421–430 of 526 posts
China seems to be testing the US air defense system, is this a sign that China is getting serious over Taiwan?
I think so; the volume of comments implying that either: 1. The US is just amplifying this to justify a war 2. The balloons are totally civilian 3. Aliens Strike me as a relatively coarse influence campaign, notable mainly for its volume. Not sure if the ramp up is to save face, or part of a larger effort. Similar efforts were notable before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
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I think so; the volume of comments implying that either: 1. The US is just amplifying this to justify a war 2. The balloons are totally civilian 3. Aliens Strike me as a relatively coarse influence campaign, notable mainly for its volume. Not sure if the ramp up is to save face, or part of a larger effort. Similar efforts were notable before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
The confusing part is: why would enemy propaganda be focused on this relatively obscure board?
Surely 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?
I don’t know exactly how fast the air currents at 40,000-60,000 feet will drive a balloon, but I would assume that this most recent balloon was already airborne by the time the previous one was discovered. As long as they don’t launch anymore starting last week, this particular episode should wind down peacefully. As to why use balloons instead of satellites, the most reasonable speculation I’ve seen is that they’re…
I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down. There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to ai…
They are probably going to keep making blunders like this, now that internal leadership (source of many internal blunders in recent years) has been consolidated / stabilized, and they are still aiming for more international power. The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious bl…
Yeah, that’s OUR racket!
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Sending 100,000 armed balloons towards a nuclear-armed adversary doesn’t sound like 10d chess strategic thinking.
US warplanners considers sending 100,000s of bombs on PRC mainland targets in case of TW scenario all the time. Is that 10D thinking? It's basic escalation dynamics of recipricating homeland attacks with home land attacks, the difference is up until recently CONUS has been shielded from both precise and volume of long range strikes from her adversaries, largely due to technologic limitations, enabling US to project p…
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
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The balloon typically suspends hardware that serves the actual function; it was likely that hardware that broke into pieces on the ice.
Right, but what makes it confusing it this is the one they were calling object, so not confirmation of being a balloon or suspending a payload.
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Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices
Weather balloons are tiny, yes, but they aren't tracked by radar anymore. Generally, it's a set of meteorological instruments and a GPS to track the location. It's a bit easier to get that to work, as you no longer need to make sure your radar works, but rather, just that the GPS is working before you let go. That said, payload is substantially smaller than these things (<1 kg for current tech).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices
Weather balloons are tiny, yes, but they aren't tracked by radar anymore. Generally, it's a set of meteorological instruments and a GPS to track the location. It's a bit easier to get that to work, as you no longer need to make sure your radar works, but rather, just that the GPS is working before you let go. That said, payload is substantially smaller than these things (<1 kg for current tech).