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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

#641

Post by pstrateman »

georgeg23 wrote: post #619
pstrateman wrote: post #613

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China is quite obviously lying about this being a weather balloon. You can see in the video about the NOAA weather balloons how small they are. The balloon that was just shot down was huge and was being actively maneuvered.

There are so many companies building airship prototypes of similar scale, Occam's Razor suggests its benign. It's like seeing your first satellite and being convinced it must be military.. This isn't the Sputnik era of ballooning by any stretch. https://aviationoutlook.com/airship-manufacturers/

So you think that a private company produced a high altitude airship prototype that just happened to go on a journey thousands of miles across the world and over a number of us military installations?

I genuinely cannot understand how you think that's a simpler explanation than it being a surveillance platform.

(btw the chinese press tried to claim that it's a weather balloon, an obvious lie)

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#642

Post by Rebelgecko »

JoeDaDude wrote: post #367

How does a surveillance balloon get the collected data back to where it is analyzed and used? I suspect the data is relayed by satellite (unless there are collection sites within the US). Which Chinese satellites are able to cover the US?

Most of China' communication satellites are in GEO over Asia, but they do have plenty of remote sensing and ELINT birds that fly over the US.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#643

Post by Rebelgecko »

falsandtru wrote: post #539

Why didn't they use machine guns? Perhaps one reason was the risk that if they used machine guns, they would hit the balloon and crash the fighter. In that case, it would have provided China with the worst possible performance of shooting down a U.S. fighter with a Chinese balloon. On the other hand, if they used missiles and shot down the Chinese balloon with flair, we could advertise a strong and brave U.S. The U.S…

How high can a machine gun shoot?

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#644

Post by TexanFeller »

effingwewt wrote: post #584
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the system is designed in a way that you have neither a say nor healthy representation America is the most powerful civilisation in the history of humanity. In almost every election, nonvoters could swing the outcome. On almost every issue, practically nobody reaches out to their representatives. Participation is hard. Many of us have more important matters to tend to. That’s fine. But don’t characterise participat…

It's not that participation is hard , it's that more and more see it as completely ineffective. Every year more of my friends and family abstain from voting. The system is broken, many choose not to play a fixed game.

I refuse to play their fixed game by voting third party, even when the third party candidate is terrible.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#645

Post by seanmcdirmid »

riku_iki wrote: post #453
SnowHill9902 wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was purposefully taken down once it was on shallow waters to preserve the equipment as much as possible.

electronics is damaged by water likely, it could have more chance to survive if hit the ground.

You can always dry things out. Hitting the ground is harder than hitting water, and it really depends on how they took out the balloon (if they were able to hit it with a small puncture, the balloon would come down more softly, but guns don’t really go to 60k, so it was probably a missile right?

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#646

Post by d883kd8 »

lsiq wrote: post #634
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #555

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the system is designed in a way that you have neither a say nor healthy representation America is the most powerful civilisation in the history of humanity. In almost every election, nonvoters could swing the outcome. On almost every issue, practically nobody reaches out to their representatives. Participation is hard. Many of us have more important matters to tend to. That’s fine. But don’t characterise participat…

Don't you find it strange that nearly every country in the world is pursuing the same currency objective at the same time. You know the one, I just don't want to spell it out to trigger the filter. How can every supposedly independent CB pursue the exact same goal if they are not under the direction of one nexus? Elections indeed swing, but do the outcomes matter if the key national politicians are operating under du…

This is not convincing because there are a variety of currency regimes in the world today and they seem to be in healthy competition

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#647

Post by georgeg23 »

pstrateman wrote: post #641
georgeg23 wrote: post #619

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many companies building airship prototypes of similar scale, Occam's Razor suggests its benign. It's like seeing your first satellite and being convinced it must be military.. This isn't the Sputnik era of ballooning by any stretch. https://aviationoutlook.com/airship-manufacturers/

So you think that a private company produced a high altitude airship prototype that just happened to go on a journey thousands of miles across the world and over a number of us military installations? I genuinely cannot understand how you think that's a simpler explanation than it being a surveillance platform. (btw the chinese press tried to claim that it's a weather balloon, an obvious lie)

It didn't go "hover over" military installations. It went over the Rocky Mountains. Pretty much any balloon that crosses the US would go over "military installations" especially when USG can't confirm where these installations are even located (they therefore must suggested that it did, game theoretically).

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#648

Post by wkat4242 »

amatecha wrote: post #410
dendrite9 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I posted this link earlier but it was tracked. Here is a flight path of Canadian fighters checking the balloon out as it crossed towards Montana. https://twitter.com/steffanwatkins/status/162136299808111001... The link was in this longer, and good article: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/chinas-spy-balloon-ove...

Oh wow, that's messed up. Kind of irritating to see the thing was being closely tracked all through BC and just... nothing? Nice...

Maybe they weren't sure at that point that it was unmanned? Shooting it down would have been a whole different story then

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#649

Post by seanmcdirmid »

ineedasername wrote: post #365
pixl97 wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically the ballon isn't moving itself in anyway at all, it instead is depending on the wind. As the atmospheric pressure lowers the maximum speed of the wind can increase greatly. For example the speed of the jet stream commonly exceeds 275 miles per hour. It looks like the strongest jet winds were closer to canada, had the jet been in the US it could have made it across the country in a day.

There was mention by the Chinese that is had some motive power of its own, or at least strongly implied when their PR said some the thing like “limited maneuvering capability”. That seems to indicate that it had some. It would a bit surprising if a payload the size of 2-3 school buses wasn’t outfitted with a reasonable amount of controllability, at least some control surfaces even if they inexplicably excluded even m…

Not much they could do there. Highly likely just up and down: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo...

Unless the Chinese have balloon control tech we’ve never even fathomed before. That would be way scarier than the balloon itself.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#650

Post by [deleted] »

w3tester wrote: post #623

Should a country shoot down an airplane if it enters its airspace by mistake? ChatGPT: It is generally not considered appropriate for a country to shoot down an airplane that has entered its airspace by mistake. In such cases, the standard protocol is for the country to contact the aircraft and instruct it to leave its airspace. The use of military force should only be considered as a last resort in extreme circumsta…

[deleted]
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