Seacoaster(1) wrote: ↑Tue Feb 07, 2023 1:07 pm
Pretty good thread from former military on Biden's and military and intelligence did/are doing the right thing:
This is a reasonable thread and would make me re-consider shooting it down over AK. My objection was the immediacy with which they tried the "Yeah, but the Trump Administration...." public relations move.
Gen Hertling cites the Treaty of Open Skies. I don't think that applies to unmanned airships (balloons) on unannounced routes of flight, not under air traffic control when in sovereign airspace.
I wonder if the jet stream dipping S with that Arctic blast caused a different route of flight than previous flights, pushing it further S & they couldn't maneuver it sufficiently to prevent overflight of CONUS.
You first point is rather moot since Orange Cheato withdrew us from the treaty back in 2020. They were worried about the Russians. The Chinese are not signatories in any case.
What Tanks in Ukraine Tell Us About America in the Pacific
U.S. hopes that Europe can take care of itself appear to be farfetched.
by John R. Deni
Germany’s insistence that the United States move first in the decision to send tanks to Ukraine tells us much about security dynamics in Europe, but it also has implications for America’s strategy in the Indo-Pacific: it reveals the futility of hoping that Europe might soon stand on its own so that Washington can focus more on the Pacific theater.
Deliberations over whether to send tanks to Ukraine took longer than many hoped, but the end result should nonetheless help increase the odds of a Ukrainian victory. The deal was clinched by U.S. willingness to take the lead, announcing it would supply Ukraine with American-made M1A2 Abrams tanks, even though these tanks require a more robust maintenance and logistical support capability. Moreover, Washington will only provide 31 Abrams tanks—just 10 percent of what Ukraine has apparently indicated it needs—and they won’t arrive in any case for several months, meaning they probably won’t play any role in an expected Ukrainian counteroffensive this spring.
The fact that Germany in particular refused to provide tanks without America doing so first is frustrating to Washington. Berlin alone has the economic, technological, and political heft to lead Europe; other candidates all fall short for various reasons. Great Britain is looking increasingly less “great,” thanks in large part to Brexit, which is forcing its military to shrink. France has the will to lead but lacks the economic and military strength; Macron’s commitment to expand military spending from 2024-30 will take years to yield results. Paris also lacks the respect of Eastern Europeans, who perceive it as too willing to negotiate with Moscow over the heads of Warsaw, Prague, Vilnius, and so forth. Farther afield, Italy and Spain appear largely uninterested in a broader leadership role in Europe – perhaps more importantly, they both have their eyes trained on instability to the south and the waves of migrants it generates.
Germany’s singular heft notwithstanding, it currently lacks the will to lead. Berlin steadfastly avoids getting ahead of either international or domestic opinion. Internationally, Berlin is unwilling to act without consensus among allies, otherwise known as “leading from the middle.” Domestically, German leaders reflected the reluctant but slowly shifting sentiment among the German electorate.
Moreover, Berlin still wants the United States in the pole position when it comes to security matters in Europe. After all, Germany lacks a nuclear deterrent of its own, remaining reliant on America’s umbrella. And the albatross of historical guilt remains around Berlin’s neck when it comes to sending military forces or even military equipment anywhere but especially in Eastern Europe.
All of this has implications for the United States, certainly in Europe but also well beyond. First, it’s clear that for the foreseeable future, Washington will need to lead actively in Europe. Even if war in Ukraine ended tomorrow with a victory for Kyiv, however that’s defined, any subsequent attempt by Washington to pull up stakes in Europe or ‘lead from behind’ is likely to backfire. Prematurely backing away from Europe would endanger enduring vital American interests there.
More consequentially, in the event of a crisis in the Indo-Pacific, Washington can’t rely on Europeans to completely ‘backfill’ the United States in Europe. Aside from the lack of will in Germany – the only major European ally with the wherewithal to lead – most major U.S. allies in Europe are either limiting or reducing their military capacity while they focus on building capabilities over this decade.
As it has for several generations—and because it has vital interests across two oceans—America will probably need to maintain its leading security role in East Asia and Europe. In Europe, the character of that role may change somewhat. For instance, it may mean a different configuration of U.S. forces based in Europe following a Ukrainian victory. But the United States will still need to sit at the head of the table, leading from the front.
In the Indo-Pacific, the United States will need to maintain and strengthen its ability to project military force and political influence across the Pacific’s vast distances and over time. However, and to the extent possible, Washington should continue to prioritize keeping strategic competition with China within the realms of economics, trade, governance, diplomacy, development, and information. Relying too strongly on a military framing for competition with China risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy and could result in overextension or worse.
Although China remains the primary long-term challenge to American interests and security, it’s equally clear Russia will remain a spoiler in Europe at least through the end of this decade and possibly longer. Moscow’s conflation of security and subservient buffer states is likely to continue running headlong into the West’s vital interest in sovereignty and self-determination. The deal to send tanks to Ukraine should remind Washington that it must continue to exercise leadership in both theaters vital to the American way of life, carefully balancing the resources necessary to do so in each.
John R. Deni is a research professor at the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. He’s the author of “Coalition of the unWilling and unAble.” The views expressed are his own.
WP EXCLUSIVE
Chinese balloon part of vast aerial surveillance program, U.S. says
Spy balloon effort operates in Hainan province off China’s south coast and has for years collected information on military assets in several countries, officials said
By Ellen Nakashima, Shane Harris, John Hudson and Dan Lamothe, February 7, 2023
The U.S. intelligence community has linked the Chinese spy balloon shot down on Saturday to a vast surveillance program run by the People’s Liberation Army, and U.S. officials have begun to brief allies and partners who have been similarly targeted.
The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest to China including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines, according to several U.S. officials, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.
Officials have said these surveillance airships, operated in part by the PLA air force, have been spotted over five continents.
“What the Chinese have done is taken an unbelievably old technology, and basically married it with modern communications and observation capabilities” to try to glean intelligence on other nations’ militaries, said one official. “It’s a massive effort.”
U.S. fighter aircraft downed a Chinese spy balloon off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4. (Video: The Washington Post)
On Monday, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman led a briefing on China’s balloon espionage for some 150 people from about 40 embassies, said a senior administration official familiar with the matter. The department has also sent to every U.S. Embassy “detailed information” on the espionage that can be shared with allies and partners.
Separately, U.S. officials have begun to share specifics with officials in countries such as Japan whose military facilities were targeted by Beijing.
“There has been great interest in this on the part of our allies and partners,” said a senior administration official.
“Many of them recognize that they, too, may be vulnerable or susceptible to this or an object of interest to the PRC,” the official said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
In Japan in 2020, an aerial orb drew speculation. “Some people thought this was a UFO,” said a Japanese official. “In hindsight people are realizing that was a Chinese espionage balloon. But at that time it was purely novel — nobody had seen this. … So there’s a lot of heightened attention at this time.”
While most of China’s long-range surveillance efforts are conducted by its expanding military satellite array, PLA planners have identified what they consider to be an opportunity to conduct surveillance from the upper atmosphere at altitudes above where commercial jets fly, using balloons that fly between 60,000 and 80,000 feet or higher, officials said.
Analysts still don’t know the size of the balloon fleet, but there have been “dozens” of missions since 2018, said one U.S. official. They take advantage of technology provided by a private Chinese company that is part of the country’s civil-military fusion effort — a program by which private companies develop technologies and capabilities used by the PLA.
In a news briefing Saturday, senior Pentagon officials alluded to the PLA program, noting that balloons had been operating elsewhere in the Western Hemisphere. “These balloons are all part of a PRC fleet of balloons developed to conduct surveillance operations, which also violated the sovereignty of other countries,” said one senior defense official.
The official flatly rejected China’s assertion that the airship moving over the United States was a weather balloon blown off course. “This is false,” the official said. “This was a PRC surveillance balloon. This surveillance balloon purposefully traversed the United States and Canada. And we are confident it was seeking to monitor sensitive military sites.”
Some commentators have made light of the Chinese effort, noting that balloons are not the most high-tech of platforms. But others caution against dismissing the balloons’ potential.
“For those who have a sanguine view about the actual intelligence collection capabilities of this balloon, I think they’re underestimating the creative ways the PLA might use it either for intelligence and surveillance purposes, or as a platform for weapons,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the Select Committee on China, who was commenting on public remarks made by Pentagon officials over the weekend.
In recent years, at least four balloons have been spotted over Hawaii, Florida, Texas and Guam — in addition to the one tracked last week. Three of the four instances took place during the Trump administration but were only recently identified as Chinese surveillance airships. Other balloons have been spotted in Latin America and allied countries in the Pacific, officials have said.
President Biden directed that all sensitive sites were protected from espionage, “which was straightforward because we could track the path of the balloon and ensure no sensitive activities or unencrypted communications would be conducted in its vicinity,” said National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby. “At the same time, we turned the tables on China and collected against the balloon, so that we would learn more about China’s capabilities and tradecraft.”
Monitoring the recent balloon helped fill in gaps about the four others, officials said. The U.S. military sent up fighter jets and other aircraft over the past week to observe the airship. A Chinese spy balloon that crashed off the Hawaiian islands last June also yielded helpful information, including about the nature of the technology China is using, they said.
For instance, some of the balloons are outfitted with electrooptical sensors or digital cameras that, depending on their resolution, can capture highly precise images, officials said. They also are equipped with radio signal and satellite transmission capability, they said.
Hainan, one of the locations where officials said the balloons are based, is an island off the southern coast of China that has long been a PLA command and control location. Though known more for its naval facility, it features an airfield that was the home base for the Chinese J-8 interceptor fighter jet that collided with an American EP-3 spy plane in 2001.
In January, the U.S. military disclosed what it characterized as an unsafe maneuver in December by a Chinese fighter jet that U.S. military officials said flew too close to an American reconnaissance aircraft in international airspace near the island. The Chinese J-11 fighter pulled within 20 feet of the American plane’s nose, “forcing the RC-135 to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision,” U.S. Indo-Pacific Command said in a statement.
The spy balloon shot down Saturday first entered U.S. airspace over Alaska on Jan. 28. It crossed north of the Aleutian islands, back over mainland Alaska, over Canada and then over northern Idaho last week, but the Pentagon did not acknowledge its presence until NBC News reported last Thursday that the Pentagon was tracking the balloon over Montana.
The resulting political uproar — some Republicans slammed the Biden administration for not shooting down the balloon sooner — led Secretary of State Antony Blinken to postpone a trip to Beijing, an announcement made hours before his plane was set to take off.
U.S. intelligence analysts have retroactively identified as spy balloons objects that were previously deemed unidentified, according to U.S. officials. New technologies have enabled the detection of measurement and signature intelligence, or MASINT, which typically includes information about radar or electromagnetic signals, such as those that might be emitted by surveillance balloons.
In some instances, the military and intelligence communities have been able to say that they originated in particular countries, including China, the officials said.
The retroactive discovery of the Chinese balloons helps explain why senior defense officials serving in the Trump administration were not aware of the incursions during their time in office, officials said.
China has made significant use of balloons to monitor targets on the ground, officials said. The balloons often don’t use the most cutting-edge technology — in most cases, the sensors aboard don’t capture more information than China could obtain with a satellite.
But balloons offer some advantages. They can linger over a target for hours, whereas a satellite orbiting Earth may have only minutes to snap a picture of its target. “If you have a balloon that’s moving extremely slowly you have persistence that you can’t get from a satellite,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Charlie “Tuna” Moore, a former fighter pilot who helped run operations out of NORAD and retired in October as deputy of U.S. Cyber Command.
Analysts think the balloons, like drones, can be remotely piloted — at about 30 to 60 mph, said one official. And because balloons float along high-altitude winds, their paths are less predictable and thus more difficult to track. The balloons are also much cheaper to produce and launch than space-based satellites.
Some of the balloons have been launched from China on flight paths that took them around the entire globe, officials said.
Officials noted that China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was apparently caught by surprise and was chagrined to see Blinken cancel his visit. The ministry initially issued a statement, saying China “regrets that the airship strayed into the United States by mistake.” Since then, Beijing has been contacting its neighbors to keep lines of communications open amid the burgeoning crisis — a signal, said one official in the Pacific region, that Beijing was embarrassed by the balloon’s flight across the United States and trying to quell the controversy.
In a statement over the weekend, a Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson appealed for maintaining “a coolheaded and prudent” approach to the incident.
A U.S. official said that “there was no sense that” the balloon’s incursion into continental U.S. airspace on the eve of Blinken’s visit was a deliberate provocation. But, the person added, “We are confident that this was a purposeful global program.”
“China’s foreign policy is a constant search for leverage and in most circumstances there are ample opportunities,” said the official. “In this one, there would appear to be very few. So when the Chinese appeal for calm and coolheadedness you can be sure they’re nearly out of options.”
NATO talking tough about China after balloon wake up call.
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/08/spy-bal ... -says.html Stoltenberg said China was building up its military and nuclear capabilities “without any transparency.”
“It is attempting to assert control over the South China Sea and threatening Taiwan, trying to take control of critical infrastructure, including in NATO countries, repressing its own citizens and trampling on human rights and deepening its strategic partnership with Moscow,” he said. “So NATO allies have real concerns which we discuss today.”
OBTW :
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/09/china/ch ... index.html An example of advances China has made in this domain is the reported flight of a 100-meter-long (328 feet) unmanned dirigible-like airship known as “Cloud Chaser.” In a 2019 interview with the Southern Metropolis Daily newspaper, Wu Zhe, a professor at Beihang University, said the vehicle had transited across Asia, Africa and North America in an around-the-world flight at 20,000 meters (65, 616 feet) above the Earth.
Another scientist on the team told the newspaper that compared with satellites, stratospheric airships are better for “long-term observation” and have a range of purposes from disaster warning and environmental research to wireless network construction and aerial reconnaissance.
Other experts have pointed to the potential use of balloons in data collection that can aid China’s development of hypersonic weapons that transit through near space.
“Understanding the atmospheric conditions up there is critical to programming the guidance software” for ballistic and hypersonic missiles, according to Hawaii-based analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of operations at the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center.
Chinese state media reports show China has also used balloons to test advanced hypersonic vehicles. In 2019, state broadcaster CCTV’s military channel showed footage of a balloon lifting off for what it described as maiden testing of three miniaturized models of “wide-range aircraft,” which according to Chinese media reports, can fly at a wide range of speeds, up to five times the speed of sound.
Balloon blind spot
US intelligence officials believe the Chinese balloon identified over the US in recent days is part of an extensive, Chinese military-run surveillance program involving a fleet of balloons that has conducted at least two dozen missions over at least five continents in recent years, CNN reported on Tuesday.
Both the self-governing island of Taiwan and Japan have acknowledged past, similar sightings, though it is not clear if they are related to the US incident.
A US military commander on Monday acknowledged that the US has a “domain awareness gap” ( ) that allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental US undetected during the previous administration.
At a press conference today, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters that U.S. intelligence has determined that the spy balloon was part of a larger Chinese surveillance program operating around the world. On Monday, the U.S. shared the information it gleaned from the wreckage of the balloon with around 150 people from about 40 embassies. China has launched “dozens” of such surveillance balloons since 2018. New information has made U.S. intelligence able to revisit previous objects that were classified as “unknown” and recognize them as part of this balloon program.
The news about the balloon illustrated the difference between the slow, hard work of governance and the easy hit of sound bites. From the beginning of his administration, President Joe Biden emphasized that he intended to focus on cybertechnology as a central element of national security. That focus meant that in May 2021, just four months after he took office, he issued an executive order on “improving the nation’s cybersecurity.”
According to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, that focus meant that the U.S. “enhanced our surveillance of our territorial airspace, we enhanced our capacity to be able to detect things that the Trump administration was unable to detect.” The Chinese apparently sent at least three of these balloons into U.S. airspace when Trump was president, but we didn’t know it until the Biden administration tightened security. Sullivan said that the surveillance improvements enabled the U.S. to “go back and look at the historical patterns” and uncover “multiple instances” during the Trump administration when similar things had happened.
During the balloon saga, Republicans complained that Biden didn’t shoot the balloon down earlier than he did, but defense officials said that they were collecting intelligence from the device (of course they were!) and that they made certain the Chinese could not get information from it.
Republicans have insisted that the balloon shows Chinese disdain for the U.S., while President Joe Biden told reporters Monday that the balloon did not change the developing patterns between the U.S. and China. “We’ve made it clear to China what we’re going to do,” he said. “They understand our position. We’re not going to back off. We did the right thing. And there’s not a question of weakening or strengthening. It’s just the reality.”
For their part, Chinese authorities appear embarrassed by the exposure of the program and by the cancellation of Blinken’s planned visit. They downplayed the balloon as an “isolated incident,” and officials expressed “regrets that the airship strayed into the United States by mistake.”
Part of what Biden was referring to when he said China knew “what we’re going to do” is that on January 28, the Biden administration inked a deal with Japan and the Netherlands to limit exports of semiconductor technologies to China. The two countries have signed on to the U.S. sanctions the Biden administration put into place last October against exports of that technology from the U.S. to China. Last week, the U.S. stopped sales of essential components to Chinese technology giant Huawei.
This shutdown of technological innovation has upset Chinese authorities, concerned about what it will mean for Chinese industry. “We hope the relevant countries will do the right thing and work together to uphold the multilateral trade regime and safeguard the stability of the global industrial and supply chains,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said earlier this month. “This will also serve to protect their own long-term interests.”
Now, suddenly eager to confront the balloon, the Republican House has come up with 17 new bills to counter China.
Meanwhile, the recent report of the Australian Lowy Institute, which for the last five years has annually ranked the power of 26 Asian countries, assessed that China’s isolation because of Covid has set it back, permitting the U.S. to retain its position as the key player in Asia. But, the report said, the idea of a multipolar region, which is what the U.S. under Biden is backing, seems so distant as to be unattainable. Finally, it assesses that Russia “risks growing irrelevance.” The 2022 invasion of Ukraine has sapped Russia in dramatic ways.
Both the Senate and the House will receive classified briefings on the balloon and Chinese intelligence this week.
Last night, during President Biden’s State of the Union address, House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) complained by tweet that Biden hadn’t mentioned China in the first hour of his speech, suggesting that the president wasn’t taking the issue seriously enough. Today, when CNN’s Manu Raju asked McCarthy if he was okay with New York representative George Santos—the serial liar who is currently under threat of an ethics investigation over where his campaign money came from—attending that classified briefing, McCarthy said, “Yes.”
All this is to say that actual governance is about a lot more than reacting to a balloon.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:44 pm
Sure sounds to me like we treated this specific event exactly appropriately.
Should have splashed that balloon in US airspace over the Aleutians still over US territorial waters.
I believe I saw in an early report that it was intercepted & identified by F-22's from Elmendorf AFB where they stand NORAD strip alert.
Like this ==> https://theaviationgeekclub.com/usaf-f- ... st-alaska/
That would have demonstrated our ability to detect intruders, defend our airspace, & not portrayed a "domain awareness gap", which was more likely a decision making brain fog. It would have also prevented any intel transmitted, international embarrassment & partisan bickering.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:44 pm
Sure sounds to me like we treated this specific event exactly appropriately.
Should have splashed that balloon in US airspace over the Aleutians still over US territorial waters.
I believe I saw in an early report that it was intercepted & identified by F-22's from Elmendorf AFB where they stand NORAD strip alert.
Like this ==> https://theaviationgeekclub.com/usaf-f- ... st-alaska/
That would have demonstrated our ability to detect intruders, defend our airspace, & not portrayed a "domain awareness gap", which was more likely a decision making brain fog. It would have also prevented any intel transmitted, international embarrassment & partisan bickering.
Back seat driving yet again. When your people were in charge, they couldn't even identify the balloons at all. Crickets from you on that.
Jammed the listening devices until we could drop it and recover almost the entire apparatus in less than 50 feet of water.
The Chinese actually asked for us to return it.
UPDATE 2/9 PM "Breaking: John Kirby confirms that another unidentified object was shot down last night near Alaska. Unclear what the object was but it posed a threat to aircraft, he said." The “high altitude object” was flying at around 40,000 feet, Kirby says, and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.” President Biden ordered the military to down the object within the last hour at the recommendation of the Pentagon, Kirby says.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 09, 2023 6:44 pm
Sure sounds to me like we treated this specific event exactly appropriately.
Should have splashed that balloon in US airspace over the Aleutians still over US territorial waters.
I believe I saw in an early report that it was intercepted & identified by F-22's from Elmendorf AFB where they stand NORAD strip alert.
Like this ==> https://theaviationgeekclub.com/usaf-f- ... st-alaska/
That would have demonstrated our ability to detect intruders, defend our airspace, & not portrayed a "domain awareness gap", which was more likely a decision making brain fog. It would have also prevented any intel transmitted, international embarrassment & partisan bickering.
Sure, in hindsight...but they didn't expect this path and wanted to study it. And did.
So, it wasn't raised as an urgent threat for such a decision...when it was, too late for that call, though Biden's first instinct (reportedly) was to take it down...backed off when military intelligence explained their recommendation to wait...so ordered that the secret sites be locked down while balloon in range.
For this moment, seems to me like best call made...but a next such situation may have standing orders to take it down, or at least raise it to urgent level faster.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:07 pm
Biden's first instinct (reportedly) was to take it down...backed off when military intelligence explained their recommendation to wait
...hold me back, hold me back, where's my CornPop chain ? You'll swallow any pro-Biden spin.
Looks like our Northern Domain Awareness Gap is rapidly closing.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:07 pm
Biden's first instinct (reportedly) was to take it down...backed off when military intelligence explained their recommendation to wait
...hold me back, hold me back, where's my CornPop chain ? You'll swallow any pro-Biden spin.
Looks like our Northern Domain Awareness Gap is rapidly closing.
So, in your world, you assume the Pentagon is lying?
That's your default???
I used the word "reportedly" as the caveat that this is an evolving story, as opposed to clearly documented "truth". However, it aligns with common sense and I see no reason, without clear evidence otherwise, to assume it's not accurate.
MDlaxfan76 wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 4:07 pm
Biden's first instinct (reportedly) was to take it down...backed off when military intelligence explained their recommendation to wait
...hold me back, hold me back, where's my CornPop chain ? You'll swallow any pro-Biden spin.
Looks like our Northern Domain Awareness Gap is rapidly closing.
So, in your world, you assume the Pentagon is lying?
That's your default???
I used the word "reportedly" as the caveat that this is an evolving story, as opposed to clearly documented "truth". However, it aligns with common sense and I see no reason, without clear evidence otherwise, to assume it's not accurate.
You apparently have BDS.
No surprise there.
Let's see a tick-tock of the detection, notification & decision making chain. Not Benghazi style talking points. Susan Rice & Victoria Nuland are still on the job.
old salt wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 1:52 am
It would have also prevented any intel transmitted, international embarrassment & partisan bickering.
Nothing will keep you from "BIden is bad", but it's cute you're bringing up "partisan bickering", acting like that doesn't mean exactly what you're doing.
Blame shoddy military systems, if you want to blame anyone. Can't do that, naturally, because Biden is bad.
For me? China has, what..... 500+ satellites up there? Yet I'm supposed to lose my sh(t over high altitude balloons, when no one has bothered to pass International laws governing these altitudes?
old salt wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 1:52 am
It would have also prevented any intel transmitted, international embarrassment & partisan bickering.
Nothing will keep you from "BIden is bad", but it's cute you're bringing up "partisan bickering", acting like that doesn't mean exactly what you're doing.
Blame shoddy military systems, if you want to blame anyone. Can't do that, naturally, because Biden is bad.
For me? China has, what..... 500+ satellites up there? Yet I'm supposed to lose my sh(t over high altitude balloons, when no one has bothered to pass International laws governing these altitudes?
Clickbait. Outrage culture.
Well looky here....seems like they did just what OS suggested.
A. obviously a registered Republican was on the NORAD overnight shift and caught it. Because lets be honest here, the Dems are bad
B. why did you rope me in? I don't care.
We dealt with the same fake Conservative outrage during Trumpy's fake trade war.....FoxNation can't keep its stories straight.
You guys keep implying that China is our enemy.
Yet we have almost 300,000 Chinese Students in US colleges, right now, today. I think this is what you cats refer to as "Open Borders".
Do any of you give a sh(t? F no. Let China do whatever they want in the lower 48.
But your'e SERIOUS when you tell me I'm supposed to be worried about a stupid ballon?
And has anyone kept track of who is still America's #1 trading partner?
But sure, FoxNation thinks China is our enemy....yet won't lift a finger to stop Chinese goods from coming here. Or students from openly taking intellectual property in schools throughout America, legally and peacefully.
But yeah, please....tell me about this sooper-scary balloon.... are they gonna find out what Biden's favorite color is with this thing?
And just like before...when I pointed this out during Trump's fake trade war.....every Republican on the board ran away from this obvious hypocrisy. If Republicans REALLY thought China was our enemy? They'd get off their (sses and do something. So nope, I don't care about "spy balloons"....any more than you care about the 290K+ students studying at your nearby elite University.
A. obviously a registered Republican was on the NORAD overnight shift and caught it. Because lets be honest here, the Dems are bad
B. why did you rope me in? I don't care.
We dealt with the same fake Conservative outrage during Trumpy's fake trade war.....FoxNation can't keep its stories straight.
You guys keep implying that China is our enemy.
Yet we have almost 300,000 Chinese Students in US colleges, right now, today. I think this is what you cats refer to as "Open Borders".
Do any of you give a sh(t? F no. Let China do whatever they want in the lower 48.
But your'e SERIOUS when you tell me I'm supposed to be worried about a stupid ballon?
And has anyone kept track of who is still America's #1 trading partner?
But sure, FoxNation thinks China is our enemy....yet won't lift a finger to stop Chinese goods from coming here. Or students from openly taking intellectual property in schools throughout America, legally and peacefully.
But yeah, please....tell me about this sooper-scary balloon.... are they gonna find out what Biden's favorite color is with this thing?
And just like before...when I pointed this out during Trump's fake trade war.....every Republican on the board ran away from this obvious hypocrisy. If Republicans REALLY thought China was our enemy? They'd get off their (sses and do something. So nope, I don't care about "spy balloons"....any more than you care about the 290K+ students studying at your nearby elite University.
Wasn’t intentional to rope you in, just the latest convo on the subject. Buuut since you asked….not sure why you get so hung up on the partisan portion, it’s not.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
youthathletics wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:30 pm
Wasn’t intentional to rope you in, just the latest convo on the subject. Buuut since you asked….not sure why you get so hung up on the partisan portion, it’s not.
Because FoxNation & the Republicans have been telling us that China is our enemy for over a decade now, and that we need to "stand up to them".
....and then they don't do a thing about it when they're running the show.
This yelling at Biden over the ballon is fruit from that same tree. So as I told OS and others during the fake Trade War: call me when we deny student Visas to Chinese nationals. Then I'll know that this is serious.
youthathletics wrote: ↑Fri Feb 10, 2023 7:30 pm
Wasn’t intentional to rope you in, just the latest convo on the subject. Buuut since you asked….not sure why you get so hung up on the partisan portion, it’s not.
Because FoxNation & the Republicans have been telling us that China is our enemy for over a decade now, and that we need to "stand up to them".
....and then they don't do a thing about it when they're running the show.
This yelling at Biden over the ballon is fruit from that same tree. So as I told OS and others during the fake Trade War: call me when we deny student Visas to Chinese nationals. Then I'll know that this is serious.
its not just Fox Nation. Kamala spoke about it during her commencement speech to the USNA class of 21’
Not sure why you keep inserting Fox Nation, seems to minimize your argument by going full on partisan, when it’s often not the point of an argument.
A fraudulent intent, however carefully concealed at the outset, will generally, in the end, betray itself.
~Livy
The Chinese are not signatories in any case.
) that allowed three other suspected Chinese spy balloons to transit the continental US undetected during the previous administration.
