I districtly remember seeing a photo of the remains of one balloon in the custody of the FBI, I think it was taken at Quantico. I'm sure it was the Chinese balloon, and the FBI was acting in their role of the agency responsible for counterintelligence investigations.
Article: June 30, 2023, 4:35 AM EDT / Updated June 30, 2023, 9:17 AM EDT
By Jennifer Jett
HONG KONG — The suspected Chinese spy balloon that flew over the United States early this year used commercially available, off-the-shelf technology that was American-made, according to three U.S. officials familiar with preliminary findings by the FBI.
Article: The FBI is responsible for investigating counterintelligence threats, and the balloon was believed to be carrying an electronics payload.
that's false
Article: 
Article: One Chinese official confirmed to Reuters that a renewed Blinken visit would be more likely if the U.S. accommodated Beijing's wish to shelve the issue, adding that China had conveyed it did not want the FBI to release details of its investigation into the downed balloon.
The two sources said the FBI report had originally been anticipated for mid-April release.
The FBI declined to comment on any report. The State Department told Reuters it had never discussed the issue with the bureau and declined to comment on discussions with China over the matter.
Asked about the release of the FBI report at a May 2 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, Daniel Kritenbrink, the department's top diplomat for East Asia, said: "I absolutely support making sure that people are aware of what happened."
Article: In a news briefing on Thursday, senior FBI officials detailed the Bureau’s role as the lead governing agency for the forensic examination of the Chinese high-altitude balloon identified and shot down February 5 by the U.S. military off the coast of South Carolina.
I did a search too, and can't figure out if the actual 4 corners of the "full report" from the FBI has been shared with congress. This is a unknown.
Yes. So why did you claim that the Gang of 8 doesn't know?
Article: “We deliberately didn't shoot down the balloon over Alaska or Montana because we wanted to see everything that was on it,” he reminded Kritenbrink. “And we allowed the balloon to go over military bases. We made sure, to the best of our ability, [that] it didn't gather any more information, all in an effort to find out what was on the balloon. ... So I look forward to working with the subcommittee and full committee to get a classified briefing on that.”
Sherman’s intervention seemed to make an impression. “Yes, sir, and I’d be happy to take that back,” Kritenbrink said.
This interview with Marco Rubio (member of gang of 8) on (10-24-2023) proves that he has not gotten the full FBI briefing/report on what was on the China Spy Balloon. So turns out I was correct.
Source: 5 sec into audio
Source: https://news.yahoo.com/bizarre-secret-behind-chinas-spy-132621162.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall
Source: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/norad-intercepts-balloon-over-texas
Source: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...cal-object-off-hawaii-in-latest-balloon-chase
Source: https://www.geo.tv/latest/487222-did-poland-just-witnessed-a-ufo
this all seems very espionagey
Your WaPo screenshot does not say the balloon had a synthetic aperture radar, only that it had enough power to operate it if it did. All radars can 'see at night', though solar-powered radars perhaps less so.
Article: After the Navy raised the wreckage from the bottom of the Atlantic, technical experts discovered the balloon's sensors had never been activated while over the Continental United States.
I don't see how discussion of the China Spy Balloon is off topic from the 3 other "unidentified objects". All four events are connected. Also the FBI was lead for the wreckage recovery of both the China Spy Balloon as well as the Alaska High Altitude object. So any report (which we know is being blocked) would address all these events together.
Not in evidence.
would like to see a source on that. what did they recover?
Article: The object fell onto sea ice off the coast of Alaska and U.S. Northern Command has begun recovery operations, Ryder said. "U.S. Northern Command's Alaska Command coordinated the operation with assistance from the Alaska Air National Guard, Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Bureau of Investigation," he said.
What I mean is in the minds of US citizens and US members of congress all 4 shootdowns are connected. Every MSM news channel was showing some variation of this graphic for a good straight 7 days.
But as concerns the evidence, they're not. And that's what matters on metabunk.
Actually they are all connected for one simple reason. The FBI was lead on the investigation of all 4 (except the one in Canada where they simply had embedded agents with their Canadian counterparts). Regardless if you buy their official story that they "lost" the debris on the 3 smaller objects the FBI was still lead in the effort. So they would include breakdowns of their search efforts, why they called if off etc. in their final report.
so if the FBI investigates 4 different terrorists, the terrorists are connected?
4 final reports, if any
arthur is presenting evidence as to the state of his mind
Exactly. They have a LOT of reasons to lie to the American people (Cover up the truth). I basically think that the 3 smaller objects were probably more spy balloons from China. But the White House wants to cool off tensions with China so they are pretending that they "lost" the debris from the shootdowns.
Yes, you think that. But you have no evidence of it.
You have no evidence of it.
You have no evidence of it.
You have no evidence of it.
Since I quoted from Project Loon documentation in the proper thread, I can appreciate that these balloons could basically loiter by choosing suitable altitudes. However, the Chinese spy balloon was considerably heavier and would not have had the same kind of vertical mobility as a Project Loon balloon, which means its manouvering capabilities would not be expected to match those of Project Loon.
Want to touch on this portion of it real quick
Yes.
I have some issues with this, notably a provable history of mistaking ordinary objects for extraordinary tech.But officials say the Chinese balloons have been a well-known foreign intelligence concern for a number of years. They say that the UAP Task Force, then led by Jay Stratton, was reluctant to confront the balloon UFO consideration. Stratton's relationship with Tom DeLonge, a musician who established a UFO research group, and his association with research at Skinwalker Ranch (where anomalous phenomena have been reported) also raised concerns with the Navy.
Stratton adamantly resists this characterization and rejects the aforementioned claim of other officials that the UFO task force was primarily focused on air safety. In a statement to the Washington Examiner, he asserted, "No one involved with the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force ever labeled something a UAP, Unidentified Aerial Phenomena, if it was identified as anything known or if it performed in a similar manner to known conventional technology, obviously including balloons. Anyone suggesting otherwise is simply trying to mislead the public into thinking very real UAP are balloons."
Regardless, one key contention was whether radar returns indicating some UFOs traveling at very high speed (multi-Mach) were truly unconventional UFOs or simply balloons producing bad data returns due to their particular physical profile. Directly knowledgeable personnel convinced of the latter scenario felt ignored by leaders in Congress and the Pentagon when they offered their concerns. They say they believed that the UAP Task Force was diverting government resources to researching truly unconventional UFOs at the expense of addressing Chinese balloons. It bears noting, however, that some UFO reports include military eyewitness sightings of apparently sizable vehicles performing extraordinary maneuvers (with apparently corroborating radar/other sensor recordings of the same object). This type of UFO is not what the complainant sources are referring to.
Seems to me like they are connected in the sense that one highly reported balloon incident led people to pay more attention to any and all balloons for a couple of weeks. That is a pretty tenuous connection, not requiring the balloons be from the same source, have them same capabilities or having similar purposes. Other than being balloons, and in a similar time frame, I've not seen anything else connecting them.
Source: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transc...of-defense-for-homeland-defense-and-hemisphe/
Read the whole of this thread, please, with special reference to posts 35, 39, and 54.
There was no "stonewalling" of Greenewald's FOIA request, as you should have read in the BV blog post you referenced. The USAF response, as shown in that blog post, denied the request under Exemption 1 of FOIA. Their response letter is shown and explains the particulars of the exemption. The letter also provided a PoC, FOIA case number, and instructions for filing an appeal.
The quote you provide says:
Source: https://www.defense.gov/News/Transc...of-defense-for-homeland-defense-and-hemisphe/
It could be a gaseous type of balloon inside a structure or it could be some type of a propulsion system. But clearly, they're — they're able to stay aloft.
Well it was clearly a denial. Also Greenwald was not the only person to do a FOIA on this stuff. I find this FOIA intresting because the Air Force basically told the guy to pound dirt and contact AARO if he wanted any records. This is useful because it at least shows that AARO has a case file for the Alaska shootdown. Or am I reading too much into this denial?
