Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
What Communists
Learned from History
Maxwell Smart and The Chief conferring under The Cone of
Silence might have come up with a more effective method of downing the Chinese
spy balloon than our Space Command or whatever it is we’ve got defending us
from The Helium Peril.
Yes, we do have a Space Command [Home (spacecom.mil)]
complete with all sorts of costumes, a theme song entitled “The Space Force
March,” and seven “warfighting units” – yes, that’s what they’re called,
“warfighting units” - with cool shoulder patches.
Photographs show that the Space Command features at least
six different kinds of attractive uniforms, so if this nation cannot control
its own skies it can at least control fashion shows.
One of the uniforms is of a forest leaf pattern, which is
curious given that spacecraft and space itself are devoid of forests.
According to its own site the Space Command is responsible
for defending us against threats (maybe Klingons?) more than 100 kilometres
above the surface of the earth, so technically a Chinese balloon is not in
their remit. Still, it could have been a chance for the Space Command to set
phasers on stun and show the guys from Peking just who’s boss of American skies.
As for the purported civilian weather balloon, nah; no
one believes that form of camouflage. Lots of nations spy on each other with balloons,
airplanes, fishing boats, and other vessels and devices, all of them said to be
civilian craft for the purpose of plausible deniability. Spies lie; it’s what
they do.
An Air Force fighter shot down the spy balloon and its
gadgetry with a missile said to cost over $400,000. The merry lads in Peking claim to be outraged
about the shootdown but probably they are merely amused. A balloon is low-tech
and probably costs less than a missile, and this one was allowed to float over
North America for days while gathering information. Whether or not it was
effective it was inexpensive, and Uncle Xi enjoyed pulling Uncle Sam’s
whiskers.
The irony is that we all read, heard, and saw the story
on electronic devices made in Shanghai. If the Communists want to know what
we’re talking about they could probably tap a few keys and have the
computerized thermostats in our refrigerators listen in.
And, say, don’t you think the coffee machine has been
acting a little suspiciously lately?
This nation has been attacked, not simply watched,
through the military use of balloons. In 1944-1945 the Japanese launched against
North America thousands of balloons armed with explosives and incendiaries [New Documentary Delves into the Japanese WWII Terror Weapon:
The Fu-Go Balloon Bomb (historynet.com)]. Several thousand of these made landfall and
killed six people and caused some damage. Some of these devices might have failed
and if so a few unexploded bombs remain lost in the woods and mountains of the
American West.
Modern Communists learned history well from the imperial
Japanese of eighty years ago – cobble together a few rudimentary barometric
mechanisms for controlling height through the measured disposal of gasses and
ballast and know the seasonal air currents on the same academic level as a
seventh-grader. Launch. Wait. See.
Now, then, what clever boy or girl in some hostile nation
is up to some unexpected mischief based on lessons learned from the German
Enigma or the British Turing-Welchman Bombe?
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