861–870 of 1001 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Name one plane that flies at more than 60,000 feet, I'll wait.
The U-2 can fly at 70,000 typical missions are 60-65,000ft. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_U-2
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You do know that ordinary people saw both the balloon and it being shot down. And the US government doesn't need ridiculous tactics like this to shore up support for protecting Taiwan. It is pretty much the only thing that almost every member of Congress supports.
Let’s say it is Chinese, why not silently remove it vs running it through the news wires or telling the public it was a weather balloon? Fake story doesn’t mean the object didn’t exist. Almost every member of Congress supports starting WW3 over Taiwan? I’m not sure that’s true, and if it is it’s a major problem.
b) There is widespread bi-partisan support for defending Taiwan against Chinese aggression. More so than on any other issue.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which football? Real football or American football?
What is real football? I've heard of association football (shortened to soccer by the British), rugby football, Australian rules football, American football and Canadian football but I've never heard of real football.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Which football? Real football or American football?
What is real football? I've heard of association football (shortened to soccer by the British), rugby football, Australian rules football, American football and Canadian football but I've never heard of real football.
It's like saying "the real Albert Einstein", as opposed to good Albert Einstein the baker, who is a local celebrity because of his amazing Apfelstrudel.
I guess it is confusing for Americans to find themselves as the cultural minority in some environment.
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 idea people would still function while the entire east and west coast burns is the same fantasy at massive scale as people who walk around with guns thinking they are going to somehow defeat someone who has planned and already actively shooting at them. I believe great many ICBMs would definitely make it to major cities and that is the end of the world. We've already seen how people handle a pandemic, imagine act…
I used to consult and teach various preparedness and emergency topics, and people always asked me what my favorite "survival manual" was. One Second After is.
I understand it won’t cover a lot given restrictions in flight path, but there are a lot of cities into which the international flights make its way into.
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…
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.
There is no evidence it had any military purpose, and given a balloon of that size has very little control and easily spotted it would be a terrible platform for spying.
It isn't easily spotted at all, and launches are much more visible, but that is irrelevant because we already have non covert observation in the form of satellites.