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US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

bbc.com

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Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#381

Post by ElectricalUnion »

krashidov wrote: post #375
ElectricalUnion wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me this sounds like a Chinese victory. If a couple of (supposedly bad and kinda not working) chinese spy baloons were suffient to suddenly make the US go nuts, and spend a lot of defense budget scrambling fighters around and shooting down UFOs, that was a lot of bang for the buck.

Yes I’m sure they will bankrupt the USA one balloon at a time. Do you really think the objective here is to get us to waste money ?

No, it's to find out how little/much/slow/fast you need to be before the USA detects it and starts launching interceptors.

Or, if the USA just shots down everything once it enters its territory, future dirt cheap, "don't even have to be smart" bio/chemical weapons platform.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#382

Post by MonkeyMalarky »

idlewords wrote: post #363
Invictus0 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI: this article has nearly 10k words and a 35 min estimated reading time.

This may be the funniest warning I've ever seen on this site. Thank you for waving us off this dangerously substantive article.

For those of you us in the eastern time zones, it's a fair warning at this time of night. Better to save the link for tomorrow :)

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#383

Post by justin66 »

Miraste wrote: post #378
justin66 wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I feel like I'm thrown back to the 80s, all this military and fear mongering and propaganda and war. I can't imagine what sort of lens you were using to view the last thirty years, such that those were the peaceful, propaganda-free times and all this shit with balloons is troubling.

The 80s is too far back, probably 2003 was the last peak, but since it became clear Afghanistan and Iraq were disasters the war propaganda complex was muted for years. Remember when Romney said Russia was the US's biggest threat in 2012, and Obama mocked him? Now both parties are back in on the war machine with Ukraine and Taiwan, and the propaganda's running at levels we haven't seen for twenty years.

> since it became clear Afghanistan and Iraq were disasters the war propaganda complex was muted for years

If it weren't for propaganda, we would have found the will to exit those wars well over a decade ago.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#384

Post by allisdust »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #348
37 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which recent activities? House hearings on weaponization? Hersh's article on Nord Stream? Something else?

The demonization of China is politically advantageous. Publicizing incursions like this assists in the demonization (to be clear, it is think it’s warranted — the amount is espionage perpetrated by China on the US, corporate and cyber and governmental, Is insane)

Forced labour camps, genocide, authoritarian, cyber warfare against other nations, salami slicing neighbours, purposefully violating air space over other nations. I don't think China needs any demonisation. This is just showing its reality.

If anything both sides of the political spectrum doesn't want to get into showing China as the demon because unlike the previous cold war, they are not sure if they can win it or even force a draw. China is too powerful as it stands and getting more powerful as years pass while the current superpower is busy fighting it self with culture wars.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#385

Post by exodust »

mellosouls wrote: post #368

Grossly editorialised (unless the original article title has changed). "UFO" has a particular cultural meaning, and is not used in the article title: U.S. fighter jet shoots down unidentified cylindrical object over Canada The article places this firmly in the context of the recent shenanigans with China and makes no suggestion that we are being invaded by Martians.

The URL has "UFO" in it, so probably the title was updated.

reuters.com/world/us/us-still-gives-no-details-about-alaska-ufo-new-object-seen-over-canada-2023-02-11/

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#386

Post by zrobotics »

dylan604 wrote: post #306
crayboff wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect finding a small balloon in the mind-boggling huge space that is American airspace is, can be surprisingly challenging. My understanding is that these UAFs are much smaller than that first Chinese balloon last week. It probably also costs a lot more money to shoot down a balloon than it costs China to put a balloon in the air.

Then stop using expensive missiles to pop a balloon. Are we so scared of a balloon to get into gun range? A short burst of 20mm would be pretty cheap compared to an AIM-9

I was wondering if modern planes even still had ballistic weapons, since engagement range for missiles is measured in miles. For anyone else wondering, according to [0] they still have guns, since most missiles have a minimum engagement range so there is still a need for short range weapons.

[0] https://planenerd.com/why-fighter-jets-still-have-guns/

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#387

Post by yellowapple »

MonkeyMalarky wrote: post #382
idlewords wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This may be the funniest warning I've ever seen on this site. Thank you for waving us off this dangerously substantive article.

For those of you us in the eastern time zones, it's a fair warning at this time of night. Better to save the link for tomorrow :)

Hell, even for those of us in the western time zones.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#388

Post by raldi »

Invictus0 wrote: post #304
ErikCorry wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That seems like the best explanation. See https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones... for a fleshed out version of that argument. I think what changed is that the US decided to stop ignoring the "UFO"s. The Ukraine war has shown how important drones are and it's obvious that drones and balloons will play a huge role in any Taiwanese war.

FYI: this article has nearly 10k words and a 35 min estimated reading time.

AI summary:

Adversary drones are spying on the U.S. and the Pentagon is acting like they are UFOs. This gross inaction and the stigma surrounding unexplained aerial phenomena has led to a massive failure in U.S. military intelligence. It is likely that a wide array of explanations exist for the UFO mystery, and America's prevailing cultural issues and the general stigma surrounding UFOs was successfully targeted and leveraged by our adversaries. The U.S. Navy has a program of record for a Netted Emulation of Multi-Element Signature against Integrated Sensors, or NEMESIS, which is a quantum leap in electronic warfare. There have been reports of large drone swarms spotted over the U.S. and its outlying territories, especially near strategic installations. The U.S. Navy's top uniformed officer says the craft involved in the 2019 incidents off of Southern California remain unidentified. It is possible that the Pentagon's investigations into these matters is a lack of real expertise to properly evaluate the evidence. Step one is to admit that we have a major drone problem and fund a real intelligence fusion center to work these cases.

Courtesy of this bookmarklet:

    javascript:location.href='https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=%27+encodeURIComponent(location.href)

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#390

Post by UberFly »

pohuing wrote: post #372
doodlebugging wrote: post #303

I was curious about part of the description given by the pilots who shot down the object off the coast of Alaska. It was described as being at about 40000' altitude (12192 m) and moving about 40 mph (64 kph) with no visible means of propulsion. To me, that implies that it was drifting in the wind at that altitude since it had no visible means of propulsion. I took a look at Ventusky (ventusky.com) to try to get an id…

Not very fun fact: Japan tried to use the jet stream to bomb America via incendiary balloon. It was largely unsuccessful of course, but still a creative way of bridging the Pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb?wprov=sfla1

Sadly only success was killing a church group out on a Sunday school picnic.
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