Pentagon tracking suspected Chinese spy balloon over the US

The US is tracking a suspected Chinese high-altitude surveillance balloon over the continental United States, a senior defense official said on Thursday. Col. Cedric Leighton, CNN military analyst and retired US Air Force colonel joins Erin Burnett to discuss. #CNN #News

70 comments

  1. You’re telling me the most advanced country in the world can’t safely recover a big balloon out of its own skies ?

    1. @Blake Veracruz thanks idiot democrats for allowing china to spy on America and for a leaving the border open for terrorists

    1. No you don’t, at that altitude its not that different than grabbing a satellite and bringing it down, well it’s harder since you can’t match it’s speed with anything other than another balloon.
      You can shoot it down though and hope it doesn’t self destruct.

  2. Are they not violating our airspace? I seem to remember in 2001 how the FBI really didn’t care about the Saudi flight students learning how to take of and fly an airplane……but not how to land one. Complacency will be our death!

    1. @Tom Bout DND already said it’s “well above commercial air traffic” which goes up to 40k ft, F-22 has been specially diverted instead of closer F-15s and F-22 has 60k flight ceiling, so it’s at least around 60k ft, the rest is speculation but if China is willing to send something over another sovereign US territory diplomatically it’s much easier if it’s not inside US airspace….

    2. @Turn It Up It seems to me that the person is saying the US airspace ends at 100k ft above ground(I cannot find any reliable info to verify this claim.) Obviously, satellites orbit above that height so they’re not in US airspaces even if they are above US soil.

    3. ​@Justin S In this case the only thing that matters is how high does China consider US airspace goes, and China probably consider it 100k ft.

    1. @Christian Prepper I’m sure the Chinese ballon will thank you for the non violent approach soon as it lands !

    2. @Scott Paris of course a ballon is the perfect way to destroy a nation…..NOT ! just alittle ensurance for you , most contaigons would disapate during flight mixed with oxygen or helium within a few days time , and they did not say the Balloon came from any enemy craft ! …sorry if I’m wrong but it smells of HOAX !

    1. what data? trhis thing ain’t gonna see any more than you can find on google earth if you think this is bad wait until you find out what spy sattelites do.

    2. @Shane Moreland what did his administration do??? Which data can that balloon collect? Or you think the state intelligence will allow it hanging if it’s collecting any important data? Common guys

    3. Beijing Biden. I been telling from the rooftops we are being gutted from within. Spent to death. Disarmed. That balloon could emp. Bio . Chem war . Collect data etc . This event is so pivotal in history .

  3. So let me get this straight…with all the ungodly technological advances we’ve made as a society…you’re telling me that we have 0 means of getting up to truly investigate this thing and our only option is to stare at it and speculate…

    1. @vl hc the F-22’s circled it, reaching it was no problem, they were simply ordered to stand down by the Pentagon for ridiculous reasons that just showed the Chinese how little we do to react.

    2. @Ned why would you say that? China just threatened America if Biden was to visit Taiwan…and then China moved its Navy and air force closer to Taiwan.

    3. @Justin S it was reported that the F-22’s circled multiple times around the balloon …based on that, id say classified information was unnecessary to determine whether we could have destroyed it.

  4. Imagine there was just a bomb attached to it. The Chinese would have been like “wow well that was easy we just walked right in”

    1. LOL anything but “socialist” metric system, amirite LMAO
      But serious DON’T SHOOT IT, FFS!!!
      It may carry a load of a lethal substance that spreads with the wind, contaminates land and water and kills millions.

    2. @Shawn Johnson why would you use something that’s more than 20 times smaller? That’s just ignorant. How hard is it to understand we have been comparing sizes like this forever. How big is it? Well it’s about as big as a bus. Everyone knows how big a bus is its very easy to understand the size. Nobody gives a fk about your metrics

  5. China thinks that it’d be a great opportunity to spy on the States, makes a 3 bus-long sized balloon and then flies it over Montana. 💀

  6. I’ve got to be honest; I’m extremely unconvinced that a weather balloon THAT BIG could be released with active radio contact with anybody on the ground without the FCC knowing or anybody seeing the launch on radar. In addition, weather balloons aren’t controllable, they just drift. I’m not sure where they’re getting China from, this could just as easily be a civilian effort to find leakable data. I don’t know the whole story, maybe it’s a model they know to be CCP in origin, but it’s quite weird to me to immediately assume foreign involvement

  7. as stated in another comment:
    To summarize why the balloons are not being targeted here is why:
    Balloons only usually have a thin layer of plastic but many plastic materials (e.g. mylar) which are transparent to radar, or only weakly reflective. second because of this it would be rather difficult to shoot down with a missile. Third because its slow-moving, modern fighter jets would move too fast to get a proper lock on the target with missiles or move to fast to shoot it down with guns. altitude is another factor if the balloon is above a certain altitude a fighter may not be in range due to ceiling limitations of the aircraft or Surface to air missiles we use. and finally a missile fired in the air misses will eventually have to go down and so it could hit a populated area causing a detonation.
    This is why we have not shot it down yet are we clear with the technicals

    1. Jets fly too fast to hit it with guns? 😂 So the best defense against a fighter jet is to simply fly really really slow. Makes sense 😜

    2. They can’t detonate a missile near it or something? We don’t have our own balloons to go up and investigate?

  8. I find the logic interesting, they say they won’t shoot it down for fear of debris. does that mean they wouldn’t shoot down a plane if it was over their skies?

  9. They can fly balloons in our air spaces but let somebody here in the U. S. fly a drone in restricted air space

    1. The balloon is flying higher then any airplane. Drones are a threat to helicopters, low flying planes etc.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.