Balloon thoughts

First off, I do not have special information on this matter.  I’m just a guy who overthinks things.  And these are just some of my thoughts on the whole BalloonGate, or whatever it’s being called.

I heard somewhere that the Pentagon reported that there was one such Chinese balloon during Obama’s time in office, three during Trump’s, and the one during Biden’s.  But if I had to bet, I’d say that for everything the Pentagon tells us, there’s a thousand things they don’t.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the military has detected dozens of these balloons or more in the past ten years or so.  They just never said anything because why alert the world to your stealth detection capabilities?  I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a long meeting where they went through each balloon detection and ranked the likelihood that China knew that we detected it.  Like, China probably knew we had detected three of the previous ones, but we said four just to cause them to go through their data wondering which was the other one.  I don’t know how this recent balloon story broke – if it really was first spotted by civilians – or if the story was leaked by the Pentagon just because it was becoming unrealistic that we weren’t talking about it.  If the later, it was probably chosen in advance because we probably already have the detection capability for whatever the next level of stealth China has. 

Another reason we haven’t said anything about these earlier, is because we were probably feeding these spy balloons bad intel.  If they knew that we knew the balloon was there, they might not believe some of the stuff they heard.  But if they’re pretty confident that we didn’t know it was there, then they’re more likely to believe what they learn.  Something to keep in mind is that spycraft makes three-dimensional chess look like checkers, and some of the loudest voices in BalloonGate probably can’t even play checkers.

Thoughts on a Space Force

So for the last day or two, people have been making fun of the idea of a Space Force.  I even got in on it.  But in all seriousness, do we need a Space Force?  As far as I know, no.

The job of this theoretical Space Force is currently done by the Air Force.  This includes handling the GPS satellites, military communication satellites, and the security making sure they aren't hacked by foreign powers.  To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been any major screw up showing the Air Force is so incompetent that these duties need to be taken over by new management.

A case could be made that we might need some Space Force in the future, and it's easier to form it now.  The idea that it's easier to transplant a sapling than a full grown tree.  But what tasks will this Space Force be needed to do in the future? As far as I can see, what the Air Force is currently doing ... only more.  Is that enough justification to make a whole new military branch?

Times are changing.  We are inching towards the era of space tourism.  At first with just suborbital hops, but soon tourists will be going to space hotels.  It's possible that thirty years from now some terrorist will take the tourists in a hotel hostage and someone will need to rescue them, like Executive Decision ... in Space!  But you wouldn't need an entire Space Force for that, just ... Seal Team Infinity?  Although it might be hard to find an entire Seal Team with everyone named Buzz.

If we do make this Space Force, what would the Air Force do?  I mean, the WWII visual of hundreds of bombers with hundreds of fighters escorting them deep into enemy territory to carpet bomb an industrial district doesn't happen anymore.  We're getting to the point where we can have hundreds of drones waiting for a bunch of cruise missiles (fired from ships, which used to shoot at other ships with guns) to take out a country's air defense system before going in and bombing other targets pinpointed by special forces units on the ground.  Getting the military working together as a cohesive whole is the way forward.  Making a new branch of the military, would probably just make that more difficult. 

So, do we have a need for a Space Force?  No.  Would a Space Force make America safer?  No, and the shakeup of the current system might open a window of vulnerability.  A Space Force sounds cool, but that's probably it.