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U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
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Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#82[flagged]
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Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they want to, but exactly how high is probably valuable intelligence). Weather balloons on the other hand fly much higher. This would have been likely (I don’t know) between 60,000 and 120,000 feet. You certainly couldn’t just do a gun run at that altitude. Clippi…
I was actually surprised there wasn't some energy-based laser that could be shot at it, even if from an aircraft, but I agree with your assessment. Which brings up an interesting question: would launching thousands of balloons at the US be a good strategy to completely drain the A2A missile stockpile? It seems like a balloon would also be absurdly cheaper than the missile, not to mention having to get a plane out to…
Do we really want to be shooting classified energy weapons at surveillance devices!?
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#84Am I the only one with “99 Luftballoons” in my head?
99个红色气球
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#85F22 shooting this down is definitely a sign of strength. If this were a James bond movie, a predator drone would have just hooked that balloon and brought it back intact. What prevents China or anyone else to just launch dozens or hundreds of these?
The fact there would be no point ?
Cost differential is an interesting thing to consider if this were done at scale. That single missile cost ~$500K (plus flight time for the F22 isn't cheap). How much would each balloon be, especially if some were decoys without any real payload?
That said, drones vs ships seems like a starker cost differential than this.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#86This seems like a worse idea than just collecting the thing and putting it in a faraday cage.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that it was visible to the naked eye and people were talking about it, it's silly to blame this on the government.
>Given that it was visible to the naked eye But why did this garner so much attention compared to the weather ballons that the US launches on a regular basis?
Weather balloons are tiny, we’re comparing a cardboard box with a small house here scalewise.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
One theory is that the Chinese know that. This could be them sending a message: "If you defend Taiwan, we can get over your heads cheaply and easily". The only casualties on the U.S. mainland during WW2 were Japanese balloons dropping bombs on the west coast. I doubt that symbolism was lost on the military or the Biden administration.
That can't be the message. You saw how easy it was to down the balloon.
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Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#89This seems like a worse idea than just collecting the thing and putting it in a faraday cage.
How would you collect it?
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
That can't be the message. You saw how easy it was to down the balloon.
It was easy to down one balloon during peace-time. You're right. Please see my comment further below for why that might not work in aggregate during a real military conflict. Edit: I'll paste it here in case it gets buried: I really do wonder if this is them testing that they can reliably and cheaply get high-altitude balloons to the U.S. mainland. In the event of a military conflict, I can imagine them swarming us w…
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't you just need a single plane with a machine gun on board to take down hundreds of these if you cared to take them down? And you can spot them far, far away and take them down far away from the coast, can't you?
I mean, they can't really do evasive maneuvers, they're not fast, they don't fight back, they're not armored, you wouldn't need super modern missiles.