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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

#701

Post by georgeg23 »

demodifier wrote: post #681
georgeg23 wrote: post #630

This exact same balloon type was spotted floating over Japan in 2020 and India in 2022, https://twitter.com/BalloonSciDan/status/1479218147098038278 Plenty of companies are working on airships including in China. Companies building airships of similar scale: https://aviationoutlook.com/airship-manufacturers/ The US puts hundreds of balloons over China, https://www.weather.gov/jetstream/radiosondes

Regarding the last point of US putting balloons over China, that page has the following two paragraphs: "Worldwide, there are about 1,300 upper-air stations. Observations are made by the NWS at 92 stations - 69 in the conterminous United States, 13 in Alaska, nine in the Pacific, and one in Puerto Rico. NWS supports the operation of 10 other stations in the Caribbean. Through international agreements data are exchang…

Why would there be stations there if the balloons aren't flying over China?

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

#702

Post by cm2187 »

adql wrote: post #694
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #645

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

An F22 won't make a small puncture (in fact the video shows the balloon exploding). Water becomes very quickly a hard surface at speed.

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

#703

Post by rkagerer »

fbdab103 wrote: post #471
remarkEon wrote: post #466

Sidestepping the geopolitical issues with this for a moment ... What advantage is there to using a high altitude balloon for surveillance? I have to imagine there are some - like longer loiter time over a specific point, maybe better optics because you are still in atmosphere, it's obviously cheaper than launching a satellite - but I don't really know enough about this kind of hardware to say. Or maybe the point wasn…

Significantly closer to the ground, so can capture better resolution pictures. If browsing Google Earth, the high-resolution data around cities originates from airplanes, not satellites.

Hey does that mean we can soon buy high-res, balloon-altitude imagery at low-priced China-rates?

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

#704

Post by rjsw »

angry_octet wrote: post #609
sandworm101 wrote: post #509

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When an aircraft doesnt have a transponder, doesnt respond to radio calls, no flight plan on file, and seems to be adrift, it is a hazard to navigation irrespective of altitide. Such things get intercepted and, if in any way dangerous, are shot down. Post-9/11, there are even protocols for shooting down unresponsive airliners.

Name one plane that flies at more than 60,000 feet, I'll wait.

Concorde did [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concorde

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

#705

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Red_Leaves_Flyy wrote: post #578
sandworm101 wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that thing had a radar strong enough to see through dirt from 50,000ft, it should have also been causing havoc to all sorts of electrical equipment too.

I know nothing of radar, but could the radar be shaped like routers beam forming? Couldn’t the radar also be switched off over the majority of inconsequential areas?

> could the radar be shaped like routers beam forming?

Yes, SAR [1].

[1] https://www.earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/backgrounders/what-is-s...

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

#706

Post by Choco31415 »

khuey wrote: post #592
ttul wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“… 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...

They put out a statement a few hours ago whining that it was shot down so I wouldn't take that "apology" for much.

Can you share a link to the statement?

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

#707

Post by everybodyknows »

clashmoore wrote: post #501
404mm wrote: post #382

I feel like the balloon takedown was seriously mishandled. Imo it should have been shot down right after it crossed our borders and before it started move over populated areas. That way there would be no surveillance and you could examine the payload. Now that it’s in the water, you may not even find it.

NYTimes is reporting that this is actually the fifth balloon to cross into our airspace. First four were seemingly ignored, three times under the Trump administration and once before during Biden’s.

The implication of that being the shootdown was a media-initiated event. After civilians saw the balloon from the ground, and it became lead story on every news site, with the MAGA press calling Biden "weak", something had to be done, whether it makes military sense or not.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/biden-weak-response-chinese-su...

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

#708

Post by cm2187 »

dendrite9 wrote: post #321
amelius wrote: post #114

So they waited until the balloon was over sea. This raises the question: why didn't the military see it coming and destroy it before it crossed the border?

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...

CF18 seem to have a service ceiling of 15km. This thing was about 20km high. Could they shoot it if they wanted?

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

#709

Post by Choco31415 »

geerlingguy wrote: post #442
snickerbockers wrote: post #282

Im pretty impressed that it made it all the way across the continent in a couple days, i had no idea high altitude balloons could move that fast.

Winds are seriously fast at higher altitudes — check out the different wind speeds using the "height" option on this site: https://earth.nullschool.net/#current/wind/surface/level/ort...

I poked at the website a bit and the fastest wind speed I could find in the world was roughly 360 km/h. Over the US there were some 250 km/h winds.

That is interesting!

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

#710

Post by T-A »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #638
alanh wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

maybe but... it seems clear enough they did not do this given that it seems to have been piloted through a very nice high-value course across the US

Weather balloons aren’t piloted. I don’t think it had any control planes at all, beyond just floating along atmospheric currents. At best they can control elevation? Ok, googling a bit: > Is it possible to steer or otherwise control a typical high-altitude balloon? It can be controlled, but let me be careful about what I mean by that. Balloons go with the wind. And so the only control that a balloon has is: in some b…

https://aerostar.com/products/balloons-airships/thunderhead-...
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