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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

#451

Post by doodlebugging »

sph wrote: post #399
doodlebugging wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I have been following those reports on The Drive for a long time. It is the most plausible explanation for the events reported by Naval personnel. It still doesn't change the fact that the objects shot down in the last couple of days are probably just balloons or other lighter-than-air crafts. It will be interesting to see how much information the DoD releases.

Also would explain why the majority of these modern sightings is in American airspace.

Exactly. If you are planning challenging your adversary at some future point then it pays to know how they might use their resources to respond and whether those resources are vulnerable to any of your existing assets. China has been making noise about attacking Taiwan and the US has a pact to defend Taiwan. We know that China does not have the capability to carry out this attack right now but there is no way that they would do it without understanding how to defend against US naval and air assets.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#452

Post by CyanBird »

10xDev wrote: post #370
pphysch wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

These articles are making me realise just how much of the HN demographic is Chinese. Either that or simply naive when it comes to international affairs.

> simply naive

By this "naive" but you are ofc referring to all of the ones worried for high altitude jetstream weather balloons spying on them right?

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#453

Post by doodlebugging »

int0x2e wrote: post #436
doodlebugging wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are probably not wrong about this since we know China wants to take Taiwan at some point in the future. It makes sense that they would map out any vulnerabilities of potential adversaries who might be involved in defending Taiwan since the battle for Taiwan will not be easy.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#454

Post by everdrive »

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…

>If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.

But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#455

Post by raldi »

sph wrote: post #402
stevekemp wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a cute bookmark, though this is unfortunate: https://labs.kagi.com/ai/sum?url=file:////etc/passwd

Yikes. Please report it.

They have no apparent link to do so, and neither the webmaster nor security addresses are functional at that domain.

Edit: Found an address that works and reported this.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#456

Post by Tozen »

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.

F-22 pilots are not scrubs that got the job by luck. To be one, means being among the best. If it is being reported accurately, that the F-22 pilot says there was some kind of interference coming from the object, then there likely really is something to it.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#458

Post by SQueeeeeL »

everdrive wrote: post #454
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…

>If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration. But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence…

> If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours."

People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#459

Post by quenix »

jamiek88 wrote: post #169
mmerlin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TikTok is like a spy balloon in your own phone (assuming the 100% clipboard-exfiltration-at-all-times and other data harvesting reports are true). Ironic if people are being spied upon by TikTok whilst watching a spy balloon video.

assuming the 100% clipboard-exfiltration-at-all-times and other data harvesting reports are true Woah! Even on iOS?

Nah. I remember this went viral at a point when the first developer betas of iOS 14 (or was if 13?) came out and IOS started reporting clipboard accesses. For a while during those early betas, it seemed TikTok was accessing the clipboard every few minutes. Apparently it turned out to be innocuous—the app qas checking for TikTok links on the clipboard to show them to the user? Something like that.

Other apps had the same issue (I think Telegram comes to mind?)

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#460

Post by moffkalast »

nostromo wrote: post #409
Julesman wrote: post #393

For anyone who wants a bit of entirely factual context COMPLETELY absent from mainstream reporting. US Military to Use High-Altitude Balloons Against China, Russia: Report https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloo...

The source article says they would be used to detect Chinese and Russian missiles. But that doesn’t mean the US had any plans to just float them over China or Russia. It’s a stretch to present these as equivalent.

It does however suggest a possible explanation that the Chinese are floating them over the US to detect tests of US hypersonics. It does seem like a good reason for it since just about everything else can be seen by spy satellites much more easily.
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