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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 343: Bakhmut

War for Ukraine Day 343: Bakhmut

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(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Here is The Financial Times‘ animated map of the battlespace in Bakhmut:

More on Bakhmut after the jump.

Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump:

Good health to you, fellow Ukrainians!

Today there was no shortage of statements and comments throughout the day, no shortage of news, especially in the diplomatic sphere.

That’s why today’s report is brief. I will start with something that has not yet been reported.

Today, I held a meeting of the Staff, for the first time in a dual format.

First, the traditional full composition of the Staff. We reviewed the situation at the front, Russia’s attempts to increase pressure in Donbas. The issue of supplying the army. Training of personnel and other issues of constant attention of the Staff.

And then, in the afternoon, an additional meeting of the members of the Staff in a narrow format. For a particularly important conversation.

We will not leave any aggressive action of the invader without our response. The enemy is at a specific stage when Russia’s strategic defeat is already clear. But tactically, they still have the resources to attempt offensive actions. They are looking for options to try to change the course of the war and are trying to put the potential of all the territories they still control in the service of aggression.

We have to continue what we are doing: strengthen our resilience, be absolutely united in our aspiration to provide our army and all defenders with the necessary weapons and equipment – we in Ukraine need to speak with one voice to the world on defense supplies. We also need to tangibly increase global pressure on Russia every month.

The enemy must come out of this stage much weaker than they anticipate in the worst-case scenario.

This is a difficult task for us. But we must accomplish it.

We also continue our fight against the internal enemy. I am grateful to the Security Service of Ukraine, the State Bureau of Investigation, the Prosecutor General’s Office and all those who are involved in the cleansing of our country. New steps will follow.

Today, in the framework of negotiations with the President of the European Commission and members of the European Commission Board, we have reached very important mutual understandings. That only together a strong Ukraine and a strong European Union can protect the life we value.

That Ukraine needs unwavering and full support in its defense against Russia.

And that we must, through our further integration, give energy and motivation to our people to fight despite any obstacles and threats.

I believe that Ukraine deserves to reach the beginning of negotiations on EU membership this year already.

And I thank Mrs. President of the European Commission, her colleagues and our friends in the EU for their tangible support on the path of integration and in protecting our country and people.

This includes military, financial, energy and social support. And these are the changes by which we ensure more interaction between our institutions – institutions of Ukraine and the EU.

Tomorrow is the second European integration day of the week. The Ukraine-EU Summit will take place. We are preparing.

And one more thing.

Today I took part in the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, DC. This is an annual event that brings together the most powerful representatives of the American state and society. President Biden was there, as well as senators and members of the House of Representatives, leaders of religious communities and various political communities.

I urged them to do everything we can and as we must in confronting the Russian evil, so that the power of our actions could complement the power of our prayers.

Prayers for salvation from evil, for victory over the invaders, and for peace for all our people – in all municipalities of free Ukraine.

I thank each and every one of our warriors! All soldiers and sailors, sergeants and foremen, officers and generals! To everyone who is resilient!

I thank everyone who helps Ukraine! May all those who pray for our victory be heard!

Glory to Ukraine!

Here is former NAVDEVGRU Squadron Leader Chuck Pfarrer’s most recent assessments of the situations in in Kreminna and Bakhmut:

The issue confronting the Ukrainians regarding the defense of Bakhmut is risk versus reward. Or, in more tactical slang parlance, is the juice worth the squeeze. At one level you don’t want to take the morale hit of giving up a tactical objective you have spent a lot of blood and treasure on. At the same time one has to realistically and, frankly, dispassionately, or as dispassionately as possible, assess the chances for success. And part of that strategic calculus has to be answering the question of whether if Ukraine cedes Bakhmut to the Russians right now does it turns threat to challenge and challenge to opportunity for Ukraine in other places? I can’t answer that question because I’m not looking at the intelligence that the Ukrainians have so I don’t know what they know. Another consideration is very Taoist: “the wise man invests in loss” and “the wise man yields.” Basically if Ukraine stops opposing Russian force trying to take Bakhmut does it cause the Russians to tactically over balance – imagine what happens if someone is pushing on the front of your shoulder and instead of planting your feet and resisting you immediately shift your weight backwards and to the side – creating new openings and opportunities for Ukraine to use Russia’s momentum against them. I hope I haven’t lost you all, but this is basically taking a concept from internal martial arts – an aikido, judo, or tai chi concept – and applying it to modern combat. I can’t answer these questions from my home here in the US, but these are the questions that most surely are occupying the Ukrainian National Command Authority.

I would also suggest that Prigozhin desperately wants Bakhmut. Not because he wants Bakhmut to have Bakhmut, but because he needs it as part of his strategy to go after Gerasimov and Shoigu. Well if he wants it so bad, then give it to him. There are ways to make Bakhmut, to use Sun Tzu’s terminology, deadly ground. There are ways to attrit Prigozhin’s mercenaries and the Russian military in Bakhmut without direct combat. And ways to bottle them up in Bakhmut as well.

The Economist has reporting on the Ukrainian troops’ attitude in the east, including what to do about Bakhmut.

Colonel “Maestro” is a commander in the Kupiansk sector in eastern Ukraine. He has been fighting the Russians since they first invaded, in 2014. His car has a dish for Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite-internet service, now ubiquitous along the front lines, attached to its roof. Thanks to his drone intelligence teams, he can watch what the enemy is doing on the other side of the line in real time, “24/7”. One night this week he monitored 30 Russian men being sent forward. Two of them were killed. When that happened the rest marched on regardless and did not bolt for cover. In the end nine of them died. “They either had no regard for their own lives,” he says, “or they were on drugs.”

On January 30th Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, said “we see that they [the Russians] are preparing for more war, that they are mobilising more soldiers, more than 200,000, and potentially even more than that.” Mr Stoltenberg is not the only one to warn that a new offensive is in the offing. Ukrainian leaders, including President Volodymyr Zelensky, have said the same, and Russian artillery strikes have sharply stepped up in recent days.But most Ukrainian soldiers at the eastern front seem curiously unfazed. Colonel Maestro’s point is that the reinforcements will not be highly trained professionals. Far from it. Many are convicts who have joined the mercenary Wagner Group deployed in the fighting around the city of Bakhmut, because to do so is a way to get out of jail. Their motivation is low, unlike that of the men they are fighting.

If yet more Russian recruits are to be thrown at them, says Oleksandr, a sniper serving under the colonel, that means that the smell of the decomposing bodies abandoned by their comrades will be “unbearable”. Meanwhile, Brigadier-General Sergiy Melnyk, who oversees a large part of the Kharkiv region, including its border with Russia, says drones and satellite imagery have not indicated any new build-up of troops there. In fact, he says, the Russians are digging trenches and building defensive positions as if it is they who are expecting an attack.

Ukrainian commanders say that they believe the main Russian aim in trying to take Bakhmut is to present a success to the public at home, particularly for the Wagner Group. “It is in a valley,” says General Melnyk, so it will be hard, though not impossible, for the Russians to advance from there and to threaten the much bigger cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, which would then become vulnerable to artillery. It is also possible that Ukrainian-held areas in the region could be encircled. From the Ukrainian perspective, General Melnyk says that the point of continuing to fight to retain the city, even at a high cost, is also symbolic. But beyond that, it plays an important role in tying down a large number of Russian troops. General Melnyk thinks that even if it is lost it could be recaptured later. But not all commanders think defending Bakhmut is worth it in terms of the heavy casualties. “If it was up to me I would pull out,” says another of them.

The general hastens to add that there is no room for complacency. He is preparing in case the Russians do launch a fresh push, he says, just as his own forces are getting ready for their own counter-offensive to drive the Russians out of the Ukrainian territory they occupy. It is almost a year since the Russians began their full-scale invasion of the country, but the general says that since Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians out of almost all of the Kharkiv region in September, and Ukrainian forces recaptured Kherson in November, psychologically everything has changed for his men. “We lost our fear of them. We understood that we can fight back and beat them.”

More at the link!

Vuhledar:

Kramatorsk:

Izium:

We interrupt this War for Ukraine update to bring you news of a People’s Liberation Army surveillance balloon spotted over the US…

Obligatorisch:

Also, obligatory:

That’s enough for tonight.

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♬ ella and kirans song – ellis :)

The English audio is from AppleTV’s new animated adaptation of Charlie Mackesy’s “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse.” Which was excellent. And for the record it was very dusty in here and I’d just used the deshedding tool on the Floofarina and my allergies were acting up when I watched it.

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

67Comments

  1. 1.

    Alison Rose

    You could hyperventilate trying to inflate a balloon that size. Har har.

    I hate that Ukraine is put into a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” spot with regard to Bakhmut. When all the options available to you suck, no matter which one you choose, some people are gonna say you chose the suckiest one. Yet there’s no way to prove that negative after the fact, to prove that it was indeed the worst choice. But assholes are gonna asshole and insist that it was, no matter what.

    I hate putin.

    I’m annoyed that the US has said that russian and belarussian athletes should be allowed in the Olympics under a “neutral” flag. No. No they should not be. It seems like a pretty damn easy answer.

    Thank you as always, Adam. Your informed analysis is worth a lot, even if you aren’t on the ground there.

  2. 2.

    Origuy

    My grandfather was in the 15th Balloon Company, Signal Corps, AEF in WWI.

    ETA Not all of the Balloon Companies made it to France, as the training was fairly lengthy.

  4. 4.

    Unkown known

    Surely to heck someone at the Pentagon can find a bit of spare cash from under a couch cushion for one of their boffins to invent a pair of high flying scissors.

  7. 7.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Dirigibles are considered aircraft, right? Such overflight would be considered comparable to flights by reconnaissance aircraft or drones, & certainly warrants being shot down. An incredibly provocative move, if intensional. We really are entering the 1950s phase of the new Cold War, aren’t we?

    I am a bit incredulous as to the Pentagon’s explanation for not shooting it down over Montana. Just aim for the balloon portion & let the tech bay fall like a rock on a more predictable trajectory. Don’t target the tech bay & create a fan of debris. It would also allow the US to take a peek at its payload. How the hell did NORAD miss its sloooow journey across the Pacific?

    Would also be interesting to see the Chinese side of the story (reality, versus official claims that may not even be offered in this case). Was it a deliberate overflight? Why take such provocative action when China already has its own constellation of high resolution optical & synthetic aperture recon satellites? & at a time when China has been making tactical adjustments in its foreign policy orientation/rhetoric, & so soon in advance of pending visits by Blinken & Macron. Did they (whether military or civilian) loose control & is too embarrassed to admitted it?

    The global polycrisis continues to roll forward…

  8. 8.

    YY_Sima Qian

    The factor we never really have much visibility to is the Ukrainian losses in these meat grinders. Presumably lower than Russian, but it has to be much lower to make the exchange worthwhile. These are not suicidal Banzai charges made by the IJA during WW II. The Wagner convicts are backed by massive artillery (not the case w/ the IJA) & the Ukrainian army is actually at a disadvantage in terms of firepower (not the case w/ the defending U.S. Army & USMC facing the Banzai charges).

    I am reading reports that Prigorzhin is running out of willing convicts to send as meat, so not sure how long Wagner can keep up w/ the tactic, either.

  10. 10.

    Mallard Filmore

    From that Financial Times bit at the very top …

    As Russia throws wave after wave of fresh troops into Bakhmut, Kyiv faces an agonising [sic] choice over whether it should give up the eastern Ukrainian city https://on.ft.com/3Xclpqx

    Unless the UA has a plan to deal with all the new enemy troops somewhere else, might as well kill them in Bakhmut.

  11. 11.

    NutmegAgain

    Here’s a substantive contribution: Nena’s kid was a school mate of my son-out-law. Oooh! fancy.

  12. 12.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Also very intrigued by Lara Seligman’s tweet that this is not the 1st surveillance balloon to overfly continental US. How many? How frequently? From whom? Why weren’t they shot down?

  14. 14.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Spanky: Probably saw simplified Chinese characters on the balloon. Should be doable even from high powered ground based optical instruments. But, does deserve an official explanation. As is the communication that must have happened between DC & Beijing concerning this incident.

  15. 15.

    craigie

    And for the record it was very dusty in here and I’d just used the deshedding tool on the Floofarina and my allergies were acting up when I watched it.

    I also had an allergic reaction to this excellent film. Totally wasn’t crying though.

  16. 16.

    bookworm1398

    Maybe its a CIA balloon on a trial run?
    What’s the cutoff in altitude between aircraft you would shoot down and spacecraft you would not? How do these rules even make sense with the resolution satellites can get nowadays.

  17. 17.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Meteorologist Dan Satterfield did a quick modeling that showed a high altitude balloon that drifts to Montana could very well come from China based on the air currents alone. Still does not explain whether it was intentional or lost control, or intentional w/ plausible deniability.

    & how did Japan & Canada not notice, either?

  18. 18.

    Subsole

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    It being Russia, I am not sure it matters. Russia is, after all, famous for volunteer forces that are not exactly the best equipped. Or led. Or necessarily the most voluntary, either.

    Edit: Putin and co strike me as perfectly willing to use their people to burn up UA’s supply of ammo. Keep throwing bodies at it until the barrel melts down, kind of deal.

    Adam, I am curious about a thing. If these balloons can be used as ‘budget satellites’ can they not be used as a replacement for starlink? Basically, could an army use them as tethered commo relays? Or maybe for AWACS duties? Hell, could we (the human we) arm these things?

    I am thinking UA needs to ditch starlink, given Mini-Thiel’s political proclivities. How viable is this as a solution?

  21. 21.

    Spanky

    @Subsole:

    How viable is this as a solution?

    It’s a target, big and slow. And not any cheaper than a starlink sat. Quite the opposite.

    Stick to satellite comms, but don’t rely on Elmo.

  22. 22.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Subsole: Both the US & China have been developing & deploying balloons & dirigibles for comms relays & aerial early warning purposes. Less urgently in the US’ case because of the existing aircraft based capabilities.

    It is an option for Ukraine, but too easy for the RuAF to shoot down w/ their long range air to air missiles

    Edit: What Spanky said.

  23. 23.

    Steeplejack

    @Alison Rose:

    I’m annoyed that the US has said that Russian and Belarussian athletes should be allowed in the Olympics under a “neutral” flag.

    Ukrainian decathlete Volodymyr Androshchuk will not be representing his country at the Paris Olympics because he was just killed by the Russian armed forces. In other news, the IOC announces that Russian athletes are welcome in Paris.

    — Timothy Snyder (@TimothyDSnyder) February 1, 2023

  24. 24.

    Mallard Filmore

    @YY_Sima Qian: 

    It is an option for Ukraine, but too easy for the RuAF to shoot down w/ their long range air to air missiles

    Missiles with the accuracy needed can’t be cheap, and unless they have multi-targeting capability it would be one less missile going to a city. The balloons could be configured to be cheap bait.

  25. 25.

    trollhattan

    Balloon could be a schoolkid project. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/elementary-students-weather-balloon-camera-210030905.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANYQ1-qeaILzV2-hky5N4eiglMjn1mwZcLrYOsE9-LjGTyNsc0kOqifbRdE4oryyJvfzCUGCVWFeU9pKNu99w6e06vgg8HP_pWaFRz8fqCX9aYL5Ve7KcmZXPppjhUEV9FZIiAMyJkCWXs1Dp6NTLG0Hezy_J-_VsGKMmbxoLC0S

    Could be spook stuff. Could be Door #3. Japan sent incendiary balloons to the Pacific coast to try and start forest fires, as a random example (probably not in January).

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb#:~:text=Fu%2DGo%20(%E3%81%B5%E5%8F%B7%5B,States%20during%20World%20War%20II.

    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

  27. 27.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Mallard Filmore:

    Unless the UA has a plan to deal with all the new enemy troops somewhere else, might as well kill them in Bakhmut.

    From the animated map up top, it looks like the Russians are on the verge of controlling the roads over which the Ukrainian forces would have to retreat from Bakhmut.  If being cut off is a real possibility, it makes sense for them to abandon the ruined town and live to fight another day.

    Bakhmut is in a valley, so they could dig a new defensive line in the high ground to the west.

  28. 28.

    Gin & Tonic

    One advantage Ukrainian soldiers have over russian ones is that they have a chance to go home from time to time. I don’t know the frequency or duration, and won’t ask, but some time after Thanksgiving we learned a friend was stationed in Bakhmut. Through his wife, he asked us for some things. Right after Christmas, we packed a box and dispatched it (typically takes ~10 days.) Last week we got a picture of him, at home in western Ukraine, with the things, saying they’ll be useful when he goes back. This is obviously good for morale.

  29. 29.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @YY_Sima Qian: @Subsole:, @Adam L Silverman:  You undoubtedly have a better idea of how reliable this analysis is (it’s quoting a supposed Russian source, probably with Wagner, on Telegram) but assuming it’s accurate, it’s quite the read. Obviously lots of spin about troop quality involved, but it seems to align with other reports about the squad-level attacks on Ukrainian positions.

    1/ The Wagner Group’s ‘human wave’ attacks, which have left the area around Bakhmut and Soledar strewn with the bodies of dead Wagner fighters, have been described in detail by a Russian source. It explains the brutal calculations behind Wagner’s seemingly suicidal tactics. ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/pz74Eej0Tq
    — ChrisO_wiki (@ChrisO_wiki) February 2, 2023

    Whatever happens, the group must reach the firing line. “Whatever happens” is not a turn of phrase, but a task, the failure to complete which will end in execution [by Wagner], regardless of any [mitigating] factors….

    ….”Groups have drone operators to lead the whole group into position to clear the area. At the same time, the lightly wounded do not slouch and do not lie down – for that, they could shoot you in the legs and leave behind….

    “And the newcomers from the penal colonies are very well disciplined: first they are shown video executions, then very soon they encounter their first real examples, and then they get used to such discipline completely….

    “Exchanging people for territory is beneficial when the territory is small and people in reserve are plentiful. If, on the other hand, you have to chop for every metre and people have become scarce, problems begin to arise.

    “As a result, losses are growing and progress slows down. The recruitment of convicts at first gave a full-flowing river of people, now they are gone. At the beginning of the war there was talk of Syrian mercenaries, some even came. But they are not fit for this war.

  30. 30.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Pentagon briefing on the balloon. Interesting that the DoD does not assess the surveillance balloon brings appreciable additional capabilities over existing Chinese spy satellites. If so, that possibly drove the cost-benefit analysis against shooting it down. If so, that begs the question why China would make such a provocation, if it was intentional. Also interesting is the claim that what differentiates this particular balloon from previous incursions is the way it has lingered over continental US. 1st, that suggests some degree of control over its flight, as opposed to completely reliant upon air currents, that would suggest the incursion is intentional; 2nd, it was the lingering that might have triggered discussions to potentially shoot it down.

    Since this is not the 1st surveillance balloon to enter the US airspace, I do wonder what is the US policy to such incursions. Also makes you wonder if there has been a tit for tat dynamic, & if so, what the US might have sent over Chinese or Russian airspaces (stealth hypersonic drones in the upper atmosphere?).

  31. 31.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Sister Golden Bear: I just read that twitter threat last night. However, we have seen other Ukrainian & Russian accounts that suggest Wagner uses convict fodder on frontal assaults to uncover Ukrainian defensive positions to be pounded by Russian artillery, fix the defenders in place, & then use the well trained & equipped infiltration teams (assets that Prigorzhin might actually value) to attack the defenders from the flanks or the rear.

    These accounts need not be contradictory. They may simply describe different parts of the elephant, ore reflect variations in tactics at different locations in the Bakhmut area. Perhaps ChrisO was simply describing the convict fodder part of the tactic.

  33. 33.

    Alison Rose

    @Gin & Tonic: The “In Ukraine” FB page often shares short clips of soldiers coming home for visits, greeting kids and dogs and parents and such, and it’s very poignant. I’m simultaneously glad they have this ability to spend even a short amount of time together, while also being a bit heartbroken at how hard it must be for them when the person has to leave again.

  34. 34.

    Sister Golden Bear

    There’s a blimp that leads a life of danger
    To everyone it greets it stays a stranger
    With every pic it takes
    We become less opaque

    Odds are it won’t drift around forever

    Chinese spy balloon, Chinese spy balloon
    They’ve sent you on a mission
    And we’ll never be the same
    — Mark Pitcavage (@egavactip) February 3, 2023

  35. 35.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    Since this is not the 1st surveillance balloon to enter the US airspace, I do wonder what is the US policy to such incursions. Also makes you wonder if there has been a tit for tat dynamic, & if so, what the US might have sent over Chinese or Russian airspaces (stealth hypersonic drones in the upper atmosphere?).

    Cheryl Rofer & David Burbach (of Naval War College) speculating along similar lines.

  36. 36.

    Bill Arnold

    @Sister Golden Bear:
    What is the range of credible estimates of deaths of soldier/mercenary(-scum) sons of Russian mothers so far, in the battle for Bakhmut and the surrounding area? The high I’ve found was a Ukrainian estimate of 17K Russian dead in January.

  40. 40.

    YY_Sima Qian

    Best take on the purpose of the balloon:

    Phil Ewing@philewing · 3h
    Replying to @HerbCarmen

    From HQ, CinC, PLA-AF
    To PLA-AF Military Intel
    Your orders are to image activities at the American Air Mobility Command pistol range facilities. Specifically you will assess pilot, crew, and support personnel’s ability to hit targets in the head w multiple rounds. High priority

  41. 41.

    Chetan Murthy

    @YY_Sima Qian: I guess we can’t get a quadcopter that high …. or we could, y’know, take a page from the UA AF book and just get right on top of it, and drop a grenade on the sucker.  It’s actually a little surprising that the USAF doesn’t have something to deal with this — I’d think that sending up a C-130 with a long cable hanging out the back, that it could just fly past the balloon a few times to snag it, would do the trick.

  45. 45.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: This thing has to be a political gesture. It fails every possible intelligence-collection cost-benefit analysis.

    It can’t be steered, so there’s no flight path control. Which probably means it’s nearly useless for photographic surveillance, barring a lucky drift: given it’s 12 km altitude, photo shots at less than 45° angle require passing within a 24 km band of any interesting target, which is a vanishingly unlikely outcome. Much more distance than that and the shape of the ArcTan() function tells you that it might as well be taking pictures from the horizon. Same for IR monitoring.

    OK, so perhaps it has an elint package? Who cares? Seriously, how much better radio/microwave surveillance can it pick up than Chinese intelligence services can get by satellite, or agents on the ground, or even just hiring a private aircraft? And the damn thing can’t be kept secret, so even if there were interesting emissions to be hoovered up, the US military would make sure they are tamped down for the duration of the overflight.

    I like your theory of symbolic retaliation for some US semi-covert (possibly hypersonic) intrusion on Chinese territory. The only doubt is that it would be rare example of discretion  that some DOD official hadn’t already bragged about such an exploit to the Washington Post.

    I think the reason for not shooting it down given by DOD makes sense. It’s no real threat, merely an annoyance, but a plummeting payload landing on some farmstead is a lawsuit and an unwanted international incident with China at a fraught time in US -Chinese relations. A secondary reason could be the knowledge that the US has a comparable, higher-tech intrusion program over China that is best left out of public view (assuming that hypothesis is correct).

  46. 46.

    Mallard Filmore

    @Carlo Graziani: 

    It can’t be steered, so there’s no flight path control.

    Someone I used to work with was really into parachuting and balloon riding. For balloons, he said if you don’t like the direction the winds are blowing you, drop a colored ping pong ball. As you watch the ball fall, if you like direction those winds down there are blowing, Go Down.

    If nothing suitable is below you, Go Up.

  47. 47.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani:

    From the link in #38.

    William “Balloon Guy” Kim
    @TheKimulation · Jul 6, 2022

    In the stratosphere there’s always a wind going in the direction you want it’s just a matter of adjusting altitude. Sounds simple but it wasn’t possible until recently. It’s pretty amazing what these algorithms can do. 7/10

    Apparently you can steer balloons. Not nearly as maneuverable as a dirigible (which is saying something) & certainly not an aircraft, but not completely to the fate of the winds, either.

  49. 49.

    Carlo Graziani

    @Mallard Filmore: I’ve seen that claim, but based on what is known from decades of observations of stratospheric wind, it appears to be overblown (sorry). Unlike tropospheric wind, stratospheric wind structure is pretty coherent over large length- and time-scales. If you drop ping-pong balls from a balloon, you might observe altitude-dependent deviations, but those are relative deviations referred to your own balloon’s motion. Both the balloon and the ping-pong balls are being carried along at some large average velocity, and they separate due to relatively small differences in their local wind velocity. And that average velocity, in mid-northern latitudes, is either E-W or W-E. Good luck finding as much of a side-vector as you need to overfly a target by changing your altitude.

    Claims tha machine learning can figure out passive stratospheric steering to the required extent are just gullible, in my opinion.

  50. 50.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani:

    I like your theory of symbolic retaliation for some US semi-covert (possibly hypersonic) intrusion on Chinese territory. The only doubt is that it would be rare example of discretion  that some DOD official hadn’t already bragged about such an exploit to the Washington Post.

    There are black programs that are not spoken of. Anything that intrudes into the sovereign airspace of another country is potentially a serious matter (remember Gary Powers). Public disclosure would basically force the Chinese government of having to shoot them down or otherwise interfere w/ them, or make a highly visible tit for tat, to head off a domestic backlash. Similar dynamic to what we are seeing w/ the surveillance balloon now in the US. These are dangerous games.

    I wonder if civilian pilots had not sighted the balloon, would the USG have made the public disclosure. (I am sure the Biden team is not pleased by how long the balloon has lingered over CONUS compared to the previous intrusions.) Note how the Japanese & the Canadian governments kept quiet as the balloon must have traversed their sovereign air spaces. The current messaging from the administration has a bit of the feeling of damage control to me, both in terms of domestic politics & in terms of impact on US-China relations. Perhaps countries have been playing dangerous undisclosed games that now suddenly have light shone on them.

    Also, where do these balloons end up? Fall into the sea? Land back in the country of origin?

  51. 51.

    patrick II

    If the balloon comes from China it bothers me that radar didn’t spot it earlier and shoot it down over the Pacific.  I think it is most likely shipped launched but I still would have liked to see it shot down before it hit CONUS.  Unless some Chinese spies launched it from some desolate place in the Western desert, in which case I want the movie rights.

    It seems that would make the most probable scenario the unspoken agreement to not shoot each other’s spy balloons down.

    As for balloons replacing starlink — they drift with the wind and would not be stable enough unless motorized.  And as others have said are a easy target for Russian missles.

  52. 52.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: That guy is an enthusiast, and not a reliable source, in my opinion. The large-scale structure of stratospheric wind—very unlike the turbulent, chaotic, short-coherence-length wind structure in the troposphere—implies that the degree of E-W speed control is very limited, and the degree of lateral (N-S) control nearly nonexistent.

    The implication that machine learning/AI can nonetheless solve the control problem is on its face absurd. The ML training and validation data would have to come from simulations to be sufficiently abundant, because there is simply not enough real-world data on regionalized stratospheric balloon control to train a ML model. Such simulations have resolutions measured in multiple kilometers. To expect the kind of real-world fidelity required for real-world control requires truly devoted, and misplaced, faith in computation.

    And in the end, the large scale average E-W or W-E velocity wind dominates the motion irrespective of small altitude-dependent fluctuations in wind speed. No clever ML can change that physics.

  54. 54.

    patrick II

    @patrick II:

    Usually it takes me a little longer to find out I am wrong when speculating about modern warfare:

    So now these balloons can create a C4ISR network that’s far more resilient, persistent, and effective than a satellite constellation. Since modern warfare is all about information, this is a big deal especially as space assets grow more vulnerable.

  55. 55.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @patrick II: Shooting it down in international airspace, even ADIZ, would have caused an international incident. Very bad precedent to set given how many manned & unmanned recon/surveillance flights the US conducts along (but just outside of) the edges of China’s sovereign air space, well w/in China’s declared ADIZ over the East China Sea.

    Shooting down intruders into one’s sovereign air space is justified (happened more than a few times during the Cold War), though typically outside of the Cold War setting manned intruders are chased out or forced to land. The fact that there have been multiple surveillance balloon intrusions in the past over CONUS, w/o US shoot down or even public protest (over at least 2 administrations), suggest some kind of modus vivendi among the parties.

  56. 56.

    Carlo Graziani

    @YY_Sima Qian: In my opinion, the lack of enthusiasm for shooting these things down over CONUS largely reflects an assessment of their low value, and low threat.

  59. 59.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @patrick II: Sure, but stratosphere is pretty high up, the debris might still have fallen on land. If we take Dan Satterfield’s estimated flight path, then the US would have had to shoot it down over the Bering Strait. That is awfully close to Russia to be firing missiles. The question is why the US & Canada allowed the balloon to fly all the way to Montana. They could have shot it down over Alaska or the Canadian Northwest where it is even more sparsely populated.

    The way the Pentagon spokesman answered it seems the US did not track it until it entered CONUS, which would suggest someone fell asleep at NORAD. Did Japan not see the balloon, either?

  60. 60.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @Carlo Graziani: But now the Biden team needs to deal w/ a political shitstorm, which GOPers in Congress are only too happy to stir up. It’s not like China could have protested much (or at all), other than perhaps claiming it had a scientific payload that they lost control & track of.

    & not even public protest over past intrusions?

  61. 61.

    patrick II

    @YY_Sima Qian:

    I think my first point (even though I didn’t know the flight path) was why didn’t we detect it earlier? I will take an uninformed (as usual) guess and say the balloon probably did not fit the parameters they look for when identifying threats.

    Thanks for responding.  I learned a couple of things.

  62. 62.

    YY_Sima Qian

    @patrick II: Balloons may well be more difficult to detect that commonly believed (certainly more than I believed). However, it is still a major miss if NORAD did not see it until somewhere over CONUS-Canada border.

  66. 66.

    Mo MacArbie

    I’m I the only one who noticed Adam taking a story about a balloon and working in an expression about “the juice”?

  67. 67.

    J R in WV

    In Cochise county AZ there is a town, Sierra Vista, and an Army base Fort Huachuca. For years now there has been a large white balloon tethered way up over Sierra Vista. Haven’t been there for a while, but was there the last time I was there. Belief was that it was a DHS / Border Patrol gadget…

    Nothing like today’s balloon panic device.

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