Let's step back for a bit.
First, let's talk about intelligence collection - aka spying. To begin with - every country in the world does this or tries to do this. Some have bigger budgets and capabilities then others.
And I'm not going to get into the different types or means here. Let's keep it simple. Every country in the world seeks to gain information to enable their priorities.
Also, if possible, to get that information without getting caught. Thats a bonus. And most countries will try and do that.
As although everyone tries to spy on each other to gain a comparative advantage its better if you don't get caught.
But caught sometimes you do. Sometimes by accident and sometimes by design.
In the case of the Chinese balloon let's talk about the shock lots of public figures are expressing. I liken it to Casablanca. In short that China reportedly was able to send a balloon over the United States has led to outrage.
What I will call manufactured outrage. Why? Well, if we could do the same without getting caught -we would as well. For all I know we have.
The Chinese are spying on us!!!!. I'm shocked to find out this is happening.
Or at least publicly getting caught. That is a key point.
Only those in the know can say if this is the first time the United States actually detected a Chinese balloon.
It is entirely possible that the U.S government has known about this for sometime.
And for whatever reason chose to ignore or not publicize it.
That would fall into the category of we know that they are doing intelligence collection operations - spying - using a balloon.
And since we know have taken steps to mitigate whatever intelligence that they can collect.
It's a similar concept in old fashioned Human Intelligence.
If you identify a person from a country who is collecting intelligence on you and is trying to do so in a covert manner.
Let them do so. A known spy is always better than an unknown one.
Knowing who is doing it makes countering what they are doing easier.
Vice not knowing who is trying to covertly collect intelligence.
All sorts of fun things can be done to muck up your adversary if you are aware of the techniques tactics and procedures of someone spying on you.
Thats when you get into the dark arts of really devious stuff.
So, it's possible that for whatever reason the U.S decided to let this activity continue. And in effect collect counterintelligence on this activity.
Another option is that China was able to get away with this activity for a period of time as they were using balloons that were smaller and less detectable. And then they figure out that the United States had become aware.
In short, they knew that we knew. So, they decided to use a massive intelligence collection balloon that would in no way able to remain convert and would certainly be detected.
Or there was a calculation that other operations with balloons had not been detected, and the decision was made to see how big they could go without being detected.
In either case it would have presented an glorious opportunity to gauge what the U.S would do when it detects something in the NORAD/ US airspace. Also, to see what tactics techniques and procedures would be used to counter the intrusion. And the associated political impact that would have on U.S internal politics.
Why, because as outrage mounted the U.S and NORAD would be forced to do something. Anything. As U.S politics would demand some action or another. All China has to do was make some popcorn and watch
If I had to guess - I'm guessing this is the case. After all, they are only losing an unmanned balloon with expendable equipment that has likely already collected what they want.
This would be a good bookend for them.
Or they were able to conduct similar operations in the past without known detection and just pushed on. Something went wrong with the route planning, or the control of the balloon and China got caught with its hands in the cookie jar.
In any case if the U.S was trying to pretend to not know about these operations that fiction went away when average citizens detected it and it went viral on news and social media.
So lets put this in context. We have already established that everyone spy's on everyone.
Lets pretend rather than countries we talk about our houses.
One day you come home to your house walk into your living room and there is a large television camera with a blinking red light aimed at your couch.
You would freak out, probably call someone.
And then you check your historical home security footage to figure out whom put a damn commercial camera in your living room.
Remember, most people don't really check home security footage until something goes wrong. Some do, just not most.
In any case you check your footage and see that the same Internet repair person has been entering your house every two weeks.
What do you do. Search your house for other devices. And what do you find.
A bunch of smaller ones that you did not see. You essentially sanitize your house. Maybe even call in a countersurveillance company. You also might change the settings on your security system to give you better alerts.
Which is kind of what happened. Essentially there was something large detected we did not expect to be there and we cleaned house.
And like anyone that detects a large camera in the living room we did so with a bunch of physical - likely manufactured - outrage. In our case in the form of several missiles.
But what did we really accomplish?
So if you make the assumption that China knew we knew, we just gave them an overt demonstration of NORAD air defense procedures.
We also gave them some pretty good insight into the national security decision making process of the white house and the associated politics with such decisions on both the Democrat and Republican party as well as the nation as a whole.
Thats pretty good intelligence operations collection operation if you asked me.
Thats like 5 birds with one stone.
So now lets pretend why, if indeed the United States did not know, how that possibly could have happened until the Chinese went big ( ie something eyeballs can see during the day).
To explore this we need to talk about radar. And other things not radar. But for ease of discussion lets keep it to radar. And lets frame the discussion in terms of threats.
So, NORAD and U.S Air defenses are generally geared towards detecting metal or other things moving fast towards Canada and the US.
Why?
Well a metal and other things moving fast might be a real threat.
A hijacked jetliner, a foreign fighter jet, a missile or an ICBM.
All those things are pretty real threats and need to be intercepted to protect the nations.
Something else about radar.
Clutter.
What is clutter. Clutter is at its basics radar returns from the environment.
Clutter can be rain, land sea interface, birds, trash, sand, clouds - lots of things
In general the more sensitive your radar the more clutter you have. Yes, this is an oversimplification.
So, there is a trade off. You can make your radar more sensitive, but you might get more clutter.
Which means for false positives/ alerts.
So if you run a very sensitive radar you might have lots of false targets.
That means your fighter interceptors are going to be very busy to try and find sand, birds, trash ect.
So, to help with that trade off, we do some basic logic.
Generally, things at really high altitude with a very low radar cross section, moving slow are not a threat and are not "real" they are clutter. So we set up our radars to filter them out.
Why waste resources tracking a weather balloon released by a bunch of scientists?
And I am just guessing here.
In order to maximize the efficiency of our systems we essentially told our radar to ignore things like the Chinese balloon.
As something moving that slow at that altitude was generally determined not to be a threat.
When we detected the balloon - a figurative camera in our living room - I'm guessing we changed some settings. When that happened, we found a bunch of other things that had not been seen before.
We also essentially looked at our historical camera data and going back found a bunch of other times this happened. Remember, if there was not a reason, most people would don't review camera footage from a home security system.
Generally, it's probably the same for U.S radar data. The amount of resources to sift through that on a daily basis is probably prohibitive.
As a postscript to all of this. I am guessing that we reduced our resources in terms of NORAD and U.S air defense since the end of the cold war.
After all, do you really think the Taliban or ISIS is going to lob a missile at us.
Not so much. So whom do we really worry about. Well Spy planes and fighter jets.
So I'm guessing this whole series of events has caused some serious re-assessment of monitoring U.S Airspace.
That is if this was really a surprise.
Lastly everyone is wondering how the Chinese or others (for the smaller ones not confirmed to belong to China ) did this.
Well, its simple. Really. Wind. Winds flow generally from west to east. And if you have a good handle of what direction the winds are blowing and how fast you can lob a slow-moving object like a balloon pretty much anywhere. Especially if it has some maneuverability.
Chek out this web site
And realize this is what is available to the public. I would be willing to guess that governments have much better more accurate information.
