Chinese Spy Balloon Flying Over the U.S.

[wilkersk]

NORAD is "changing" how it analyzes raw radar data....

Anyone remember the "UFO" to-do in 2019 and 2020? I wonder if one has anything to do with the other.

 

[Zeldman]

But there are other uses for balloons besides lower-tech spying.

About 15, 16 years ago a company came into the airport here looking for someone to launch a balloon at 6am and 6pm every day for 6 months. It was a weather balloon size balloon to be used for communications for their people working outside of cell phone range.

The payload on it was about the size of a shoe box, and it was labeled to drop in any mail box if found. Also had the company phone number if any questions.

According to the guy I talked to, about 1/3 of the boxes get returned in the mail, and he had never heard of one getting hit by an airplane.

I never thought to ask if any get shot down...

 

[NoHeat]

Another one, over Lake Huron
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/12/spy-balloon-alaska-canada/

That's #4

This one was shot down by an F16. So we're economizing. Before long, we'll be using Sopwith Camels.

 

[Albany Tom]

Sounds reasonable. Or maybe a low tech solution?

Not the ship, the chain shot.

The Constitution is still in service! I suggest we temporarily put a patriot launcher on it, and let it have a shot at one.

Either that, or find the guy with the lawn chair and BB gun, and send him up.

 

[iamtheari]

That's #4

This one was shot down by an F16. So we're economizing. Before long, we'll be using Sopwith Camels.

I’m not sure that the Camel would be any less expensive than the Falcon.

 

[kyleb]

I’m not sure that the Camel would be any less expensive than the Falcon.

Put them on a fixed price contract with spares, training, etc. I'm sure they could be delivered for $10M ea, maybe a little less if the manufacturer didn't need a subcontractor in every state.

 

[Matthew]

Felix Baumgartner holding a KA-BAR in his teeth, dropping on it from above.

 

[TCABM]

Felix Baumgartner holding a KA-BAR in his teeth, dropping on it from above.

I don’t know how to photoshop, but I’m going to figure it out and make that a meme.

 

[wanttaja]

The Constitution is still in service! I suggest we temporarily put a patriot launcher on it, and let it have a shot at one.

That'd be pretty cool. It would give the Constitution victories in three separate centuries.....

Ron Wanttaja

 

[Palmpilot]

During WWI, balloon kills counted just as much as aircraft kills. The balloons back then were a leeeetle better defended than these, though....

Aren't balloons aircraft?

 

[X3 Skier]

IBTL

 

[Llewtrah381]

Somebody woke up cranky…

 

[Cap'n Jack]

ChatGFP broke down?

 

[Sierra_Hotel]

Lol what a load of ****.

 

[Dana]

Amateur launches of high altitude balloons are not unheard of, either. This young lady (who was a Miss America contestant and incidentally also owns a Cessna 140) sent her tiara to 112,000' using a weather balloon:

 

[Baked Potato]

sidewinders have been shot at a hostel target over North America

There were young travelers using affordable, shared accomodations on those balloons?

 

[Domenick]

Could an adversary simply be testing our detection technology and skill? One of the latest balloons was first detected over Montana, but dismissed as "an anomaly." Oops!
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/unidentified-object-shot-down-off-alaska/

I'm okay with shooting them down. It our pilots a chance for some live-fire training, though you would think the turbulence from a high speed flyby would rip them apart.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

Another one, over Lake Huron
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/02/12/spy-balloon-alaska-canada/

Low enough to take out with a Sopwith Camel.

 

[Doug Reid]

Instead of spending billions on a quest for intelligent life in the cosmos, why not find intelligent life in DC.

 

[Llewtrah381]

I'm okay with shooting them down.

I am too - so long as we realize that once they’ve plummeted to the ground, water, or ice, we’re probably pretty limited on what we can learn about the capabilities of the thing - and what intel it had gathered.

 

[GaryM]

Instead of spending billions on a quest for intelligent life in the cosmos, why not find intelligent life in DC.

Just playing the odds. There is a better chance of finding it elsewhere in the cosmos than in DC.

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

So....do all y'all think China is tracking these thingys they're lobbing over?

 

[Doug Reid]

Aliens ? Now that is funny...I don't care who you are .

Why go to all that trouble to fly in from the north when you can walk in from the south ?

 

[RyanShort1]

Could an adversary simply be testing our detection technology and skill? One of the latest balloons was first detected over Montana, but dismissed as "an anomaly." Oops!
https://www.avweb.com/aviation-news/unidentified-object-shot-down-off-alaska/

I'm okay with shooting them down. It our pilots a chance for some live-fire training, though you would think the turbulence from a high speed flyby would rip them apart.

I don't think so. I think whoever is / was doing this has likely been doing it for quite a while and had the knowledge of how to avoid certain spectrums of the radar system because of filters. Now, thanks to some civilian blowing the story on the Chinese balloon, they've readjusted the algorithms and are now seeing more stuff that was probably already there for some time.

 

[Warlock]

Since we have no answers on why we are conducting Air to Air Combat over the county…might as well laugh…

 

[Katamarino]

 

[Katamarino]

{Unhinged ranting}

 

[wanttaja]

I don't think so. I think whoever is / was doing this has likely been doing it for quite a while and had the knowledge of how to avoid certain spectrums of the radar system because of filters. Now, thanks to some civilian blowing the story on the Chinese balloon, they've readjusted the algorithms and are now seeing more stuff that was probably already there for some time.

And I think most of the sightings and shootdowns are innocuous objects like weather balloons or hobbyist projects. The first one, no, but when over a thousand balloons are launched every day around the world, examples are going to be showing up like we're seeing. For the rest, politicians screamed when we didn't shoot down the first one, which basically led to a zero-tolerance policy.

Me and my buddies launched a lot of homemade hot-air balloons back in high school, and we would have been overjoyed if the National Guard had sent F-102s to shoot them down. My wife even incorporated that into her first romance novel, published by Harlequin in the '90s.

Ron Wanttaja

 

[dtuuri]

With over 700 posts I'm not going back to look, but has anybody speculated why the spy balloon wasn't painted blue to match the sky? Maybe it was supposed to be noticed? And the smaller one with a cylindrical "payload"? Like, say, oxygen or some other kind of gas container? Didn't it have a "metallic" balloon, too, better to reflect radar energy? The ability to sail the wind to deploy biological agents from small non-metallic, hard to see balloons could be concerning enough to change our thoughts of protecting Taiwan from an invasion by China, so pardon me if it was discussed already. We seem very vulnerable right now, economically speaking, no strategic reserve remaining to speak of, supply chain dependence on China, stagflation, our arms depleted and sent to Ukraine, our oil and coal industries under attack in the name of changing the earth's climate and the cost of fighting covid (and all the hidden agendas buried in the fine print) weighing us down with needless debt. I don't see this as a nothingburger.

 

[RyanShort1]

There's a certain irony now to me that it might seem "fun" to a certain percentage of the population to see if one could get a "suspicious" balloon up with a hardened Go-Pro setup and see if one could get some live footage of what it's like to be shot down by an Aim-9... and maybe even some U-2 and F-22 flyby activity. And yes, as an aerial photographer, I'm saying that there would be some technical satisfaction in that.

 

[RyanShort1]

With over 700 posts I'm not going back to look, but has anybody speculated why the spy balloon wasn't painted blue to match the sky? Maybe it was supposed to be noticed? And the smaller one with a cylindrical "payload"? Like, say, oxygen or some other kind of gas container? Didn't it have a "metallic" balloon, too, better to reflect radar energy? The ability to sail the wind to deploy biological agents from small non-metallic, hard to see balloons could be concerning enough to change our thoughts of protecting Taiwan from an invasion by China, so pardon me if it was discussed already. We seem very vulnerable right now, economically speaking, no strategic reserve remaining to speak of, supply chain dependence on China, stagflation, our arms depleted and sent to Ukraine, our oil and coal industries under attack in the name of changing the earth's climate and the cost of fighting covid (and all the hidden agendas buried in the fine print) weighing us down with needless debt. I don't see this as a nothingburger.

I don't see it entirely as a nothing burger, either, but most of those problems you mention are really our own... these balloons are merely exposing our own faults.

Honestly, it reminds me of this quote by the prescient Alexis de Tocqueville:

If ever the free institutions of America are destroyed, that event may be attributed to the omnipotence of the majority, which may at some future time urge the minorities to desperation and oblige them to have recourse to physical force. Anarchy will then be the result, but it will have been brought about by despotism.

Source: https://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/DETOC/1_ch15.htm

 

[Palmpilot]

And I think most of the sightings and shootdowns are innocuous objects like weather balloons or hobbyist projects. The first one, no, but when over a thousand balloons are launched every day around the world, examples are going to be showing up like we're seeing. For the rest, politicians screamed when we didn't shoot down the first one, which basically led to a zero-tolerance policy.

Me and my buddies launched a lot of homemade hot-air balloons back in high school, and we would have been overjoyed if the National Guard had sent F-102s to shoot them down. My wife even incorporated that into her first romance novel, published by Harlequin in the '90s.

Ron Wanttaja

I'm hoping that they will be able to learn enough from the debris of the shoot-downs to be able to determine whether they hostile or innocent.

 

[Zeldman]

I think I see a chinese balloon over New Mexico....

 

[Checkout_my_Six]

Debris from the downed spy balloon washing up on shore