:michael-laugh:
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1622068483012829185
Article link: https://archive.is/Qb0Oa
This all feels like a satire but it’s real and Americand are just as dumb as I’ve been hoping they weren’t.
The specter of…balloon gap…is haunting America. I mean…this is like an ironical one liner I see on hexbear, but now it’s WSJ and unironical. What an insane country.
WE MUST NOT ALLOW A HOT AIR BALLOON GAP
As if the US wouldn’t be working on that already. This whole affair is just the usual projection imo.
The Pentagon is working on a new plan to rise above competition from China and Russia: balloons.
The high-altitude inflatables, flying at between 60,000 and 90,000 feet, would be added to the Pentagon’s extensive surveillance network and could eventually be used to track hypersonic weapons.
For years, DoD has conducted tests using high-altitude balloons and solar-powered drones to collect data, provide ground forces with communication and mitigate satellite problems. The Pentagon is quietly transitioning the balloon projects to the military services to collect data and transmit information to aircraft, POLITICO discovered in DoD budget justification documents.
The Covert Long-Dwell Stratospheric Architecture (COLD STAR), a project designed to locate drug traffickers, was widely reported in 2019. At the time, the Pentagon launched 25 surveillance balloons from South Dakota as part of a demonstration.
