Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 526 posts

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#431

Post by ryan_j_naughton »

rgbrenner wrote: post #38

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…

We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.

One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor.

Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#432

Post by Animats »

ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #431
rgbrenner wrote: post #38

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…

We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred. One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detec…

> We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.

We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package.

It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#433

Post by darthrupert »

65a wrote: post #422
darthrupert wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The confusing part is: why would enemy propaganda be focused on this relatively obscure board?

It's not. There's plenty of that elsewhere as well.

Exactly. So we mostly have useful idiots here.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#434

Post by [deleted] »

exodust wrote: post #385
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/

[deleted]

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#435

Post by [deleted] »

darthrupert wrote: post #418
65a wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

[deleted]

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#436

Post by int0x2e »

doodlebugging wrote: post #350
winddude wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe penetration testing, testing response times. Could even be trying to monitor various network traffic and communications signals in relation to activities around responses. Lots of possibilities, it's hard not to speculate.

This is true. I could certainly see the utility of a platform like this for passive signals intelligence.

Specifically, this could be amazing to map out non-public comms, radar and AA systems. This could provide the sort of information you'd want for a future military conflict. I hope I'm completely wrong about this.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#437

Post by [deleted] »

detrites wrote: post #77

Is there a plausible explanation as to why the US government has not announced objects 2 & 3 are balloons, if they are balloons? They call them "objects", yet must know what they are. They wouldn't randomly missile unknowns. If it's for reasons of secrecy, why announce it at all? The second one was in the middle of nowhere, it could easily have been ignored, or dismissed as a military exercise if anyone had made a fu…

[deleted]

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#438

Post by int0x2e »

dirtyid wrote: post #416
anon7725 wrote: post #412

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 think this is a neat idea in theory, but for any long term value to be gained, a military power would need to practice generating at least medium-scale sorties many times to know if this strategy was really viable, and specifically, since this strategy is so reliant on scale and weather - you would need to also test launching at some scale at your actual target (even with dummy payloads) prior to the real attack (i.e.: what if once you get to a wave that's 10k/100k strong, they start to mess with your weather projections?)

Basically, I think this is a strategy that's effective at scaring the US citizenry, but it is such a bad idea in practice no good adversary would choose this instead of the usual nuclear deterrent.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#440

Post by dawdaway »

bombcar wrote: post #202
belter wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The second object has not been called a balloon by US Air Command. Most interesting are some reports of pilots saying the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes. [1] Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious. On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant pre…

Pilots always claim sensor interference- it covers any mistakes they may have made.

Evidence for this?
Post reply on HN