are Canada’s air forces non existent?
It was shot down in the Yukon, jets from Alaska were likely the closest to the target.
US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
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Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#12Surely this is not the world's slowest declaration of war? Whoever country is sending whatever these artificial objects are, what can they possibly gain from this?
Could be for observing the response of US.
Russia did, and I guess still does, this a lot. Flying their planes constantly in European airspace to see if what the response is and also make it more normal occurrence. If they one day attack it’s harder to tell if this again one of those random times or an actual attack
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#13are Canada’s air forces non existent?
Canada contributes to North American air defence and it's F-18s (to become F-35s) fly norad missions. Americans also contribute, and obviosuly have more fighters. The article says both countries dispatched planes, the americans ended up shooting it down. It was over the Yukon which is very close to Alaska so not surprising both were present. It would have been a bit odd if it was over saskatoon or something
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#14How much if this is just awareness bias, where the media reports commonplace events that were previously ignored?
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#15are Canada’s air forces non existent?
Compare with UK and Ireland, where Ireland indeed has a non existant air force and UK a right to defend.
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#16I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#17Surely this is not the world's slowest declaration of war? Whoever country is sending whatever these artificial objects are, what can they possibly gain from this?
Trolling is cheap
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#18I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.
I don't see how China would willfully continue send these balloons without expecting a symmetrical escalation. Sure, they managed to send a few relatively undetected until the past recent weeks, but continued attempts would surely produce a physical response from NATO states, whether that's sending balloons of their own or overflying Chinese territory with other aircraft, or increased signals intelligence operations.
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#19So the F-22 is now 3-0 against balloons? And people had the audacity to call this plane a "failure"!
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#20How much if this is just awareness bias, where the media reports commonplace events that were previously ignored?
It's much more likely that the US government is wanting to tell the press, leak to the press and get the spin cycle going. There are spy events all the time, it's rare something gets actually reported proportionally.