“Cheap and cheerful”: Russia was offered to respond to the United States with balloon trolling
There are several important lessons Russia should learn from the Chinese balloon's flight over the United States.
Military analyst Ilya Kramnik stated this in a commentary to Moskovsky Komsomolets, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
He points out that a high-altitude reconnaissance balloon is a relatively cheap way to get better quality imagery of the area than from a satellite, and with less vulnerability of the carrier to air defense.
In addition, the expert believes, by changing the flight altitude, you can select the desired air flows and thus make the balloon’s flight controllable. In his opinion, the ability of US air defense and missile defense to detect, track and shoot down such a target has radically decreased compared to the 1970s.
The analyst called the Pentagon’s claims that the balloon was shot down “as soon as it ceased to pose a danger to people on the ground” false.
“Over the taiga regions of Alaska, Canada and Idaho, where there are fewer people per kilometer than bears, it could be shot down with less danger to people on the surface than over the densely populated Atlantic coast. Based on the parameters of the target, we can assume that they shot it down as soon as it became possible - losing the working fluid, the ball gradually descended, and when it reached an altitude of 20 thousand meters, it made sense to lift the fighter to it.
Now the question is: why don’t we use such an inexpensive and effective way to troll the USA? A country that has declared us its adversary and enemy, which supplies the Armed Forces of Ukraine with long-range weapons en masse and declares its readiness to supply even more of them,” Kramnik said.
He believes that Russia could build one or two factories for the production of rubberized fabric and helium production in one of the friendly countries of the Western Hemisphere.
“We would put the production of balloons on stream and launch dozens of them towards the United States. Look, the United States would have other concerns besides putting pressure on Russia. Cheap and cheerful.
And, in fact, judging by the direction of air flows in the stratosphere, it is possible to launch probes towards the United States from our territory. This would keep US fighter aircraft in good shape. And at the same time, we would receive valuable intelligence information, compensating for the acute shortage of our own satellites for sensing the Earth from space,” Kramnik concluded.
"Cheap and cheerful": Russia offered to respond to the US with balloon trolling