I would have thought capturing it would be better so that they could analyze the working equipment as opposed to a pile of waterlogged junk at the bottom of the ocean.
I'm not sure they were just jamming it. Disclaimer - I was USAF but did not deal with radar or signals, so I may be off here...
What if they were using something similar to those "Stingrays" the police use to capture cell phone traffic by making the phones connect to the Stingray instead of the nearest cell tower? If the balloon was using a comms technology that depended on sending messages to a relay somewhere (like a phone) they could just play man-in-the-middle, intercept the actual message, and either stop it there or forward on an invalid message that we want the Chinese to see. Planefags said there were planes and helicopters shadowing the balloon so it is possible (if that tech exists anyway).
I would have thought capturing it would be better so that they could analyze the working equipment as opposed to a pile of waterlogged junk at the bottom of the ocean.
I'm not sure they were just jamming it. Disclaimer - I was USAF but did not deal with radar or signals, so I may be off here...
What if they were using something similar to those "Stingrays" the police use to capture cell phone traffic by making the phones connect to the Stingray instead of the nearest cell tower? If the balloon was using a comms technology that depended on sending messages to a relay somewhere (like a phone) they could just play man-in-the-middle, intercept the actual message, and either stop it there or forward on an invalid message that we want the Chinese to see. Planefags said there were planes and helicopters shadowing the balloon so it is possible (if that tech exists anyway).
Space Force