U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

Post by SoylentYellow » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 7:07 AM UTC

sgtnoodle wrote: post #742

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.

I think you're being overly generous in attributing competency/capability. Just thinking about the physics of it, robustly jamming an unknown signal of a transmitter 60KM high seems like a rather impossible task. If the air force were somehow broadcasting several megawatts of broad spectrum noise over a populated area, somebody would have noticed. The authorities in charge have no real idea what's going on or what th…

Post by objectivetruth » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 7:09 AM UTC

georgeg23 wrote: post #701

demodifier wrote: post #681

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Post by BuyMyBitcoins » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 7:13 AM UTC

peeters wrote: post #601

pokstad wrote: post #572

Imagine how expensive it was to shoot down this balloon. We sent an expensive F22 which burned a ton of fuel and then shot a very expensive missile at the balloon AND several ships had to clean up several miles of debris?? Send China the check.

Pilots burn a ton of fuel while training. The USAF probably welcomed the opportunity to conduct a novel mission with very little risk.

Post by eterm » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 7:15 AM UTC

ridgeguy wrote: post #714

angry_octet wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

U-2 (TR-1), SR-71, WB-57

Post by garyfirestorm » Sun, Feb 05, 2023, 7:22 AM UTC

darkerside wrote: post #577

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…

Size of a football field, got it