What's up with a giant balloon being able to evade detection? The US didn't know about this balloon until it was reported visually by civilian aircraft when it was over the US. I read somewhere that Japan asked the US if it flew over their country. And on cable news they have to talk about the backwardness and why need a balloon when satellites can do the same job? I see an answer in there. Something that is cheap and they can't detect it...?
Remember those pictures of various Chinese hypersonic mockup designs hanging from a carriage hanging from a balloon? Have these floating over the Pacific waiting for enemy ships to come into range. You're going to be able to detect radar before they get close enough to read the bounce-back signal. I was watching CNN and they had a former General being interviewed saying the surveillance technology hanging from the balloon must weigh in the tons. How many suicide drones can it carry? Launch the balloon at night and it would be loitering over Taiwan before sun-up. No chance of spotting it. You know how paranoid Taiwan would be if hundreds of balloon decoys were coming at them that that they would have use up missiles shooting them down?
How they might be used is that they'll be spread out in designated zones in the far West Pacific, outside of where US thinks China has consistent ISR, and then suddenly once an US battlegroup enters the grid, they get shot at by YJ-21s at max range seemingly from nowhere.
Its probably not too good that some USian spotted it from a plane, because imagine the surprise when US didn't know such types exist. However, US intelligence might already have a clue that the capability exists. Either way, China deemed it non-secret enough to send them on long haul recon trips that are 1 way missions with decent probability of straight up crashing inside US territory, if theres a big storm or something.
