“Would you like to ride in my Chinese spy balloon….”

Trump is such an unoriginal dipshit he tried to make "Spygate" catch on for an umpteenth time.

 

.

Silly old bear.

 

The DOD just released a closeup of the Chinese spy balloon.

 

It’s 11½ miles up. You’re not gonna shoot this thing down with an AR-15.

 

What an odd story. As has been noted, it seems like the Chinese could get the same info with more sophisticated technology. But what do I know? Must be some sort of benefit, even if it's just a political jab.

I wonder when it was launched and from where.

 

a simple troll move.

It would be fun if a few certain unmentionables popped out and suddenly 'unretired'.

 

The balloon has been popped.

 

Maybe it was just a gender reveal gone way too far.

 

I was hoping it would descend over Mar-a-Lago
and deposit a flaming bag of dog shit on Fucko's doorstep.

 

If it were made from the same materials as Chinese condoms, it would have failed a lot sooner.

 

There do seem to be some benefits with the balloon vs. a satellite, like loiter time. A satellite zips by once or twice a day and the other side knows exactly when that will be, so it can hide stuff or lay low for that 20- or 30-minute window when it's overhead. A balloon can linger for hours, take more and better pictures, and disrupt operations. At the same time, they're much cheaper than a satellite and very difficult to shoot down.

Now as for why it's there? That's the million dollar question.
There are some theories floating around that it could be a dry run for a high-altitude EMP or nuclear attack. This is an effort to test our defense capabilities and response. Given that they seem to have a bunch of these things floating over countries all over the world, though, that might not be likely. Could just be some sort of electronic surveillance.
That we don't know exactly why it's there is among the arguments against shooting it down. Shoot it down, and it smashes into a million pieces when it lands. Figure out a way to take it down in one (or mostly one) piece and you can have the techies go over every inch of it and hopefully gather some good intelligence.

And while I now understand why this thing has floated across the entire country, it's still an embarrassment that it has. Some questions need to be asked about why we don't have the capability to quickly deal with a threat like this — which, of course, also means billions of dollars will be spent trying to figure out how to kill the guy from "Up."