The China balloon.

[Trexller]

things like this are response tests

gotta look at things from the CCP perspective. while Americans plan for the next fiscal quarter, the CCP plans for the next quarter century.

they know that they are going to want to make some military moves in the near future, so they will constantly fly things into other nation's air defense identification zones, they've been doin that for awhile with taiwan, japan, philipines etc.

a fighter jet in US airspace would be too much of a provocation, so they'll fly something like a balloon into our airspace, its easily deniable as some sort of civilian craft and they will glean information such as response times, from where, what craft responds, american civilian reactions, american DoD reactions etc

then they will apply this info to their military calculus for future goals they wish to accomplish