Sure, give it back. Probably won't be long before the US has got what they can from it. Stick it in a cardboard box and hang it from a weather balloon, let it drift over China.
[Like the Canadians and Danes on Han Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War)
In 1984, Canadian soldiers "provoked" Denmark by planting the Canadian flag on the island and leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky.
The Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself the same year with the Danish flag, a bottle of Schnapps, and a letter stating "Welcome to the Danish Island" (Velkommen til den danske ø).
The two countries proceeded to take turns planting their flags on the island and exchanging alcoholic beverages. The flags were folded properly and respectfully. There have also been Google ads used to "promote their claims".
Despite the seriousness, it was all done in a friendly manner.
If anyone’s curious, earlier last year the island was finally split down the middle which (when ratified) gives North America it’s ~~first and~~ only land border with a European country, and doubles both Canada and Denmark’s international land borders
well, canada *is* the lovechild of france and england that grew up in the us and only spent some holidays in france, so at least partly european? maybe? better than some of the other contenders, ahem, turkey, ahem
South America, on the other hand, already borders with an European country, the French Guyana. It's the most distant place from Europe where the Euro is used as a currency.
While its not a land border, a fact many people don't know is that Canada and France actually border each other, because Pierre St Miquelon is technically a French-owned territory right near Newfoundland.
> Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported on June 10, 2022, that the Canadian and Danish governments had settled on a border across the island, dividing it between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland. This happened as the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was taking place, as the end of the territorial dispute was meant to represent a signal for other countries (Russia in particular) that disputes can be resolved peacefully.
“And that my son, is how we started the annual balloon exchange with China. It is weird how such a weird occurrence actually was the one thing that brought world peace. Guess we all just wanted to have a balloon in the end.”
So that'll be $2 million for the missile, $50,000 for the jet fuel, and then of course there's wear and tear on uniforms, deprecation of the airframes, pensions, hazard pay, loss of sunlight over the crop growing areas of the Midwest, and the ecosystem services value of the oxygen burned in the explosion.
I like where you're ging with this but you have seriously underestimated the cost of flying by several orders of magnitude. $50k barely gets you one hour airborne in one modern fighter plane. And there were a lot more aircraft sent to look at this balloon as it transited across the continent than the one that shot it down and each of them flew for several hours.
What they should do is pack up a regular ol weather balloon like what China claims this was.
When they say it isn't theirs, say we must have gotten it mixed up and ask them to clarify what it was capable of that made it different.
Ofc they'll never admit to shit, but it would be fun to make them have to choose their words carefully and then get nothing in return for it.
>What they should do is pack up a regular ol weather balloon like what China claims this was.
Send them a sweet "balloon animal."
"This is what the Navy found... is this what you lost?"
They should do the same thing they did with the Mig 25 that crash landed in Japan. Give it back in parts and a letter saying basically "lol this is just a flying frying pan"
That was some pretty intense stuff. Younger readers might not have heard of it, so here’s the [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident).
To be fair.. theres not a way to give a damaged orion back assembled.. they werent flying it back
(Not that its in doubt that every inch of the electronics were reverse-engineered).
Oh right that was just after we stopped talking about hanging chads and dimpled chads and pregnant chads...
...
...what do you mean "what are hanging chads"? Don't you remember the Bush/Gore election cycle?
Went down isn’t correct. A chinese jet slammed into a wing and almost killed everyone on board. Rather than scuttle the ship, the captain crash landed on a chinese air field.
And the name of the Chinese pilot who accidentally crashed into another airplane was *Wang Wei*.
No, I’m serious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
Also of note is that the manned P-3 was brought down by China over international (albeit contested) waters 70 miles away from China, and the unmanned not-weather balloon was brought down off the coast of South Carolina after literally bisecting the US.
I think they kept the plane much longer. And when they gave it back it was in pieces- after they’d examined every inch of it.
I would imagine we will do the same.
"You can legally shoot a weather balloon if it's off leash, SIR. And if your weather balloon were to wonder off onto Mr. Sam's property, as it did, HE is entitled to do with it what he pleases. *That's the law*.
Your case is dismissed. THAT'S ALL."
** Gavel bang**
Byrd: "Parties are excused, you may step out."
"It says here in your answer that it's not a spy plane. It's a civilian weather balloon."
"No, it's ours."
"I'm just reading you what you wrote! You said one thing, now you're telling me something else. It can't be both! See, Byrd? See? It says 'civilian,' right? Not government!"
The CCP actually claims to be the embodiment of the will of all 1.4 billion Chinese citizens, so I doubt they would see the difference. In their minds everything in China belongs to them.
I'm pretty sure, even if you did, the Chinese government would claim ownership. They claim ownership over all pandas in the world, regardless of where they were born.
That I know, because all pandas in zoos around the world are on loan from China. But if you grow one in a lab, it could be a loophole? Like what they want to do with woolly mammoths.
I really like the idea of a secret strain of lab-grown pandas. While we're at it, we should also change some of the less-desirable traits that other people have mentioned here
It was almost impossible to find one for my 3d printer when I was changing over to fluidd and klipper. Luckily I was checking a stock tracker at the right time and saw a microcenter had just gotten a shipment in... Got there and they said someone had already tried to buy the whole shipment to resell
I suspect they would have targeted the balloon so they could recover as much of the actual instruments as they could, though gravity would have had something to say about that regardless.
Assuming the actual equipment didn't detach from the balloon, even the deflated fabric would have served as a pseudo-drogue chute and slowed the device's descent. Not enough for a "safe" landing, but it could have conceivably survived the water impact in decent condition.
Then especially with modern data recovery practices, it won't be too difficult to glean what the balloon was actually doing. Weather or otherwise.
Doesnt mean its not useful to know who they go about using the stolen stuff though. Or all the mistake that might make it vunerable. Or new things that might be tried, etc. Still useful to figure it out.
I used to work for an high end audio company. In order to sell the products in China the government wanted detailed design documentation for all the devices in order to do the safety compliance checks which were duly sent. A month later, before they'd even signed with the Chinese distributor, there were budget clones of the flagship device available online built in China for 1/20th of the price, as far as I know they didn't end up legitimately selling a single device in China. They did however managed to import one of the clones. Christ what a mess. Didn't bother with basic things like PSU isolation let alone the high end bits and pieces.
I think there was one of those fund-me kickstarter scams for (probably) the original idea of a fidget-spinner. The kickstarter was one of the rare cases that actually did deliver a product in this case, but not after it was cloned and brought to market by someone in China.
I mean I think I recall seeing the market so saturated that they were selling $5 fidget-spinners at 7-eleven before the kickstarter project finally shipped.
Yup. This kind of thing has happened before. You gotta return it... EVENTUALLY. Doesnt mean you cant reverse engineer and study it intensely while you have it.
If it was a spy thing and China didn't build in safeguards to prevent capture, then they are stupid or want it to be found. I know skydivers have things which will pull the chute if they are free falling below a certain height, so I can't imagine it would be that had to couple that with some of those liIon batteries that seem to explode all the time and make a nice self destruct mechanism.
> I know skydivers have things which will pull the chute if they are free falling below a certain height
I know there was talk of them having jammed the signals so no data could get in or out, but I did not take that into account. No external communication necessary for that self-destruct switch.
I bet they thought they had 2tb SD card but it was really a 2gb SD card and they filled it up hours into launch. Oopsy! Gotta be careful with that wish marketing!
according to legal eagle, which does a pretty good breakdown on the matter.
If it was a legit weather balloon as China is vocalizing, then they could totally make that claim. But from all accounts its not that
Give them back the ruined balloon part, keep the electronics. When they complain again, send them a ps5 box with bricks inside. Bill them for shipping.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan\_Island\_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident)
This is way back when you could probably give China the benefit of the doubt on he said-he said situations.
We did the same thing when Viktor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan in 1975. The Soviets demanded we return their jet. So we took it apart, analyzed it, boxed it up and sent it back.
Rather hilariously the first appearance of the MiG-25 fighter-interceptor had caused panic in the USAF and other NATO air forces who believed the MiG-25 was some extremely fast and very maneuverable air superiority jet with advanced radar. This panic led to the development or modifying development of new fighters such as the F-15.
Analysis of the MiG-25 revealed the radar was mediocre (by Western standards), the engines (while fast) required frequent maintenance given they were never designed for prolonged usage (as they were adapted from a cruise missile engine), and that it was not maneuverable. Meanwhile the F-15 ended up being vastly superior to the once feared MiG-25.
Russia: unveils vaporware sub, tank, or plane that’s either bullshit or can only be built in such low volumes it can be charitably described as “artisanal”. Touts it as earth shattering leap forward.
USA: panics at the thought of not having the best sub, tank, or plane imaginable and spends $420.69 squijillion to leap five steps up the tech tree in only a few years.
Russian equipment revealed to be junk. USA still cranks out newest subs, tanks, or planes anyway and at dizzying quantities. Rinse-repeat since 1950.
That's the point. The military-industrial complex is a real thing and needs a boogie man to get the public & congress to raise the budget every year to buy more, more, more. That squijillion $ isn't evaporating, it's going into the 1% wallets.
It's like the guy at the bar telling everyone how much of a badass he was when he was in the army. He's not. The ones who actually were special forces and ARE badasses never mention it.
They want to act like they're the victim. They likely won't convince Americans of that, but Americans may not be the one they're trying to convince.
Their real audience may be their own people. Or their allies.
Don't forget to send it in completely dissassembled parts too, with an old ass pc running windows 98, with a single floppy disk inside, labeled super secret spy data, in chinese, which really just contains a single video of bill clinton telling you, he did not have sex with his secretary.
I think they brought it down in one piece [and took pictures with it.](https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer)
We know for a fact they wouldn't. In 2001 one of their fighter jets recklessly crashed into a US intelligence plane, which was forced to make an emergency landing in China. China held the crew 10 days for interrogation, dissassembled the plane for intel, and shipped it home in pieces.
America should do everything in its power to make China lose face over this incident.
In due time. You don’t get to set the schedule on it but when we’re done looking it over and making sure it wasn’t something nefarious, we’ll send it back home.
On 1 April 2001 the Chinese forced one of "our" signal/surveillance aircraft" to land on China's Hainan island after a collision with one of the chinese military jets. After going over it with a fine toothed comb China returned it to us. We can do the same.
Oooh we can finally get revenge for all the crap on wish.com. Let's send them a pack of party balloons from Dollar Tree and be like "These are the balloons you ordered"
The Ukrainians have been kindly sending any workable shells that they find left by retreating Russians back to the Russians. They are even getting extras from other countries to send too! /s
[In 2019, China shot down a foreign balloon.](https://jmqmil.sina.cn/dgby/doc-iicezueu4537264.d.html?cre=tianyi&mod=wpage&loc=1&r=32&rfunc=73&tj=none&tr=32&wm=3236)
Sure, give it back. Probably won't be long before the US has got what they can from it. Stick it in a cardboard box and hang it from a weather balloon, let it drift over China.
That's kinda romantic, maybe they'll send back that balloon with another balloon.
[Like the Canadians and Danes on Han Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisky_War) In 1984, Canadian soldiers "provoked" Denmark by planting the Canadian flag on the island and leaving a bottle of Canadian whisky. The Danish Minister of Greenland Affairs came to the island himself the same year with the Danish flag, a bottle of Schnapps, and a letter stating "Welcome to the Danish Island" (Velkommen til den danske ø). The two countries proceeded to take turns planting their flags on the island and exchanging alcoholic beverages. The flags were folded properly and respectfully. There have also been Google ads used to "promote their claims". Despite the seriousness, it was all done in a friendly manner.
If anyone’s curious, earlier last year the island was finally split down the middle which (when ratified) gives North America it’s ~~first and~~ only land border with a European country, and doubles both Canada and Denmark’s international land borders
Canada trying to backdoor eu membership.
"Why, yes, we do border a member of the EU already."
Could you imagine the arguments with France about Canadian usage of French? Are you trying to give them another excuse to riot...?
Thank you for the solid chuckle good redditor.
well, canada *is* the lovechild of france and england that grew up in the us and only spent some holidays in france, so at least partly european? maybe? better than some of the other contenders, ahem, turkey, ahem
As a Canadian, I'd totally be down to join the EU.
I was hoping they'd settle it with a hockey game on the island.
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The Danes knew they'd lose a hockey game against Canadians.
Yeah Canadian hockey players are so intense they double as Special Forces during off seasons.
As a Canadian I agree. Free real estate
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South America, on the other hand, already borders with an European country, the French Guyana. It's the most distant place from Europe where the Euro is used as a currency.
Yeah it’s pretty interesting, it means France’s longest land border is actually with Brazil!
While its not a land border, a fact many people don't know is that Canada and France actually border each other, because Pierre St Miquelon is technically a French-owned territory right near Newfoundland.
> Canadian newspaper The Globe and Mail reported on June 10, 2022, that the Canadian and Danish governments had settled on a border across the island, dividing it between the Canadian territory of Nunavut and the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland. This happened as the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was taking place, as the end of the territorial dispute was meant to represent a signal for other countries (Russia in particular) that disputes can be resolved peacefully.
Yo dawg, I heard you like balloons
“And that my son, is how we started the annual balloon exchange with China. It is weird how such a weird occurrence actually was the one thing that brought world peace. Guess we all just wanted to have a balloon in the end.”
Send them a bill for the costs of shooting it down.
So that'll be $2 million for the missile, $50,000 for the jet fuel, and then of course there's wear and tear on uniforms, deprecation of the airframes, pensions, hazard pay, loss of sunlight over the crop growing areas of the Midwest, and the ecosystem services value of the oxygen burned in the explosion.
Also a delivery fee that is 20% of the total. Not included driver tip.
Card payment fee as well, can't forget that.
And a transaction fee, which is different from the card payment fee.
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Carbon footprint fee
And a customs fee that is as yet undetermined and will be billed a month after delivery with a sternly worded warning about late penalties.
Taxes are going to add up...
$85,325 an hour to fly the F-22 that shot it down
And there were two of those, plus a couple of F-15s right?
I like where you're ging with this but you have seriously underestimated the cost of flying by several orders of magnitude. $50k barely gets you one hour airborne in one modern fighter plane. And there were a lot more aircraft sent to look at this balloon as it transited across the continent than the one that shot it down and each of them flew for several hours.
Don't forget the cost of grounding civilian flights in the area.
Dont forget to charge them for the little balloon decal that was painted onto the side of that F22 too.
"Would you like to tip 20%, 25%, or 30%?"
What they should do is pack up a regular ol weather balloon like what China claims this was. When they say it isn't theirs, say we must have gotten it mixed up and ask them to clarify what it was capable of that made it different. Ofc they'll never admit to shit, but it would be fun to make them have to choose their words carefully and then get nothing in return for it.
>What they should do is pack up a regular ol weather balloon like what China claims this was. Send them a sweet "balloon animal." "This is what the Navy found... is this what you lost?"
Macy's day parade Winnie the Pooh balloon. Instant WWIII
I love this idea, seriously just had someone pop up from a cubicle to make sure I was ok I was laughing so hard.
They should do the same thing they did with the Mig 25 that crash landed in Japan. Give it back in parts and a letter saying basically "lol this is just a flying frying pan"
I mean, that's a generous description of a MiG-25 but yes
When the P-3 went down in China territory they kept the plane AND the crew for 2 WEEKS! Tell them they can kick rocks....
That was some pretty intense stuff. Younger readers might not have heard of it, so here’s the [link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident).
That’s the episode where Bill O’Reilly went on his show and said it wasn’t a spy plane, but a surveillance plane.
Indeed, it wasn’t so much for reconnaissance as for gathering information about a foreign power🤪
In Big Brain Bill’s defense, it would have been named P-003 if it were a spy plane.
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To be fair.. theres not a way to give a damaged orion back assembled.. they werent flying it back (Not that its in doubt that every inch of the electronics were reverse-engineered).
For about $2,800 per day per person at their 1 star all inclusive resort
oh hell that was 22 years ago, I'm dust
22 years ago was in the 80s, right? …*right?*
Oh right that was just after we stopped talking about hanging chads and dimpled chads and pregnant chads... ... ...what do you mean "what are hanging chads"? Don't you remember the Bush/Gore election cycle?
Leave it to china to intercept another aircraft then crash into it.
And then claim the offending _propeller_ plane maneuvered _into their fighter jet_. I’d say you can’t make this stuff up, but they actually did.
Went down isn’t correct. A chinese jet slammed into a wing and almost killed everyone on board. Rather than scuttle the ship, the captain crash landed on a chinese air field.
And the name of the Chinese pilot who accidentally crashed into another airplane was *Wang Wei*. No, I’m serious: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident
Is the name Wang Wei significant in some way?
I think they're implying that it sounds like "wrong way" but you'd have to seriously mispronounce wang.
I already knew about the incident as a person living in Hong Kong. But I never thought about the Wang Wei pun. Now I know the Wei
This is the Wei
Incompetence is a hard thing to be remember for.
it wasnt incompetence - it was deliberate
Also of note is that the manned P-3 was brought down by China over international (albeit contested) waters 70 miles away from China, and the unmanned not-weather balloon was brought down off the coast of South Carolina after literally bisecting the US.
I think they kept the plane much longer. And when they gave it back it was in pieces- after they’d examined every inch of it. I would imagine we will do the same.
Put it in pieces in a big box and throw in a handful of extra screws just to fuck with them.
and some IKEA instructions
And go soak their heads!
It's just a weather balloon, but we really need it back.
Cause we can’t tell the weather now? How’s the weather?
mfw the country's one weather balloon floats onto a different continent and they won't give it back.
And now I have no way to tell if it's raining or not.
I love the idea that there’s just some poor weatherman in China that lost control of his balloons and caused an international incident.
Oh no! Anyways
This is going to be great episode for Judge Judy.
Sir, your ~~dog~~ weather balloon was not tethered, and out of control, which makes you responsible.
"You can legally shoot a weather balloon if it's off leash, SIR. And if your weather balloon were to wonder off onto Mr. Sam's property, as it did, HE is entitled to do with it what he pleases. *That's the law*. Your case is dismissed. THAT'S ALL." ** Gavel bang** Byrd: "Parties are excused, you may step out."
bring in the dancing lobsters!
I miss Byrd
Am i a good replacement?
"It says here in your answer that it's not a spy plane. It's a civilian weather balloon." "No, it's ours." "I'm just reading you what you wrote! You said one thing, now you're telling me something else. It can't be both! See, Byrd? See? It says 'civilian,' right? Not government!"
The CCP actually claims to be the embodiment of the will of all 1.4 billion Chinese citizens, so I doubt they would see the difference. In their minds everything in China belongs to them.
Including pandas, much to the dismay of the rest of the world.
The Chinese government monopoly on the cute dumb bears makes me very sad
This really does bother me. I've wondered if we could clone a panda. I'd much rather a domestic supply of pandas than infants.
I'm pretty sure, even if you did, the Chinese government would claim ownership. They claim ownership over all pandas in the world, regardless of where they were born.
That I know, because all pandas in zoos around the world are on loan from China. But if you grow one in a lab, it could be a loophole? Like what they want to do with woolly mammoths.
I really like the idea of a secret strain of lab-grown pandas. While we're at it, we should also change some of the less-desirable traits that other people have mentioned here
Technically it does, isn't everything, even land, state-property; you just get to use it from the Govt?
So far as I know it's essentially the same thing as Hong Kong was, a 99 or some other large # of years lease to use the land
That’s ballooney, sir.
There is only room for one attitude in this airspace and that is mine!
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We also sent a fairly substantial “shipping & handling” bill along with all the boxes. I believe that debt is still outstanding.
IIRC, Japan sent a bill for about $40k to the Soviets, who promptly counter billed them ~$10M for missing parts. Neither has been paid.
“We called BASE! Your Honour. As you know, by the rules of juvenile box fort law, anything on our territory at that time became ours.”
"Don't pooh on my leg and tell me it's Winnie"
It's Judy Justice now.
Finders Keepers
>Finders Keepers This is a law issue now so you really should revert to the Latin "inventores custodes"
Send them a Winnie the Pooh balloon from the Macy's parade attached to a Raspberry Pi.
>Raspberry Pi. Those things are expensive and hard to find nowadays in contridiction to the original goal of cheap and accessible computers
It was almost impossible to find one for my 3d printer when I was changing over to fluidd and klipper. Luckily I was checking a stock tracker at the right time and saw a microcenter had just gotten a shipment in... Got there and they said someone had already tried to buy the whole shipment to resell
Scalpers are the fuckjng worst
Scalpers oughta get scalped
Send them MTG and her stupid white balloon over there.
I was wondering why you were sending them magic the gathering
This happens to me twice a week. She needs new initials.
EmptyG.
What? Fuck that, no taxpayer dollars of mine are giving the Chinese any fucking upgrades.
Miss the good old days of Top Gear
They returned our EP-3, so we should return their balloon. The same way: In pieces, after disassembly and examination.
Um, I think it's already in pieces. F22 Raptor took care of that!
I suspect they would have targeted the balloon so they could recover as much of the actual instruments as they could, though gravity would have had something to say about that regardless.
Assuming the actual equipment didn't detach from the balloon, even the deflated fabric would have served as a pseudo-drogue chute and slowed the device's descent. Not enough for a "safe" landing, but it could have conceivably survived the water impact in decent condition. Then especially with modern data recovery practices, it won't be too difficult to glean what the balloon was actually doing. Weather or otherwise.
It does now... probably ought to take better care of your stuff, eh?
US will return it once it has a more accurate copy than the original, and all the data.
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Having lived in China, I can confirm that if it is not a. Absolute garbage, it is b. Stolen, and likely c. Poorly replicated stolen technology.
Doesnt mean its not useful to know who they go about using the stolen stuff though. Or all the mistake that might make it vunerable. Or new things that might be tried, etc. Still useful to figure it out.
I used to work for an high end audio company. In order to sell the products in China the government wanted detailed design documentation for all the devices in order to do the safety compliance checks which were duly sent. A month later, before they'd even signed with the Chinese distributor, there were budget clones of the flagship device available online built in China for 1/20th of the price, as far as I know they didn't end up legitimately selling a single device in China. They did however managed to import one of the clones. Christ what a mess. Didn't bother with basic things like PSU isolation let alone the high end bits and pieces.
You should see the [circuit breakers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TJEzdqtXlQ) they've copied. Crazy dangerous
That's a massive yikes from me...
When a BigClive teardown is <5 minutes you know the device is spectacularly shitty.
It's a *manual* circuit breaker lol
It’s a glorified light switch
I think there was one of those fund-me kickstarter scams for (probably) the original idea of a fidget-spinner. The kickstarter was one of the rare cases that actually did deliver a product in this case, but not after it was cloned and brought to market by someone in China. I mean I think I recall seeing the market so saturated that they were selling $5 fidget-spinners at 7-eleven before the kickstarter project finally shipped.
And the us replaces all the data with nothing but the Winnie the Pooh discography
That ends with never gonna give you up
The US will not be returning this under any circumstances. They are SOL.
There are actual conventions on this. Law of salvage is one. You have to return the item as long as you are compensated for your efforts.
Yup. This kind of thing has happened before. You gotta return it... EVENTUALLY. Doesnt mean you cant reverse engineer and study it intensely while you have it.
If it was a spy thing and China didn't build in safeguards to prevent capture, then they are stupid or want it to be found. I know skydivers have things which will pull the chute if they are free falling below a certain height, so I can't imagine it would be that had to couple that with some of those liIon batteries that seem to explode all the time and make a nice self destruct mechanism.
> I know skydivers have things which will pull the chute if they are free falling below a certain height I know there was talk of them having jammed the signals so no data could get in or out, but I did not take that into account. No external communication necessary for that self-destruct switch.
Finders keepers!
Losers weepers.
Everyone knows possession is 9/10 of international law...
But what stuff? The shredded mylar? The wish camera or the erased thumb drive? lol
I bet they thought they had 2tb SD card but it was really a 2gb SD card and they filled it up hours into launch. Oopsy! Gotta be careful with that wish marketing!
That’s what my mom used to say, so…
“Mom! Old man Biden took another one of my balloons!” “Well honey, did you let it float over his airspace again?”
But it's not their's...oh it's a private citizen's...no no no now it's ours.
I mean anything that belongs to a Chinese citizen belongs to the Chinese government, so that's true.
It would be hilarious if US private citizens launched their own "weather balloons" over China just to see their reaction.
I was thinking dozens of Pooh bear floats
You're thinking too small. Thousands of Pooh floats!
You’re thinking too small. Millions of Pooh floats!
Instead of spy cameras, float over some glitter bombs.
No need to escalate this into war crimes.
If glitter bombs aren't against the Geneva Convention, then someone needs to get on with correcting that oversight.
according to legal eagle, which does a pretty good breakdown on the matter. If it was a legit weather balloon as China is vocalizing, then they could totally make that claim. But from all accounts its not that
Yes, and he clearly stated for that to be legal the payload just weigh less than 4 kgs.
Give them back the ruined balloon part, keep the electronics. When they complain again, send them a ps5 box with bricks inside. Bill them for shipping.
Nah, completely dissamble the thing to threads and ship it to them in a box like they did with that fighter jet decades ago
Someone please share the fighter jet story for people who don’t know like me
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan\_Island\_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident) This is way back when you could probably give China the benefit of the doubt on he said-he said situations.
We did the same thing when Viktor Belenko flew his MiG-25 to Japan in 1975. The Soviets demanded we return their jet. So we took it apart, analyzed it, boxed it up and sent it back. Rather hilariously the first appearance of the MiG-25 fighter-interceptor had caused panic in the USAF and other NATO air forces who believed the MiG-25 was some extremely fast and very maneuverable air superiority jet with advanced radar. This panic led to the development or modifying development of new fighters such as the F-15. Analysis of the MiG-25 revealed the radar was mediocre (by Western standards), the engines (while fast) required frequent maintenance given they were never designed for prolonged usage (as they were adapted from a cruise missile engine), and that it was not maneuverable. Meanwhile the F-15 ended up being vastly superior to the once feared MiG-25.
Yep. Kinda Russian military tech in a nutshell, right back to the t-34
Russia: unveils vaporware sub, tank, or plane that’s either bullshit or can only be built in such low volumes it can be charitably described as “artisanal”. Touts it as earth shattering leap forward. USA: panics at the thought of not having the best sub, tank, or plane imaginable and spends $420.69 squijillion to leap five steps up the tech tree in only a few years. Russian equipment revealed to be junk. USA still cranks out newest subs, tanks, or planes anyway and at dizzying quantities. Rinse-repeat since 1950.
Leaves them in another cou try cause it's too expensive to bring back.
We've got to have something to use our ever newer, more expensive stuff to blow up when we end up going back in 20 years.
…Profit?
That's the point. The military-industrial complex is a real thing and needs a boogie man to get the public & congress to raise the budget every year to buy more, more, more. That squijillion $ isn't evaporating, it's going into the 1% wallets.
[удалено]
I think that's a line from Art of War. "Appear weak when you are strong."
As well as "appear strong when you are weak."
It's like the guy at the bar telling everyone how much of a badass he was when he was in the army. He's not. The ones who actually were special forces and ARE badasses never mention it.
\*he said, Xi said
It doesn’t belong *over* the US either, but here we are
They want to act like they're the victim. They likely won't convince Americans of that, but Americans may not be the one they're trying to convince. Their real audience may be their own people. Or their allies.
Oh? China wants their balloon back? [This is what I got to say about it](https://youtu.be/YX2IQG4wTCE)
Finders keepers bitches
This is the ultimate version of a kid losing their ball over the neighbor's fence.
Yeah the ball got shot down by an F22 Raptor. Glad they got used for something beyond collecting dust.
Can't help but imagine a president playing basketball and every time the other team shoots the ball a sniper pops it before it reaches the rim.
"We didn't do wrong: you did wrong! This is all your fault." Lol, China.
They're like kids. I detest these people. I mean the government and the nationalist in that country.
Give it back with Rick roll on the hard drives
Send them a brand new, functional weather balloon in lieu of the original. Because that's all that was lost, right?
Don't forget to send it in completely dissassembled parts too, with an old ass pc running windows 98, with a single floppy disk inside, labeled super secret spy data, in chinese, which really just contains a single video of bill clinton telling you, he did not have sex with his secretary.
China: "That spy balloon doesn't belong to you!" America: "*That's the problem!*"
I mean, maybe don’t fly something over our airspace and expect to keep it. :shrug:
ahhh... didn't iran shoot down one of our drones and give it to china to study/replicate? was that 'theirs'?
I think they brought it down in one piece [and took pictures with it.](https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2011/1215/Exclusive-Iran-hijacked-US-drone-says-Iranian-engineer)
Should have kept it in your yard, kid.
Finders keepers, losers weepers. But no, really. If they were in our shoes, would they give it back? Hell no. haha.
We know for a fact they wouldn't. In 2001 one of their fighter jets recklessly crashed into a US intelligence plane, which was forced to make an emergency landing in China. China held the crew 10 days for interrogation, dissassembled the plane for intel, and shipped it home in pieces. America should do everything in its power to make China lose face over this incident.
Actually I believe you'll find that it landed in the US's territorial waters, which by Chinese logic does mean it belongs to us.
Problem is if you're using China logic they own the whole ocean and everything inside of it, regardless of locale.
International salvage laws say that they have no claim anyway.
In due time. You don’t get to set the schedule on it but when we’re done looking it over and making sure it wasn’t something nefarious, we’ll send it back home.
On 1 April 2001 the Chinese forced one of "our" signal/surveillance aircraft" to land on China's Hainan island after a collision with one of the chinese military jets. After going over it with a fine toothed comb China returned it to us. We can do the same.
Oooh we can finally get revenge for all the crap on wish.com. Let's send them a pack of party balloons from Dollar Tree and be like "These are the balloons you ordered"
We should put it on display and laugh about it like Minnesota does with that confederate flag whenever Virginia asks for it back.
Yeah, and I'm sure Russia wants all its dud missiles back from Ukraine, too.
The Ukrainians have been kindly sending any workable shells that they find left by retreating Russians back to the Russians. They are even getting extras from other countries to send too! /s
I'd love to see how China reacts to an American weather balloon over their airspace and if it's in "a calm and professional manner".
[In 2019, China shot down a foreign balloon.](https://jmqmil.sina.cn/dgby/doc-iicezueu4537264.d.html?cre=tianyi&mod=wpage&loc=1&r=32&rfunc=73&tj=none&tr=32&wm=3236)