This seems like a worse idea than just collecting the thing and putting it in a faraday cage.
How do you go about collect it from 65,000 feet?
U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
91–100 of 1001 posts
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, these were reported by civilians over landlocked states and there's no indication that the balloons were spotted earlier.
The military is unlikely to report their surveillance activities to the media. There was no overt indication that the balloons were spotted earlier.
Except the statements from Canada that are very suggestive.
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/20...
https://www.canada.ca/en/department-national-defence/news/20...
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#93In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected
Bullshit. Had civilians not seen it the government would never have reported it.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#94F22 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?
A predator drone wouldn't have been able to reach it.
It was really flying really high. FL600 is ~roughly at Armstrong limit, or the altitude where you absolutely need a pressurized space suit if you want to go outside, or the water in your eyeballs will boil off. The very high performance jet that intercepted the balloon didn't climb to the same altitude as the balloon, as it was over the publicly stated ceiling for that plane. Instead, it did a zoom climb and fired a missile from below as it maxed out.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#95In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected
Not sure where your info is from, but this balloon was seen by the naked eye and all over social media. As someone who lives in Montana, many many people could see it. The idea that the USG prompted the publicity is unlikely to be accurate (would suggest a calculated social media psyop). Not impossible, but not likely.
How big was it? I don't mean your well thought out estimate, I mean your gut impression.
Smaller than the end of your pinkie at arm's length?
I gather that it gave the impression of being somewhat normal sized and much closer than it actually was, gauging by the number of people who thought they could shoot it down with their firearm.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#96I had seen reports that the balloon was the length of 3-4 school busses but it appears that was misreported and just repeated. The PAYLOAD was the length of 3-4 school busses. I haven’t been following this much until today/ vaguely aware as an amusing background story. But, has anyone seen high res photos of the balloon or someone doing back of the envelope math on the size of the balloon portion? I ask simply becaus…
I don't know how big this particular one is, but high altitude balloons get really large because of the low pressure.
For example, I could find that this ballon reaches 200ft diameter at 100,000 feet.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#97Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#98In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected
It seems more likely that the balloon being visible forced the gov to acknowledge the balloon. It's unclear if that had any effect on the decision of when to shoot it down. Apparently they had been tracking it over the Aleutians, so they could have downed it over the Pacific, if they hadn't pussyfooted it.
But would you want to go recover it in the alaskan wilderness, possibly on a mountain, in winter? They waited until it got somewhere more convenient.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#99In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected
The US state apparatus did not make a big deal of this. The media and the public did, and the US state apparatus answered to the media and the public, as is their duty.
Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon
#100Earlier 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…
Meh, countermeasures for even lots of balloons are not difficult to imagine.