first one we did anything about in the US.
Re:Should hack and repurpose. (Score:4)
get your hands on a functional one
At that altitude, how?
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You only need the electronics to still be functional, it doesn't have to still be in the sky. It could be as simple as giving the balloon a minor leak or as daring as having skydivers grabbing it as it falls. We put robots on Mars, I think we can handle capturing a balloon.
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We've captured re-entry capsules with specially equipped airplanes. But those were descending under parachutes. Do we know what the terminal velocity of a punctured balloon is at a low enough altitude? Do we have a specially equipped plane ready to go? How soon will a balloon begin to descend with how many holes in it? Hint: machine gun fire at Zeppelins during WWI was largely ineffective until the British started using incendiary rounds.
Re:Should hack and repurpose. (Score:4, Interesting)
Fairly low.
From gas physics and the dimensions of the flying balloon, we can work out the weight being suspended.
Tearing up the balloon fabric - was a job that ammunition designers were successful at in the 1700s. ... sorry, 1650-odd [wikipedia.org] Once you've done that, your balloon is a fairly compact mass suspended below an irregular eccentric parachute. Which is not a "clean" problem, but it's pretty approachable. As one of my rock climbing friends used to describe some of their "gear", "they may not stop you, but they sure as hell slow you down".
There are airborne "sondes" which can fly offset to a towing aircraft. Which is a family of techniques that has previously been used to catch space-dropped film cannisters, planetary science sample returns and probably other things "the spooks" have classified.
Most of the stages in catching one of these out of the air have been done over previous decades. I'm pretty sure they could catch it. If they wanted to. Which probably means that for some reason, "they" didn't want to expose that capability.
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Control (Score:2)
China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites
How did they do that? Did the balllon had a drive?
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> Propellers
Yeah, that was reported, and it had lots of solar panels, so there was some control.
Though it might have mainly floated along with the jet stream.
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Changing elevation to catch different currents typically.
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see post above
CaptQuark ( 2706165 ) Alter Relationship on Sunday April 09, 2023 @12:35AM (#63436106)
"If you watched the NBC video linked in the summary, they revealed the balloon had both a propeller and rudder. In fact the video showed a still photo of the recovered payload that clearly shows a ducted fan arrangement that reminded me of the fan from a motorized parachute or paraplane. Spy balloon [nbcnews.com]"
It Ate All It Could Eat Until Full... (Score:3)
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Shame ... (Score:1)
Spying is good. (Score:5, Interesting)
A word of reminder - spying on each other is *good*.
We all do it, we all know that we do it, and we're all pretty much okay with that. Big guns are much more convincing when the opposition can see them clearly.
Because at the end of the day the world is run by the power-hungry assholes who clawed their way to running the most powerful nations on Earth, and the one of the biggest things stopping them from starting WW3 in the pursuit of an even larger empire is knowing that the other guy can hit back hard enough to make them regret starting shit.
Hell, it sounds like we probably knew when this balloon first left the ground in China, and let it fly unimpeded. The big difference this time was just that the balloon was big enough for it to be noticed by everyday people not steeped in international politics, which got the news cycle and sound-byte politicians riled up.
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Spying is good, for various values of "good". Reconnaissance, or military spying, has the added benefit of being internationally legal, with the caveats that all other international laws are followed and the recce units are marked and uniformed.
Was the balloon a spy? Yes, it flew over international borders. Do we/did we want to make a big deal of it, perhaps because we do the same thing? Moot point, I guess, since this story hit the news cycles then became politicized. Will it curtail our efforts? Various v
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Spying? (Score:1)
Really? Did they actually find evidence of that then? I mean, evidence that shows it isn't just a weather balloon?
Or is all just words that we're supposed to just blindly believe?
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You can be sure everything about the balloon, real or imagined, is highly classified. If you are reading anything about it, it is because an "Anonymous Source" in the Government wanted you to read a story with carefully selected bits of information designed to advance an agenda they or their Agency wanted advanced; your belief as an individual is optional, in fact a few skeptics help create a fog of confusion so they can label those who don't buy the narrative a conspiracy theorist.
My suspicion is our Intel
Efforts (Score:2)
>"despite the Biden administration's efforts to block it from doing so"
Despite WHAT "efforts"?
They allowed the balloon to fly from Alaska through Canada and then all the way across the US mainland.
Probably could have used a laser to burn a small hole in it at any time, having it gently float down to ground.
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For one thing, I expect that we had ELINT jammers flying below it. A very basic precaution of which we have good capability. For circumstantial evidence, I saw a report that an AWACS and an ELINT aircraft were observed being hangared at a base somewhere along the path. For another thing, they moved or turned off anything considered sensitive.
Impressive high altitude LTA flight control (Score:3, Interesting)
We are stupid about the Chinese (Score:1)
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With so many of our politicians and business leaders aiding and abetting the Chinese Communist Party I wonder how long we will survive as a country.
This country is long gone. We may as well start speaking Mandarin.