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U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

cnbc.com

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

#691

Post by barbariangrunge »

ttul wrote: post #571
remarkEon wrote: post #508

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did they actually apologize? I thought all they said is that it was a weather balloon. Regardless, I'm very interested in what hardware was actually on this thing. Hopefully the public gets a summary of what USN pulls up during recovery.

“… the uncharacteristic speed and contrition of China’s statement as indications that it was probably a genuine error…” https://www.economist.com/china/2023/02/03/how-a-balloon-bur...

The "how we use data" popup, on the article about surveillance, was awkward

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

#692

Post by pageandrew »

fumeux_fume wrote: post #535
moomoo11 wrote: post #395

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you really believe the USAF and rest of the military and 3 letter agencies had not already intercepted/jammed/hacked the comms link? By letting it saunter all the way across they also probably got a lot of good info on its capabilities.

Had to lol at this one. Yeah, after they hacked the comms link and they were able to gain access to the master program.

Its very possible that they could jam the radio frequencies the balloon uses. "Hacking the comms link", not so much, but neutering its ability to phone home... very possible.

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

#693

Post by letmevoteplease »

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…

"Officials said the balloons are part of a fleet that China uses for surveillance, and they can be maneuvered remotely through small motors and propellers."

https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government...

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

#694

Post by adql »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #645
riku_iki wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Try to make small puncture in pressured baloon and report your findings here, you might be surprised.

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

#695

Post by moomoo11 »

IMTDb wrote: post #674
moomoo11 wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Must be nice being so privileged to talk down the very thing that maintains global trade channels (diplomacy) and keeps most of the world in check. Most of the world is backwater nations who oppress the shit out of their population making whatever faults you find in the US seem trivial. And yes the world isn’t fair and entropy exists. EU is basically a forced alliance after thousand years of constant fighting that le…

The danger for the US are inside, not outside. The military spending is already far sufficient to guarantee the safety of the country against external state nations. The issue is that it does not spend enough to maintain internal peace. The dudes that took over the capitol aren’t Chinese or Russian. Now of course, you could use your military power to control your population and prevent it from rebelling even if it is…

I agree from an optics pov but even with the capitol thing.. half the country and half the politicians elected by them think it wasn’t a big deal. Meanwhile everyone argues over it while..

Everything is in control, at least in my opinion.

I’m just a simple tax payer, and honestly I trust the people who really run the country while laymen argue over dumb shit and our side vs that side etc.

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

#696

Post by moomoo11 »

pageandrew wrote: post #692
fumeux_fume wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had to lol at this one. Yeah, after they hacked the comms link and they were able to gain access to the master program.

Its very possible that they could jam the radio frequencies the balloon uses. "Hacking the comms link", not so much, but neutering its ability to phone home... very possible.

Yeah and it’s why hacked was the third option aka least likely. Not my fault people pick one thing out of a range of possibilities and fixate on it lol.

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

#697

Post by evolve2k »

blululu wrote: post #574
willis936 wrote: post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Judging from the videos that pan from the moon to the balloon: the balloon was about 3x smaller in the sky than the moon. Knowing the altitude of the balloon was 68,000 feet, we can fudge the distance from the observer to the balloon as 100,000 feet. Knowing the distance to the moon and the radius of the moon we can use like triangles to estimate that the balloon was ~285 feet across, +/- 20% for estimates. Edit: upd…

This is a clever method and I appreciate that you posted the Wolfram alpha link - always happy when people show their work and I did not realize that you could do things like include (diameter of moon) as variables with it. This is a nit, but if you're busting out an AI enhanced calculator there is no need to make a 40% rounding of 70K to 100k. I got ~200 ft across.

60m (200ft) - 85m (285ft) for the rest of the world.

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

#698

Post by kylehotchkiss »

angry_octet wrote: post #605

How incredibly dumb. Imagine all the delicious ELINT that balloon relayed about the APG-81 RADAR and the missile, which assuredly coat much more than the balloon drone.

I presume they had the ability to detect which bands this thing was transmitting on, entirely disable it with some sort of electronic warfare thingy, and then get close enough to shoot

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

#699

Post by notimetorelax »

IIAOPSW wrote: post #688
ipnon wrote: post #336

This is technically the first combat kill by the F-22.

Wish it was a drone that shot it down. Then it would be the first unmanned aircraft dog fight.

It wouldn’t be the first. Drone on drone fights happened in Ukraine.
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