I 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.
US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
21–30 of 526 posts
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#22Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#23Surely 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?
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#24Surely 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
#25So 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
#26Surely 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?
Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#27Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada
#28I 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.
So like what, a similar but bigger balloon?