I was joking in the other thread, that soon people will be buying weather baloons and setting them off "for the lulz" (youtube videos, tiktok, or whatever) :)
That's a good point though - people seem more worked up about the data collection balloon than they are about the little data collector in their pockets.
Nah. I remember this went viral at a point when the first developer betas of iOS 14 (or was if 13?) came out and IOS started reporting clipboard accesses. For a while during those early betas, it seemed TikTok was accessing the clipboard every few minutes. Apparently it turned out to be innocuous—the app qas checking for TikTok links on the clipboard to show them to the user? Something like that.
Other apps had the same issue (I think Telegram comes to mind?)
Russia did, and I guess still does, this a lot. Flying their planes constantly in European airspace to see if what the response is and also make it more normal occurrence. If they one day attack it’s harder to tell if this again one of those random times or an actual attack
That is one of the reasons the US left the Open Skies treaty, Russia kept breaking the agreement doing things like that making the entire thing a handicap to the US.
> The Soviets recovered many of these balloons and their temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened film[8][9][10] would later be used in the Luna 3 probe to capture the first images of the far side of the Moon.
Shooting at unidentified and nonresponsive unmanned aircraft over your own airspace has never, ever been considered an act of aggression. That is a ridiculous suggestion.
I don’t know exactly how fast the air currents at 40,000-60,000 feet will drive a balloon, but I would assume that this most recent balloon was already airborne by the time the previous one was discovered. As long as they don’t launch anymore starting last week, this particular episode should wind down peacefully.
As to why use balloons instead of satellites, the most reasonable speculation I’ve seen is that they’re collecting signals intelligence (radio traffic, etc.) which is not accessible from orbital distances.
Large controllable balloons could probably be 'recalled' by instructing them to crash into the ocean. If any more big ones like the first balloon show up, it's probably on purpose.
I was wondering why China wouldn’t include a self-destruct feature. My daughter pointed out that crashing into a US city, even unintentionally, would probably be seen as even more hostile than sending the balloon in the first place. You obviously could choose to self destruct in a remote area or over water, but they may well have considered the escalation risk to be too high if they added potentially destructive capabilities.
WSJ, linked in another comment on this post, “The craft came outfitted with small explosives to disable the surveillance equipment, an official said, though they weren’t detonated.” https://archive.is/oORem#selection-677.0-677.133
Actually, though, sling some detcord over the enemy balloon and set it off... (I don't know if detcord really works like that, but I'm pretty sure razor blades won't do the job either. :D)
Canada contributes to North American air defence and it's F-18s (to become F-35s) fly norad missions. Americans also contribute, and obviosuly have more fighters. The article says both countries dispatched planes, the americans ended up shooting it down. It was over the Yukon which is very close to Alaska so not surprising both were present. It would have been a bit odd if it was over saskatoon or something
It's much more likely that the US government is wanting to tell the press, leak to the press and get the spin cycle going. There are spy events all the time, it's rare something gets actually reported proportionally.
I've noticed that as well recently an increase in coverage of Ukraine and antagonistic articles of China while at the same time what could be termed as "anti-woke" media.
Seems to me like the military-propaganda apparatus is spinning up to prepare the populace for a war. But it's more of a gut feeling at this point.
Based on quick search, these have been happening also before.
"an official revealed during a briefing on Saturday that the U.S. was aware of three other instances during the prior administration and one instance earlier in the Biden administration that such an apparatus “transited” the country."
Yeah, but if you read, they didn't know about the incidents until well after they happened; also, they never shared if they were over US coastal waters or over actual US soil.
Also the source was anonymous "a senior U.S. defense official" while ranking members of the previous administration publicly denied that any such incident occurred.
It wasn't anonymous, it was confirmed by committee members that deal with this topic. The White House/DoD has also offered to brief the previous administration members on the topic. The entire premise is that the previous administration just didn't know about it because they only just discovered this occurred (I assume by putting together multiple pieces of evidence from the various intelligence apparatus.) Keep in mind there are various new programs dealing with this exact topic to monitor unknown arial crafts over US assets. So of course, the previous administration could confidently deny they were briefed on it, because no one has even claimed the previous administration was ever briefed on it.
Anytime the media gets focused on unimportant things like this, I'm looking to see what the actual news is? Is it the Ohio train thing? Covid treatment stuff? Who knows?
I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
I don't see how China would willfully continue send these balloons without expecting a symmetrical escalation. Sure, they managed to send a few relatively undetected until the past recent weeks, but continued attempts would surely produce a physical response from NATO states, whether that's sending balloons of their own or overflying Chinese territory with other aircraft, or increased signals intelligence operations.
The press conference yesterday, the WH spokesman explicitly corrected someone who called the second object a balloon. They're being a bit cagey about whatever it actually is
They didn’t say they weren’t balloons, just that they were calling them “objects” and not balloons. Sure, that could be because they definitely want to emphasize the “we don’t know who owned them” aspect and calling it a balloon would immediately evoke China associations, or maybe they already know they’re not balloons. Either way, they also didn’t say “it wasn’t a balloon”
This is the wrong question. Large militaries spend a fortune anyway on firing ordnance anyway for training purposes. Doing so in actually uncertain conditions is in many ways more valuable than pre-planned exercises. There's also a political attention focusing effect that allows rapid realignment of priorities away from status0quo maintenance towards novel readiness postures. So in strategic terms, it can be a net benefit rather than a net cost.
The flip side of this is adversarial observer(s) can learn all sorts of things about readiness, detection networks, response times, and tactical doctrine if well-prepared in advance to acquire and integrate that information.
Kinda wish I had a way to bet on the popularity of search terms because I can practically hear the rattle of doctrinal articles being furiously drafted at military institutions of higher learning right now.
It might not be the best thing to do our training with complex adversarial information gathering devices rather than more inert target dummies under our control.
I've not looked into it - but it's possible there is zero or negative cost to shooting down a small number of balloons. Imagine each pilot needs X hours of training or to fire Y missiles in training. A couple balloon missions could just replace training exercises, on net saving money because we wouldn't need to setup the target.
Also, the US has a ton of Sidewinder missiles. I thought I saw 20,000 of AIM-9X; it is at least 5,000. The US may have a ton of older variants but it sounded like they need the imaging sensor in the new variant for balloons.
There may be cheaper ways to shoot down balloons. Unguided rockets might work. There are guided rockets that would work better and still be cheap.
Even F-35 criticisms don't hold all that much water, at least in terms of cost, given they are actually cheaper than the F-14 was when you adjust for inflation.
Well, it has a very niche application. It is absolutely the best at what it does, but an air superiority/dominance fighter is not typically useful in the conflicts that the US has been involved in since the F-22 entered service. The fact that it has been in service for almost 15 years before seeing any air to air action has meant it has been a cost that is tricky to justify.
They've been doing it for a few years. The US did it in the 50's. The reason we're talking about them is two fold: 1) the "first" one had such a massive payload that people could see the object from the ground. People were posting a bunch online even before the media picked it up. 2) It became a political issue about the US's strength in response to China. That amplifies the former to be a larger and broader discussion(s).
This could also indicate China's surveillance capabilities. Need to use balloons to get high resolution rather than relying on satellite imagery (kinda why we don't really use U2s anymore and why that Trump tweet was seen as a big deal). It could also be trolling. It could also be testing (including of cameras that would be put on satellites). It is hard to say anything with certainty tbh. Militaries work in secrecy and that's why information is so valuable (despite what many think). But the objects will be recovered and you'd be surprised what can be reverse engineered from an exploded pile of scrap.
Authorize US jets you mean? Canada is a close US ally, norad allows both US and Canada to learn about the object at the same time, and US may have offered to shoot it down with Canada’s permission since we probably have some new patrols in the area since Friday’s ballon
A close enough ally that the US was willing to sell nuclear tipped SAMs to Canada during the cold war. The only reason it didn't happen is because the general public flipped shit when they found out about the plan.
> […] and US may have offered to shoot it down with Canada’s permission since we probably have some new patrols in the area since Friday’s ballon
The US was monitoring it on Friday:
> A statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the object shot down on Saturday was first noticed over Alaska on Friday evening. Two F-22 fighter jets “monitored the object” with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard, Ryder’s statement said, “tracking it closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object.”
> Defence Minister Anita Anand said in a news conference the "small, cylindrical object" was about 40,000 feet above ground and downed — due to possible risks to civilian aviation — at around 3:40 p.m. ET about 100 miles from the U.S. border in central Yukon.
> A senior government source with direct knowledge of the situation told CBC News that the Canadian government was first alerted to the object Friday night when it was still travelling through Alaska.
> The source added the object crossed into Yukon on Saturday morning and Trudeau ordered the shoot down by whichever country arrived at it first.
So it looks like the US 'took too long' to decide to shoot it down, and once it crossed the border Canada had final authorization. The US jets just happened to be closer (CA jets were scrambled as well).
Because of our shared landmass USA and Canada cooperate closely via NORAD.
The US and Canada have gameplanned for all sorts of scenarios similar to this, and up to and including full nuclear war. They have established playbooks for alllllll kinds of scenarios. Because when shit goes down, you there is NO TIME to gameplan. No, you pull binder #568 off of the shelf and get to work executing gameplan #568, "US jets pursue craft into Canada" or whatever.
There is a playbook for this kind of thing, and they are following it. The playbook possibly does include some kind of explicit authorization from the Canadian PM for the final shootdown.
So in reality this is certainly more "Trudeau authorized it" than "ordered it", because the US and Canada definitely can't order each other do things. However, for obvious optics purposes, they phrased it as "Trudeau ordered the shootdown." Because it looks sort of weak to the untrained eye if Trudeau just sort of allowed it.
However, the actual wording is sort of irrelevant. The reality is that it was a fairly seamless bit of cooperation between two close allies.
It's not so much that he commanded US jets, he gave an order for the object to be shot down by the first able aircraft, and included authorization for that to be US aircraft. I don't anything is implying that the US pilot bypassed US chain of command to do so. Trudeau had obviously been discussing strategy with the US, but it's important for Canadian sovereignty for the order to come from Canada.
This is third shoot down we’ve been told about. First was the Chinese balloon, second was the small less maneuverable vehicle off of Alaska, and this third one in Canadian airspace. Feels like some cold conflict we’ve been unaware of is heating up.
Yup, a switch has been flipped. Actions that may or may not have happened in the past, and are happening now, are no longer being tolerated. Between this and the CHIPS act I expect the current divestment from China to go from a trickle to flood..
I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down.
There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to air traffic), people just ignore it... weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time.
But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down, even if it caused an international incident.. and luckily nothing serious happened. So now that the cat is out of the bag, we're going to shoot down every balloon that hasnt filed all of the required paperwork that enters out airspace that's reachable by our aircraft... because 1) the public demands it; 2) it'll become political fodder if the white house doesn't; and 3) the international issue it generates is easier for the white house to handle than the political criticism.
If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.
Since that likely settles the balloons intent… we can add 4) now that we know it’s a spy balloon, we’re going to shoot down all the balloons. Before the large balloon was shot down, no one would have bothered to check. No one is stopping weather balloons at the border. Big mistake on chinas part.
They are probably going to keep making blunders like this, now that internal leadership (source of many internal blunders in recent years) has been consolidated / stabilized, and they are still aiming for more international power.
The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious blind spots. That could be pretty huge.
I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.
Right now Chinese leadership does not want to be seen "bending" in this way or that, by their internal audience. But not doing so is a huge risk factor for them in international diplomacy.
Whether the US or any other country really takes advantage of the opportunity and resulting partial leadership vacuum in the international space will be interesting to see.
It's the classic dilemma that most people who prefer expedient governance don't always understand. When a government is paralysed by too much bureaucracy and corruption, everyone craves for something lean and expedient. Anyone who wants to combat that will want to consolidate power. Once they have successfully consolidated - usually by eliminating anyone in the way irrespective of whether they're someone who speak truth to power or a bureaucrat trying to preserve their fiefdom - all that's left are the yes-men. Then starts the bungling and fumbling and doubling down and over-corrections.
This describes the current situation in Russia with Putin surrounded by yes men. But it is not true about China where officials are frequently fired loosing pretty much everything. I.e. if one always say yes in China, the consequences for not delivering are high so one is under the pressure to say no at least sometimes.
There are indications that even in Russia Putin got that and tried to introduce harsher punishments than assigning the failed official to less prestigious positions. But it seems they did too little too late.
> I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.
> If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.
As evidence to this claim, you'll see that many articles are actively discussing the fact that these balloons are relatively common. The big difference here, American citizens could see this object with just their eyes (uncommon for a balloon). I do buy the argument that China overplayed their hand.
I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything, that's strategically exploitable especially if PRC can make current WH admin look weak by flying a balloon at height that can't be shot down. Medium/long term, PRC building/exposing CONUS vunerability is net benefitial for PRC posture - it's their version of, in DoD parlance, integrated deterence. IMO US analysis missing strategic calculus on PRC side.
Serious question: was there ever any doubt that US military could shoot something down out of the sky no matter how high it flies? If they are doing this to determine capabilities, it's like staking at a grocery store to see if it sells milk.
Removing doubt has value. If US has to shift to another platform to hit 80k feet ballon reveals specific capabilities. Like if US has to start using advanced ground based interceptors, it will inform PRC on constraints relevant in IndoPac scenario. If US has to break out asat tier weapons, ASM135 cost 5B for ~15 missiles then PRC can start developing capabilities to accordingly to shift strategic math. Imagine if balloon threat forces US to reorient billions on homeland balloon defense, that's potentially billions not going elsewhere.
E:over post limit but Streak Eagle was high performance preproduction airframe specifially designed to hit 100k for a few minutes. Hard to say if current blocks can do the same or reliable prosecute mission at 100k, finding out is value itself.
> knowing the US would use it to undersell capabilities
Simultaneously capabilities can be prodded, i.e. PRC start testing counter measures on balloons, and if successful reveal gaps / cause more drama - US domestic politics may constrain how much US can undersell. Ultimately getting US to change ROE and consistenly enagage with live weapons is opportunity for both sides.
Yeah. I'm kind of flabbergasted by 99.9% of the comments on this topic, which assume the US is just chasing these things blindly without taking countermeasures.
The F-22 and other "stealth" jets can carry radar reflectors to intentionally make themselves EXTREMELY visible on radar.
Why would they carry such a thing? For one, it helps reduce the risk of accidents during training and other situations where they are flying in friendly skies. Two, helps prevent nosy enemies from learning about the true radar cross section of these planes.
It's hard to find concrete information on the USAF's practices here, for the obvious reasons.
The following is speculation, but: one imagines that the F-22/F-35/etc carry these as standard practice when not flying combat missions/patrols. One also imagines that they can be jettisoned midflight (like drop fuel tanks) in case e.g. a patrol turns into a spicy situation. That's a guess, I don't know if that's true.
Tangential, but you may also want to fill the skies with noise when flying a stealth mission.
The rationale being that you may be able to hear a cat's claws on floorboards in the middle of the dead night, but you'd never hear it in the middle of a rave party. So pairing F-22s with eg F-15s becomes a valid strategy.
They could be observing specific things about the planes sent to intercept them, such as their heat signatures and radar cross sections.
But also, don't assume that the US was naive here. The USAF is pretty good at electronic warfare. It's very possible they were jamming the object's sensors in various ways.
Higher would be more expensive to shoot down, but given that we have missiles designed to shoot down satellites - at least in LEO - I don’t think it’ll be possible to use altitude as a means of evading response.
US switching platforms itself has information value. If it takes expensive ASAT tier platforms to take out balloons then saturation with higher ballons might be viable. Like if US has to start trading 5M USD SM6s to hit 110ft ballons, then 100K USD balloons might be economic way to trade sap US advanced missile inventory in future war.
You could but confirming US has that capability is significant. The purpose is to gather intelligence after all.
E: Lunar ranging = ground stations. Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. If anything, balloons will try to bait responses from SHiELD/air based laser ABL interception (YAL1) that can be extrapolated to IndoPac theatre.
Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future.
It is also not feasible to keep using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar balloons.
I kind of doubt that the planes are cheaper than ground based lasers. Even so, a mobile ground station could avoid giving away the US position and allow them to cover more area. Not sure how feasible that is.
Even if eventually technically feasible, imo it will take multi decades to acquire finish program and acqure platforms in sufficient numbers. Missiles feasible short term because there's airframes and stockpiles. It's a function of what's available. I think PRC can mass weaponize balloons to drope guided munitions much sooner than US can build up economic counter measures. Silly as meme is, balloon gap might eventually be real.
I don't think they can send a balloon the US can't shoot down, but the problem with using ground or sea based interceptors, or longer range jet-launched missiles launched from below is identification and proper targeting. The US might not want to take the risk of hitting the wrong thing/a misidentified object.
Bug reason why PRC aviation / airspace is stressed is because PLA has priority intercepting US recon. If balloons cause comparable stress on commercial US aviation then problems with ID becomes part of the strategy. Exposing CONUS vunerability and fallout of domestic politics might be the point.
I actually wonder why not burn holes in them by laser… maybe the US doesn’t want to show their capabilities, but that was the first thing that came to mind
I don't fully agree with the political assessment because the WH gave the Pentagon permission to shoot it down when they deemed appropriate. They didn't order the pentagon to do it immediately. I'm not sure (someone please chime in if you know) if the WH 'ordered' the Pentagon to shoot it down in the sense that it HAD to come out of the air at some point, or if the message was just "shoot it down if you think that's the best thing to do".
Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices
That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains.
And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.
Not that it's necessarily indictatory, but this balloon had a payload the size of a small jet. By my understanding (I could be wrong) that's very uncommon for a weather balloon.
Maybe in the near future you won't be able to attach a full tube of toothpaste to a weather balloon and send it high up into the air, just a 3 oz size.
Weather balloons are tiny, yes, but they aren't tracked by radar anymore. Generally, it's a set of meteorological instruments and a GPS to track the location. It's a bit easier to get that to work, as you no longer need to make sure your radar works, but rather, just that the GPS is working before you let go. That said, payload is substantially smaller than these things (<1 kg for current tech).
I assume this would be slightly more clear as "aren't tracked by radar anymore [by their controllers]" -- who does what tracking and how, of course, wildly varies. (Not trying to be overly pedantic, just saying out loud my internal thought reply.)
- the balloon was required to file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder
- the balloon did not file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder
So either the balloon's operator didn't know about the requirements, which seems unlikely given its apparent sophistication, or the operator was deliberately hiding the presence of the balloon, in which case I think it's reasonable to call it a spy balloon.
Looking on from UK this all seems like a big joke. Slow moving, massive balloons, visible for hundreds of miles are sophisticated spying apparatus? But all the previous encounters over the years have just been unremarkable weather balloons?
I don't see this as anymore aggressive than yearly war games, and significantly less aggressive than claiming islands and ocean territories that are contested and building military installations on them...
Yes it suggests our military has the right to defend our sovereign airspace and that of our allies as well as the ability and will to do so until these outrageous and arrogant acts of escalation stop.
Sorry for the sarcasm, but, honestly, I think it's pretty obvious to most adults that an aerial, or even multiple aerials on a balloon does not rule out it being a weather balloon.
What could rule that out in your mind then? Seems to me that if it had hardware that didn't serve any purpose with regard to weather data collection, calling it a weather balloon is, at the very least, an incomplete description, if not intentionally deceptive branding. Especially when said hardware has very clear use cases for intelligence collection.
How about China stops flying those things? While we are at it, how about the forever friends China and Russia stop dragging the world towards World War 3?
> There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hard rule about when life begins but killing a 5 year old isn't a 22nd trimester abortion, it's murder. 18-60'000 feet is class A, controlled airspace in the US and Canada.
When the US sent U2s over the USSR, the rationale wasn't that 70,000 feet was "space", it was that it was that 70,000 feet was too high for soviet radars detect and and soviet planes to intercept.
It's an uncommon expression then. The commenter might be British. Anyway, anyone reading this thread knows it now.
I recently met someone who uses the expression "country mile" all the time. Hadn't heard it before but it's cool. "That's more popular by a country mile" Country miles are obviously better than city miles. So now I'll probably end up using it.
A country mile is often hot and dusty and walked uphill both ways by your grandpa. Time stands still and the cicadas buzz. It’s bigger than a city mile even in how much imagination it takes to conjure.
It’s a euphemism for a nonsequitor, OP is asking what balloon size has to do with it being okay to shoot it down since there’s nothing about size in protected airspace laws.
Maybe would have been clearer to use a nonseqiotor that doesn't involve China- for a second there I thought that there was something linking these balloons to tea trade or sanctions or something
I don’t know where the parent got their wrong information but US airspace is pretty clear to anyone that knows anything about aviation. It’s not sone vague thing no one can define. That’s pretty silly.
Ranking members of the previous administration have publicly denied that there were any previous balloons and no evidence has been presented that there were previous similar incidents.
No evidence has been presented to us. It sounds like the info came from the intelligence community, and they likely wouldn’t tell how they know what they know.
The second object has not been called a balloon by US Air Command. Most interesting are some reports of pilots saying the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes. [1]
Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious.
On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant presence of AWACS and other multiple airplane sorties, the Aliens everybody was talking about here days ago, seem to have vanished...
F-22 pilots are not scrubs that got the job by luck. To be one, means being among the best. If it is being reported accurately, that the F-22 pilot says there was some kind of interference coming from the object, then there likely really is something to it.
"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
This article and any other that mentions these two things has absolutely no source for the statement. There is a 0.0% chance F22 pilots are talking to the press, so I really believe this is a complete fabrication.
We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.
One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor.
Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.
> We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.
We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package.
It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.
Now that US has learned that the big ballon was spy one, it would not be an embarrassment but a reasonable assumption that smaller ones could be spy ones as well. So they should be stopped.
Science balloons have to go through a rigorous, and constant, check with DOD to ensure no mis communicating happens. I have first hand experience with this. We had to constantly ping our DOD channels to make sure they knew where we were and how long we would be staying there or risk being shot down.
It doesn't matter what their 'objectives' are really.
Yeah they are not worried about our 'detection limits' and definitely not 'wasting our resources'.
They might possibly be hoping to pick up some F22 signatures or something like that but even then very unlikely. They have ships that can do that.
And given the 'free publicity' the China Hawks are going to get (not quite 'Sputnik Moment' but a bit like that) I suggest it can't bode well for them, unless are playing real 3D chess and some internal guy is trying to get America to 'wake up' so as to prevent a war!
Might not be a probe of military capability, but rather a probe of diplomatic stance. US govt is forced to make a statement about the balloon -- which normally they wouldn't care about -- to the public: US govt can choose to either lie and save face for China, saying it was a weather balloon, thus demonstrating earnestness in building relations, or tell the truth and say it was a spy balloon, thus demonstrating unwillingness to paper over such a diplomatic faux pas.
I suspect they won’t learn much other than how the US responds to balloons. It’s not like the US is revealing anything novel or secret. They’ve used already unclassified and publicly available aircraft and ordinance.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
>If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.
But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.
> If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours."
People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!
I'm a China hawk, but I hope it doesn't come to that.
Would like to point out something relevant: China and India kill each others soldiers fairly frequently. I find it rather remarkable their issues haven't escalated.
They kill each others soldiers, yes, but they are always small engagements because it is very difficult to transport a large formation of Chinese soldiers to Indian territory (specifically, any territory India cares about) or vice versa because the mountains are such formidable barriers.
>But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down
1. Where can one find evidence of this mass demand?
2. How does the US government gauge this mass demand without formal voting/polling?
Were people phoning their senators, "SHOOT IT DOWN!"? I'm sure crazies phone in all kinds of things from time to time - what's the threshold for acting on demands/mass demand?
"But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down"
You mean saw with their eyes or on the news? If it was with their eyes then it wouldn't lead to public demand since as you say "weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time." and there's no way to attribute it to another country. If it's on the news then physical size is not relevant but detectability and newsworthiness are. People would have cared.
Because we very famously shot down a balloon and everyone is talking about the balloon that we shot down from the air and now there's more objects being shot down from the air and everyone is talking about it.
The government is apparently not saying what these objects were, so people are assuming they're balloons.
Seriously! All official statements so far have been pretty clear that they're not labeling it a balloon (yet).
A CNN correspondent [0] just claimed that there were conflicting statements from the pilots that it interfered with their sensors as they approached it. And that they couldn't figure out how it was staying in the air. I have no idea where she got those updates, but it certainly adds mystery to the situation.
Asked if was "balloon-like," the official said, "All I say is that it wasn't 'flying' with any sort of propulsion, so if that is 'balloon-like' well -- we just don't have enough at this point."
The US Government shooting down an Unidentified Flying Object sounds like the start of a science fiction film. If there were ever a bad time and place for actual aliens to come visit...
The most interesting thing to me is that the US federal government isn’t calling them “balloons” - or even “lighter than air craft”. It leaves open a lot of conspiracy type theories, and I just don’t see the motivation to do that
It “feels” to me like there’s something more than US/China brinksmanship going on.
> Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the U.S. is just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”
Let's say we're at war with Alpha Centaury. They'll get news of the downing of their flying cylinder in 2027 and will retaliate in 2032. If they can't send much more than a few small ships the logistic is pretty bad for them. Even if they are loaded with nukes, it's not much damage on the planetary scale. If they can send one thousand, it's a different matter.
Is there a plausible explanation as to why the US government has not announced objects 2 & 3 are balloons, if they are balloons? They call them "objects", yet must know what they are. They wouldn't randomly missile unknowns.
If it's for reasons of secrecy, why announce it at all? The second one was in the middle of nowhere, it could easily have been ignored, or dismissed as a military exercise if anyone had made a fuss about it.
Ofc how they perform in reality vs their published specs no one knows.
In the past at least likes of China and Russia tended to inflate the specs that they made public whilst the west tended to keep the real figures hidden and release far more conservative figures especially when it came to things like maximum speed, range and operational ceiling.
Sure, but those have wings. A cylinder would have to maintain altitude with some kind of thrust. Lets imagine something like a jet engine oriented vertically. How much flight time do you think that could manage?
I don’t personally think that the 2nd object was a drone at least not a traditional aircraft UAV, I just replied to correct the assumption that drones have a relatively short range and low endurance.
Because at least the 2nd object wasn’t, it was described as a cylinder about the size of a car which is where all the UFO tic-tac victory mark memes came from.
> One official told ABC News that the object was “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and gave the “balloon-like” appearance of floating without “any sort of propulsion”
> The object, shot down on the order of President Joe Biden, was flying at a high altitude of about 40,000ft and was the size of a small car, the White House said.
Could be they thought it was a balloon originally hence the immediate press conference, but now they've received conflicting accounts from the pilots (some reported experiencing sensor interference for example) so they're not sure what they are anymore.
I know this is Hollywood magic thinking, but in the the spirit of no dumb questions, for an object like this, are there no capture devices besides just letting it crash?
Helicopters are really expensive and that's the only way I can think of getting a delta V low enough so the device, tether or aircraft doesn't shatter/snap on capture.
But more importantly, it sends a message - don't fuck with our airspace, we won't even send body bags
I've had the same question, and it seems like there aren't really.
It's too high for helicopters or rotor drones so there's no kind of aircraft that can get their quickly and just hover next to it and retrieve it. (And sending an airship would be so slow and hard to control I'm not sure you could ever get it to reliably intercept in a reasonable amount of time.)
So since you've necessary got to launch something at speed, the only conceivable capture device would seem to necessarily involve 1) a missile to puncture and deflate the balloon/buoyant part, 2) a giant net to wrap the entire thing, and 3) a parachute attached to the net to let it down gently.
But I can't even begin to imagine how you'd get all three elements working together reliably, rather than interfering with each other.
most plausibly it's because it's a balloon carrying something, not just a balloon, and the bit that is worth shooting down is the bit that's not a balloon.
they said the second object was freely drifting and not self-propelled or guided, so whether it's technically a balloon or just something that behaves like a balloon is kind of irrelevant to anybody who isn't working for whatever government department is tasked with analyzing it.
They are now saying they don't know how it was staying airborne (no visible balloon or propulsion) and when they approached to observe it interfered with instrumentation.
The Pentagon confirmed this on Sunday, which is why they said they weren't referring to them as balloons. They did hint that it's likely that the balloon part may be within the object itself to obscure its true nature. I don't think they are saying it's aliens, just that a pass by couldn't determine the exact nature of the object.
Right, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading this thread. Just because we shot down a balloon recently everyone on here seems to assume the two new objects are also balloons.
>One official told ABC News that the object was “cylindrical and silver-ish gray” and gave the “balloon-like” appearance of floating without “any sort of propulsion” It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said.
Any idea why they refuse to confirm that its a balloon if it is? The pilots confirmed its "unmanned" but why wont they confirm if its a balloon or not? strange dont you think.
"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes"
"Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month:
"Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3."
Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016?
"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes"
"Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month:
"Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3."
Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016?
If we take one question mark from each event, we can construct a very spooky narrative. But none of the question marks, on their own, seem all that peculiar.
HN vibe when ET life is finally acknowledged by government: “ is it just me or does this sound unremarkable? I mean think about it the universe is so big. We’ve always welcomed open minded scientific inquiry on this forum, I don’t think any of us ever seriously doubted we’d eventually find ET life. Why is this on front page? Let’s get back to bickering over the latest shiny tech fad.” Hehe
1. It is lowest of the low rhetoric to argue from what a hypothetical exaggerated caricature in a hypothetical situation would say. If you want to upset people then keep doing it, but I advise punching above the belt.
2. We've got a bunch of balloons in the air. Balloons are a technology dating back to before they started keeping records [0]. If it turns out people aren't registering every single balloon flight with every government then that isn't really a surprise. Drones are in the mix now too.
2b. People are going to use balloons to spy on each other. That isn't new. Governments spy on everything all the time. These comments are probably being logged in a super-database somewhere in the NSA, in the GRU and the Chinese Ministry of State Security. While it makes a good story it is not evidence of change unless someone does the legwork to show that it wasn't just a slow news week.
That's like you saying you want to be above everyone else and be the "highest of the high", and while trying to upset people with this (or obliviously thinking you "won't" because it must be your "natural place above everyone" and they'll just accept and worship you for it, haha...how ridiculous!), you try to chastise other's for wanting to upset people. This is the same pathology where someone who needs to dominate, but doesn't know how to achieve, has to invent and fabricate "wrongs" everywhere so they can "legitimize" going after people and trying abusing them. Hahah, the very punching above the belt that you advise, is something you would never do, because you'd lose. So you have to "skew the field" and do the very same "hypothetical exaggerated caricature" (really...not just a caricature? an exaggerated caricatured? are you sure?) that you try to blame someone else doing, is what you do!!! Hahaha. Ridiculous.
Anyway your point is invalid. The situation I described is exactly the HN vibe you see. Hypocritical, lacking in self awareness, desperate to be seen as smart...well, hey...whaddayouknow...exactly like what you've displayed here. Hmmm, not a caricature at all (tho I admit it was satirical) and also not intended at everyone! Totes makes sense now that the person most wounded by that satire and thus prompted to reply would be the person most likely to demonstrate the very same! Thank you for revealing yourself! :) ;P xx ;p
All your other points are valid but uninteresting, they don't disprove anything. But yeah...this whole thing seems like a distraction for the current tumult. There's 1000s of other cases if you're interested in something real...but you're probably not, but second I'm guessing maybe you are into this (maybe you're just too scared to admit it in public?)...anyway whatevs...this thing's probably a distraction. Well except for your comments, they just revealed you. But, yeah, the balloon thing: probably a distraction.
Just because you found a branch of wood in front of you doesn't imply that you must be living in the forest.
Just because we found metallic balls doesn't mean it must be alien. It's far more likely an SCO state that's spying on the US.
Additionally, the last fictious alien event series around Roswell turned out to be the A12 prototype (aka SR-71 Blackbird) that was being tested for its radar stealth capabilities.
Yet none of those tinfoil hats ever realized that...so...here we are, with "aliens" supposedly using a crappy technology like a balloon instead of warp-drive capable space ships. Because you know, space can be travelled in a balloon and there must be oxygen of identical density on every single habitable planet /s
The only tinfoil hats are you guys, these days. Tin foil on your head keeps the new info from getting in. So you can protect the existing "everything is bland and normal" cognitive bias. (I'm not attacking, it's not you-personal---it's a whole phenomena of people who wanna believe the boring shit, and never anything else).
Me looking at your first 3 lines:
...Uhuh...
...Good...
...WTF!?! Roswell was A12?!
Come on man, you can't believe that hype. Even the "tinfoil hat space weather balloon" bs cover story, has a guy holding a telegraph memo. You can zoom in on that memo and clearly make out a communique that details the coverup.
Also, read Corso's Day After Roswell (available in 1 click probably). It details an extensive chronology for the events of the crash, initial unsanctioned info release, and subsequent coverup and reverse engineering efforts.
It's just nuts to wave it away with a magical swoosh of your hands and say, "It was A12, nuff said." Some disinfo agent probably fed that story to the press, just like with the balloon. Please, please, please read more before you speak more about this. Actually read it for yourself, not just the "internet crib" notes and then make up your mind to confirm your existing bias because some 12-year-old commenter said "Contains many logical fallacies" on Goodreads or whatever. I don't know if there's a goodreads, don't go lookin' for it--just read more please!!! :P :) xx ;p
I'm not even saying these latest things are legit (probably just disinfo distraction)--but there's so many others--so, you know, look into it!
Doesn't strike me as weird at all. Saying you shot some unidentified unmanned stuff out of the sky sends a much different message than saying you possibly shot an unidentified someone out of the sky.
Not wanting to disclose what it was isn't the same as being fine with any interpretation of what was done.
Balloons are treated differently under the Chicago convention. There’s a little bit more leeway for balloons when it comes to overflights on sovereign territory.
Before we jump to alien spacecraft, the US Government was quite forthcoming about this even, so let's see what they say when they gather up all the wreckage and analyze it.
We're rolling into an election season, and the minority party loves conspiracies. I have a good feeling that information will be shared shortly about what they shot down.
> ffs, Do the downvotes mean "obviously there is" or "obviously there isn't"?
Downvotes on HN are handed out like candy to mean anything. Some people think obviously there is, and so downvote, others will think there isn't and downvote. Others think this is a stupid idea and will downvote. Others might think it's a good idea but disagree with the way you framed to the question
I wouldn't really worry too much about the votes here. They mean nothing.
I predict I will get downvoted on this comment, I don't know what it's meant to signify.
525 comments
[ 0.18 ms ] story [ 380 ms ] threadWhoever country is sending whatever these artificial objects are, what can they possibly gain from this?
Ironic if people are being spied upon by TikTok whilst watching a spy balloon video.
That's a good point though - people seem more worked up about the data collection balloon than they are about the little data collector in their pockets.
Woah! Even on iOS?
Other apps had the same issue (I think Telegram comes to mind?)
we're not far :D
it has happened before.
Russia did, and I guess still does, this a lot. Flying their planes constantly in European airspace to see if what the response is and also make it more normal occurrence. If they one day attack it’s harder to tell if this again one of those random times or an actual attack
Poetic.
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-soviets-built-besp...
As to why use balloons instead of satellites, the most reasonable speculation I’ve seen is that they’re collecting signals intelligence (radio traffic, etc.) which is not accessible from orbital distances.
I guess the US air forces received order to shoot earlier?
> Both Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled to track down the object which Trudeau says was taken out by a US F-22.
So clearly not.
NORAD is NORAD. They collaborate very closely and it becomes kind of moot who specifically does what.
Seems to me like the military-propaganda apparatus is spinning up to prepare the populace for a war. But it's more of a gut feeling at this point.
Whether these intrusions by unknown objects were commonplace and previously had been ignored, is something I've wondered about myself.
"an official revealed during a briefing on Saturday that the U.S. was aware of three other instances during the prior administration and one instance earlier in the Biden administration that such an apparatus “transited” the country."
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3844511-chinese-balloons-...
So like what, a similar but bigger balloon?
The flip side of this is adversarial observer(s) can learn all sorts of things about readiness, detection networks, response times, and tactical doctrine if well-prepared in advance to acquire and integrate that information.
Kinda wish I had a way to bet on the popularity of search terms because I can practically hear the rattle of doctrinal articles being furiously drafted at military institutions of higher learning right now.
There may be cheaper ways to shoot down balloons. Unguided rockets might work. There are guided rockets that would work better and still be cheap.
And anyway, isn't the F-22 due to be retired before the end of the decade, so wouldn't debating its merits be beating a dead horse?
This could also indicate China's surveillance capabilities. Need to use balloons to get high resolution rather than relying on satellite imagery (kinda why we don't really use U2s anymore and why that Trump tweet was seen as a big deal). It could also be trolling. It could also be testing (including of cameras that would be put on satellites). It is hard to say anything with certainty tbh. Militaries work in secrecy and that's why information is so valuable (despite what many think). But the objects will be recovered and you'd be surprised what can be reverse engineered from an exploded pile of scrap.
I didn't know that was a thing, Canadian PM having the power to command US jets.
Can anyone who knows more about NORAD weigh in with an ELI5?
The US was monitoring it on Friday:
> A statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the object shot down on Saturday was first noticed over Alaska on Friday evening. Two F-22 fighter jets “monitored the object” with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard, Ryder’s statement said, “tracking it closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object.”
* https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/norad-additional-obj...
However:
> Defence Minister Anita Anand said in a news conference the "small, cylindrical object" was about 40,000 feet above ground and downed — due to possible risks to civilian aviation — at around 3:40 p.m. ET about 100 miles from the U.S. border in central Yukon.
> A senior government source with direct knowledge of the situation told CBC News that the Canadian government was first alerted to the object Friday night when it was still travelling through Alaska.
> The source added the object crossed into Yukon on Saturday morning and Trudeau ordered the shoot down by whichever country arrived at it first.
* https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/norad-monitoring-airborne-o...
So it looks like the US 'took too long' to decide to shoot it down, and once it crossed the border Canada had final authorization. The US jets just happened to be closer (CA jets were scrambled as well).
The US and Canada have gameplanned for all sorts of scenarios similar to this, and up to and including full nuclear war. They have established playbooks for alllllll kinds of scenarios. Because when shit goes down, you there is NO TIME to gameplan. No, you pull binder #568 off of the shelf and get to work executing gameplan #568, "US jets pursue craft into Canada" or whatever.
There is a playbook for this kind of thing, and they are following it. The playbook possibly does include some kind of explicit authorization from the Canadian PM for the final shootdown.
So in reality this is certainly more "Trudeau authorized it" than "ordered it", because the US and Canada definitely can't order each other do things. However, for obvious optics purposes, they phrased it as "Trudeau ordered the shootdown." Because it looks sort of weak to the untrained eye if Trudeau just sort of allowed it.
However, the actual wording is sort of irrelevant. The reality is that it was a fairly seamless bit of cooperation between two close allies.
go on... why is that?
There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to air traffic), people just ignore it... weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time.
But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down, even if it caused an international incident.. and luckily nothing serious happened. So now that the cat is out of the bag, we're going to shoot down every balloon that hasnt filed all of the required paperwork that enters out airspace that's reachable by our aircraft... because 1) the public demands it; 2) it'll become political fodder if the white house doesn't; and 3) the international issue it generates is easier for the white house to handle than the political criticism.
If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.
Edit: bobbyjo pointed out this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...
Since that likely settles the balloons intent… we can add 4) now that we know it’s a spy balloon, we’re going to shoot down all the balloons. Before the large balloon was shot down, no one would have bothered to check. No one is stopping weather balloons at the border. Big mistake on chinas part.
The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious blind spots. That could be pretty huge.
I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.
Right now Chinese leadership does not want to be seen "bending" in this way or that, by their internal audience. But not doing so is a huge risk factor for them in international diplomacy.
Whether the US or any other country really takes advantage of the opportunity and resulting partial leadership vacuum in the international space will be interesting to see.
There are indications that even in Russia Putin got that and tried to introduce harsher punishments than assigning the failed official to less prestigious positions. But it seems they did too little too late.
Yeah, that’s OUR racket!
As evidence to this claim, you'll see that many articles are actively discussing the fact that these balloons are relatively common. The big difference here, American citizens could see this object with just their eyes (uncommon for a balloon). I do buy the argument that China overplayed their hand.
I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything, that's strategically exploitable especially if PRC can make current WH admin look weak by flying a balloon at height that can't be shot down. Medium/long term, PRC building/exposing CONUS vunerability is net benefitial for PRC posture - it's their version of, in DoD parlance, integrated deterence. IMO US analysis missing strategic calculus on PRC side.
E:over post limit but Streak Eagle was high performance preproduction airframe specifially designed to hit 100k for a few minutes. Hard to say if current blocks can do the same or reliable prosecute mission at 100k, finding out is value itself.
> knowing the US would use it to undersell capabilities
Simultaneously capabilities can be prodded, i.e. PRC start testing counter measures on balloons, and if successful reveal gaps / cause more drama - US domestic politics may constrain how much US can undersell. Ultimately getting US to change ROE and consistenly enagage with live weapons is opportunity for both sides.
And then the Chinese, knowing the US would use it to undersell capabilities…
The F-22 and other "stealth" jets can carry radar reflectors to intentionally make themselves EXTREMELY visible on radar.
https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/82798/how-does-...
Why would they carry such a thing? For one, it helps reduce the risk of accidents during training and other situations where they are flying in friendly skies. Two, helps prevent nosy enemies from learning about the true radar cross section of these planes.
It's hard to find concrete information on the USAF's practices here, for the obvious reasons.
The following is speculation, but: one imagines that the F-22/F-35/etc carry these as standard practice when not flying combat missions/patrols. One also imagines that they can be jettisoned midflight (like drop fuel tanks) in case e.g. a patrol turns into a spicy situation. That's a guess, I don't know if that's true.
The rationale being that you may be able to hear a cat's claws on floorboards in the middle of the dead night, but you'd never hear it in the middle of a rave party. So pairing F-22s with eg F-15s becomes a valid strategy.
Obviously simplifying, but that's the essence of what ECM is.
But also, don't assume that the US was naive here. The USAF is pretty good at electronic warfare. It's very possible they were jamming the object's sensors in various ways.
E: Lunar ranging = ground stations. Not feasible to cover CONUS with network of ground based laser for forseeable future. If anything, balloons will try to bait responses from SHiELD/air based laser ABL interception (YAL1) that can be extrapolated to IndoPac theatre.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunar_Laser_Ranging_experime...
It is also not feasible to keep using million dollar missiles to shoot down thousand dollar balloons.
I kind of doubt that the planes are cheaper than ground based lasers. Even so, a mobile ground station could avoid giving away the US position and allow them to cover more area. Not sure how feasible that is.
And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.
Not true: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...
https://www.faa.gov/air_traffic/publications/atpubs/atc_html...
- the balloon was required to file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder
- the balloon did not file a flight plan or have an ADS-B transponder
So either the balloon's operator didn't know about the requirements, which seems unlikely given its apparent sophistication, or the operator was deliberately hiding the presence of the balloon, in which case I think it's reasonable to call it a spy balloon.
I don't see this as anymore aggressive than yearly war games, and significantly less aggressive than claiming islands and ocean territories that are contested and building military installations on them...
Be careful how many times you prod the beast.
https://www.ft.com/content/96992b83-58f7-4cdb-9900-a2bc59677...
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hard rule about when life begins but killing a 5 year old isn't a 22nd trimester abortion, it's murder. 18-60'000 feet is class A, controlled airspace in the US and Canada.
When the US sent U2s over the USSR, the rationale wasn't that 70,000 feet was "space", it was that it was that 70,000 feet was too high for soviet radars detect and and soviet planes to intercept.
What does this mean? I don’t see a reference to tea in the comment you are replying to.
I recently met someone who uses the expression "country mile" all the time. Hadn't heard it before but it's cool. "That's more popular by a country mile" Country miles are obviously better than city miles. So now I'll probably end up using it.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/price_of_tea_in_China
Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious.
On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant presence of AWACS and other multiple airplane sorties, the Aliens everybody was talking about here days ago, seem to have vanished...
[1] - https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-obj...
"How do you become an F-22 pilot?" - https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/e76db/how_do_you_...
Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
This article and any other that mentions these two things has absolutely no source for the statement. There is a 0.0% chance F22 pilots are talking to the press, so I really believe this is a complete fabrication.
https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Ai...
One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor.
Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.
We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package.
It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.
Yeah they are not worried about our 'detection limits' and definitely not 'wasting our resources'.
They might possibly be hoping to pick up some F22 signatures or something like that but even then very unlikely. They have ships that can do that.
And given the 'free publicity' the China Hawks are going to get (not quite 'Sputnik Moment' but a bit like that) I suggest it can't bode well for them, unless are playing real 3D chess and some internal guy is trying to get America to 'wake up' so as to prevent a war!
It's definitely a wierd one.
I suspect they won’t learn much other than how the US responds to balloons. It’s not like the US is revealing anything novel or secret. They’ve used already unclassified and publicly available aircraft and ordinance.
An appropriate quote to the situation
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”
- Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927
But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.
People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!
Would like to point out something relevant: China and India kill each others soldiers fairly frequently. I find it rather remarkable their issues haven't escalated.
1. Where can one find evidence of this mass demand?
2. How does the US government gauge this mass demand without formal voting/polling?
Were people phoning their senators, "SHOOT IT DOWN!"? I'm sure crazies phone in all kinds of things from time to time - what's the threshold for acting on demands/mass demand?
You mean saw with their eyes or on the news? If it was with their eyes then it wouldn't lead to public demand since as you say "weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time." and there's no way to attribute it to another country. If it's on the news then physical size is not relevant but detectability and newsworthiness are. People would have cared.
Trying to stir up an impeachment case over the response to the first balloon is just projection as usual from the GOP.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republica...
The government is apparently not saying what these objects were, so people are assuming they're balloons.
A CNN correspondent [0] just claimed that there were conflicting statements from the pilots that it interfered with their sensors as they approached it. And that they couldn't figure out how it was staying in the air. I have no idea where she got those updates, but it certainly adds mystery to the situation.
[0] https://twitter.com/i/status/1624544183208890369
It “feels” to me like there’s something more than US/China brinksmanship going on.
Really? You can't think of any reason the US government would be happy to stir up disinfo and bullshit? I mean...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-...
> Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the U.S. is just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”
Emphasis mine.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/politics/pentagon-ufo-videos/...
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ufo-report-go...
https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-team-study-ufos-release...
Motherfucker when we all get shipped off to the cobalt mines on Rigel you're getting a blaster bolt up the ass.
If it's for reasons of secrecy, why announce it at all? The second one was in the middle of nowhere, it could easily have been ignored, or dismissed as a military exercise if anyone had made a fuss about it.
But now I am playing the guessing game a bit too much for my own liking.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium-altitude_long-endurance...
Also there is the Arctic you can take off and land on ice and use either an icebreaker or a sub for deployment and recovery.
China does have some advanced drones with a substantial range e.g. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guizhou_WZ-7_Soaring_Dragon
Ofc how they perform in reality vs their published specs no one knows.
In the past at least likes of China and Russia tended to inflate the specs that they made public whilst the west tended to keep the real figures hidden and release far more conservative figures especially when it came to things like maximum speed, range and operational ceiling.
Source?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/alaska-myste...
> It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said.
https://news.sky.com/story/us-shoots-down-unknown-object-fly...
> The object, shot down on the order of President Joe Biden, was flying at a high altitude of about 40,000ft and was the size of a small car, the White House said.
Maybe Blue Beam is in effect.
Apparently the Alaska object shattered upon impact against the ice. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/pentagon-shoots-down...
But more importantly, it sends a message - don't fuck with our airspace, we won't even send body bags
https://www.space.com/281-sky-capture-nasa-bring-genesis-ear...
However, that was a known harmless object on a known trajectory versus an unknown and possibly hostile object.
Additionally, helicopters can't fly nearly high enough for these. 25,000 feet vs 40,000+ feet.
It's too high for helicopters or rotor drones so there's no kind of aircraft that can get their quickly and just hover next to it and retrieve it. (And sending an airship would be so slow and hard to control I'm not sure you could ever get it to reliably intercept in a reasonable amount of time.)
So since you've necessary got to launch something at speed, the only conceivable capture device would seem to necessarily involve 1) a missile to puncture and deflate the balloon/buoyant part, 2) a giant net to wrap the entire thing, and 3) a parachute attached to the net to let it down gently.
But I can't even begin to imagine how you'd get all three elements working together reliably, rather than interfering with each other.
they said the second object was freely drifting and not self-propelled or guided, so whether it's technically a balloon or just something that behaves like a balloon is kind of irrelevant to anybody who isn't working for whatever government department is tasked with analyzing it.
Source: https://twitter.com/ZaidSabah/status/1624527081026486274
Might as well say it’s wizards showing up… because wizards don’t have a reason not to.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/alaska- mystery-flying-object-us-chinese-balloon https://news.sky.com/story/us-shoots-down-unknown-object-fly...
Any idea why they refuse to confirm that its a balloon if it is? The pilots confirmed its "unmanned" but why wont they confirm if its a balloon or not? strange dont you think.
"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes"
"Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-...
"It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-shoots-high-altitude-obje...
"Defense Department official said it broke into pieces"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-...
That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month:
"Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3."
Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016?
https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/possible-ufo-caught-on-camera-...
2014 Chilean Navy UFO looks pretty similar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEK3YC_BKTI&ab_channel=FoxNe...
As does the U.S. Navy footage of a UFO caught off the coast of San Diego in 2019:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-6jRrbtuI&ab_channel=TODAY
Another similar looking metallic sphere UFO caught by the U.S. Navy in 2021:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/K5ohaoh2ayfECjmuxtczQJ-970...
"Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-...
"It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-shoots-high-altitude-obje...
"Defense Department official said it broke into pieces"
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-...
That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month:
"Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3."
Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016?
https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/possible-ufo-caught-on-camera-...
2014 Chilean Navy UFO looks pretty similar:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEK3YC_BKTI&ab_channel=FoxNe...
As does the U.S. Navy footage of a UFO caught off the coast of San Diego in 2019:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-6jRrbtuI&ab_channel=TODAY
Another similar looking metallic sphere UFO caught by the U.S. Navy in 2021:
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/K5ohaoh2ayfECjmuxtczQJ-970...
If we take one question mark from each event, we can construct a very spooky narrative. But none of the question marks, on their own, seem all that peculiar.
2. We've got a bunch of balloons in the air. Balloons are a technology dating back to before they started keeping records [0]. If it turns out people aren't registering every single balloon flight with every government then that isn't really a surprise. Drones are in the mix now too.
2b. People are going to use balloons to spy on each other. That isn't new. Governments spy on everything all the time. These comments are probably being logged in a super-database somewhere in the NSA, in the GRU and the Chinese Ministry of State Security. While it makes a good story it is not evidence of change unless someone does the legwork to show that it wasn't just a slow news week.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_ballooning
Anyway your point is invalid. The situation I described is exactly the HN vibe you see. Hypocritical, lacking in self awareness, desperate to be seen as smart...well, hey...whaddayouknow...exactly like what you've displayed here. Hmmm, not a caricature at all (tho I admit it was satirical) and also not intended at everyone! Totes makes sense now that the person most wounded by that satire and thus prompted to reply would be the person most likely to demonstrate the very same! Thank you for revealing yourself! :) ;P xx ;p
All your other points are valid but uninteresting, they don't disprove anything. But yeah...this whole thing seems like a distraction for the current tumult. There's 1000s of other cases if you're interested in something real...but you're probably not, but second I'm guessing maybe you are into this (maybe you're just too scared to admit it in public?)...anyway whatevs...this thing's probably a distraction. Well except for your comments, they just revealed you. But, yeah, the balloon thing: probably a distraction.
Just because we found metallic balls doesn't mean it must be alien. It's far more likely an SCO state that's spying on the US.
Additionally, the last fictious alien event series around Roswell turned out to be the A12 prototype (aka SR-71 Blackbird) that was being tested for its radar stealth capabilities.
Yet none of those tinfoil hats ever realized that...so...here we are, with "aliens" supposedly using a crappy technology like a balloon instead of warp-drive capable space ships. Because you know, space can be travelled in a balloon and there must be oxygen of identical density on every single habitable planet /s
Me looking at your first 3 lines:
...Uhuh...
...Good...
...WTF!?! Roswell was A12?!
Come on man, you can't believe that hype. Even the "tinfoil hat space weather balloon" bs cover story, has a guy holding a telegraph memo. You can zoom in on that memo and clearly make out a communique that details the coverup.
Also, read Corso's Day After Roswell (available in 1 click probably). It details an extensive chronology for the events of the crash, initial unsanctioned info release, and subsequent coverup and reverse engineering efforts.
It's just nuts to wave it away with a magical swoosh of your hands and say, "It was A12, nuff said." Some disinfo agent probably fed that story to the press, just like with the balloon. Please, please, please read more before you speak more about this. Actually read it for yourself, not just the "internet crib" notes and then make up your mind to confirm your existing bias because some 12-year-old commenter said "Contains many logical fallacies" on Goodreads or whatever. I don't know if there's a goodreads, don't go lookin' for it--just read more please!!! :P :) xx ;p
I'm not even saying these latest things are legit (probably just disinfo distraction)--but there's so many others--so, you know, look into it!
Not wanting to disclose what it was isn't the same as being fine with any interpretation of what was done.
Nonresident alien.
We're rolling into an election season, and the minority party loves conspiracies. I have a good feeling that information will be shared shortly about what they shot down.
Edit: ffs, Do the downvotes mean "obviously there is" or "obviously there isn't"?
Downvotes on HN are handed out like candy to mean anything. Some people think obviously there is, and so downvote, others will think there isn't and downvote. Others think this is a stupid idea and will downvote. Others might think it's a good idea but disagree with the way you framed to the question
I wouldn't really worry too much about the votes here. They mean nothing.
I predict I will get downvoted on this comment, I don't know what it's meant to signify.