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Ask HN: Why did not USA safely brought down the Spy Balloon?

2 points by prabhu-yu ↗ HN
USA could have harpooned the balloon at worst to puncture it or attach some load. Or, it could have used one or other methods to reduce the destruction of Balloon. (For ex: puncture it with a precision Laser etc) Firing it with a missile made the debris to spread over 10km radius. Now they are painfully collecting the debris. And now they say, "we will study the debris!" Any reason why was it destructively shot down?

Further, USA action shows, nearly no military has a device to safely bring down a man-made object floating in sky at 20km altitude. Agree, shooting a competitor's object has a subtle message. Also, shooting a defenseless object is a no show of strength.

(If USA does not have such a technology, it is unlikely others have it or thought of it.)

15 comments

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LinuxBender
Just a guess, but probably a show of military response vs. just hacking the controls and manually landing it (it had navigation controls). Perhaps they did not wish to expose other capabilities.
JakDrako
I'd like to see the harpoon attachment for the F-22.
SavageBeast
I think the balloon was ~ 80k feet in altitude. I cant think of any way we have to safely pluck a multi-ton payload out of the sky from that or any other altitude. I'd naively guess we used a missile for lack of any other viable way of downing the craft.
cratermoon
Imagine the headlines if the balloon had been carrying some kind of explosive warhead, set to go off if tampered with.
verdverm
rumor has it that it did in fact have self-destruction explosives which did not go off, make of it what you will
cratermoon
It was hit with a missile. I'm not sure it'd be possible to tell the difference between the missile and the self-destruct explosion.
verdverm
This was supposedly what they said after pulling it out of the ocean, again, very speculative, just what I recall being reported somewhere
mytailorisrich
They did not want to damage it as far as possible, I think, and the missile did not directly hit the payload from what I gather from the videos.

I think that their aim was to score a decisive hit to ensure it would be brought down instantly where they wanted to and, at the same time, to ensure they would not look ridiculous by failing to bring a balloon down...

1970-01-01
Agreed. Grappling hooks and a mooring chain would have been the easiest way to get it down safely.
verdverm
how is that supposed to work at 60km and the speed of sound?
1970-01-01
woosh
verdverm
I hear a big bang as the vehicle with the tow cable attaches and gets instantly ripped apart by the forces at play.

It is estimated that the payload weighed 1+ tons, you are going to have a bad time trying to accelerate that to several hundred mph in an instant.

throwawaysalome
I'm sure it's military protocol to respond in one way to foreign espionage, manned or unmanned, in our airspace.
PaulHoule
They need one of those half-humanoid robot, half-fighter jet things they have in anime.
kstenerud
There are previous incidents of governments trying to shoot down errant weather balloons, including one where jets fired thousands of rounds into it, only to fail to bring it down. Bear in mind also that anything they shoot at it will fall to the ground as well, kilometers away. Nobody wants random bullets falling from the sky into their skulls.

Fighter jets are not built for firing at slow-moving airborne targets. Even hitting it with a missile was actually quite a difficult feat.