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
China missed the opportunity to paint a big smiley face on the balloon. That would have been scary
the real question is how do they know that was china balloon?
@Kitty Cat Awe good one Miss Kitty 👍
@3rd Reich Ball heehee yX-D!! Bless you 🏆
😁😁😁
Irresponsible China will never admit responsibility
You’re telling me the most advanced country in the world can’t safely recover a big balloon out of its own skies ?
@Futurewealthyperson fox cnn bouth same war propaganda..
The American leyend the UFOs 🛸
@Francisco Resto 😂 you must work for Russia or China
@Blake Veracruz thanks idiot democrats for allowing china to spy on America and for a leaving the border open for terrorists
Most advanced country ?… I think that you must be speaking of the America of the 1900s ..
You can’t tell me we don’t have the ability to go up there and snag it and bring it down for evaluation
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.
no, that technology is like 30 years ago away
@Mark Smith we do 😂 a helicopter and net
Literally a dead country and these comments show it. There’s Americans that would rather have China win
@didier montagnier good point
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!
@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….
@piXie23 It is the same thing from an airspace perspective, as in outside of US airspace.
@Turn It Up Reading comprehension: same as satellites in that neither are inside US airspace.
@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.
@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.
this is really cracking me up if I’m being honest.
Amazingly, that are allowing it to continue flying rather than blowing it up asap. THAT’S amazing.
Beijing Joe Biden says that it’s a friendly and nothing to worry about.
just use a drone to hook a line an tow the POS..idiots ..homeland security myazz
If they did blow it up it would drop debris on people
@Christian Prepper I’m sure the Chinese ballon will thank you for the non violent approach soon as it lands !
@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 !
Tracking it as it collects data, wow.
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.
That’s the biden administration for you…
The ballon does not see more then any satelite and its mission is quite useless.
@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
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 .
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…
@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.
@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.
@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.
@Saper Dee whoa…good point…and maybe the Chinese need us to explode it over ourselves 😳
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”
They walked in with a balloon? Floating would be easier.
What are they doing elsewhere while all of our attention is on this lone balloon?
Girl follow the ballon at least they are looking up now
Exactly!
They are over seeing it while it is getting all the information it needs.
”the size of three busses”. American units are always impressive
@Kitty Cat Chinese generals probably contacted Milley and told him that 😆
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.
@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
@Shawn Johnson you’re seriously not too bright
What about British unit
The media is comedy at this point 😂
Easy to bemoan facts after so much reefer.
CNN and Fox are entertainment agencies.
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. 💀
Wow . Making sure the big guy gets his 10% by any means possible
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
It crossed through Alaska and across Canada……
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
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 😜
@Lupin the 3rd 5 second google search woulda told you it’s 40,000 feet up. Your next “theory”?
They can’t detonate a missile near it or something? We don’t have our own balloons to go up and investigate?
If it had MAGA written on it I guarantee it would be shot down so can the excuses.
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?
They can fly balloons in our air spaces but let somebody here in the U. S. fly a drone in restricted air space
it’s technically above our airspace. this thing is like 18 miles in the air
The balloon is flying higher then any airplane. Drones are a threat to helicopters, low flying planes etc.