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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

#471

Post by cwillu »

sundvor wrote: post #411
JohnBooty wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah. I'm kind of flabbergasted by 99.9% of the comments on this topic, which assume the US is just chasing these things blindly without taking countermeasures. The F-22 and other "stealth" jets can carry radar reflectors to intentionally make themselves EXTREMELY visible on radar. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/82798/how-does-... Why would they carry such a thing? For one, it helps reduce the risk of a…

Tangential, but you may also want to fill the skies with noise when flying a stealth mission. The rationale being that you may be able to hear a cat's claws on floorboards in the middle of the dead night, but you'd never hear it in the middle of a rave party. So pairing F-22s with eg F-15s becomes a valid strategy.

> Tangential, but you may also want to fill the skies with noise when flying a stealth mission.

Obviously simplifying, but that's the essence of what ECM is.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#472

Post by datavirtue »

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…

Right, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading this thread. Just because we shot down a balloon recently everyone on here seems to assume the two new objects are also balloons.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#473

Post by _0w8t »

Animats wrote: post #432
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Now that US has learned that the big ballon was spy one, it would not be an embarrassment but a reasonable assumption that smaller ones could be spy ones as well. So they should be stopped.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#474

Post by _0w8t »

8ytecoder wrote: post #420
themodelplumber wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

It's the classic dilemma that most people who prefer expedient governance don't always understand. When a government is paralysed by too much bureaucracy and corruption, everyone craves for something lean and expedient. Anyone who wants to combat that will want to consolidate power. Once they have successfully consolidated - usually by eliminating anyone in the way irrespective of whether they're someone who speak tr…

This describes the current situation in Russia with Putin surrounded by yes men. But it is not true about China where officials are frequently fired loosing pretty much everything. I.e. if one always say yes in China, the consequences for not delivering are high so one is under the pressure to say no at least sometimes.

There are indications that even in Russia Putin got that and tried to introduce harsher punishments than assigning the failed official to less prestigious positions. But it seems they did too little too late.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#475

Post by peeters »

marstall wrote: post #57
userbinator wrote: post #29

...with Canada's permission; I think that should be said explicitly.

article states that it was on Canada's orders. I didn't know that was a thing, Canadian PM having the power to command US jets. Can anyone who knows more about NORAD weigh in with an ELI5?

It's not so much that he commanded US jets, he gave an order for the object to be shot down by the first able aircraft, and included authorization for that to be US aircraft. I don't anything is implying that the US pilot bypassed US chain of command to do so. Trudeau had obviously been discussing strategy with the US, but it's important for Canadian sovereignty for the order to come from Canada.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#476

Post by pixl97 »

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…

A bunch of incendiary balloons in a dry windy summer on the west coast would be rather messy for a rather large area. We've already had a million+ acres per year burning as it is. Wouldn't be hard to burn 10M+ acres that way. That said, I do believe we'd consider that an outright act of war if it wasn't in a middle of a war.

Of course on all things relate to fire it seems like the US has been about dumb as possible. 99% Invisible podcast episode 'built to burn' goes over this rather well.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#477

Post by voldacar »

Animats wrote: post #432
ryan_j_naughton wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The balloon stopped drifting and lingered around military sites beneath it. That seems to rule out solar observation or atmospheric data collection.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#478

Post by JohnBooty »

petre wrote: post #379
JohnBooty wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The USAF (and any functional air force) has lots of flight time budgeted for its pilots: for training, patrols, etc. Active duty pilots must fly X number of hours per month to maintain their fight status. Essentially, they practice like athletes (because they are literally athletes, among other things) So intercepts like these, and even silly stuff like sports event flyovers, come out of their existing budgets. To ac…

If they do that, the USAF/US Army missile defense is going to zap their pesky baloons with lasers or regular ammunition. https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/12/07/us-army-laser-stry... So far they're offering good sport for the USAF. I'm glad they decided to take action and shoot'em down instead of letting them pass undisturbed through US airspace. This should send a clear message to uncle Xi to keep his lantern fest…

    lasers or regular ammunition.
Bullets (technically, cannon fire) may not work as well as one would hope: https://eurasiantimes.com/1000-rounds-fired-why-canada-could...

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#479

Post by DeLeeuw »

csomar wrote: post #354
lakomen wrote: post #302

I feel like I'm thrown back to the 80s, all this military and fear mongering and propaganda and war.

Both parties seems to be ready for a war. At least, the US seems to want it. Time to prop the propaganda agenda and psychologically prepare the minions.

[flagged]

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#480

Post by tdehnel »

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…

This is a really long winded way of displaying your contempt for your fellow citizens.
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