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Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

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Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#121

Post by anigbrowl »

userbinator wrote: post #30
DebtDeflation wrote: post #5

On the one hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a balloon.

The cylindrical description fits what could be hung from a balloon, however.

Or a small dirigible. You can buy those for a few thousand though I have no idea on their flight ceiling etc.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#123

Post by hnthrowaway0315 »

akmarinov wrote: post #11

Have aliens invaded and we just don’t know about it, the government holding them off lowkey? Edit: Now China’s shooting them down! https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says...

Didn't expect to dive into xcom timeline right now...do I need to buy some guns to defend against aliens? I mean at least you can hurt them by guns in the game.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#124

Post by busyant »

llacb47 wrote: post #7
Ancalagon wrote: post #4

Why are there no photos of any of these except the original Chinese balloon?

Well, two were over remote parts of Alaska. And this one just happened like an hour ago, so maybe pics will come out from people on the ground. In any case, the best pics from the first one over Montana were shot with telephoto lenses, so it’s not like anybody with a phone can snap a close up shot

also... may be currently difficult to find them in northern alska / canada. not much daylight.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#125

Post by mach1ne »

janoc wrote: post #96
mach1ne wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strongly suggests against balloons - mainly because they already shot one down and it was no biggie. Aliens are not impossible any more, but drones of some kind remain the vastly most probable option.

Drone at 40000 feet? That's higher than most airliners - that would need be one heck of a drone, especially given where they have shot it down and how far it would have had to fly. Much more likely sounding/meteorological balloons - a lot of those are sent up every day, worldwide, with payloads that are roughly cylindrical in shape. And some of them can traverse huge distances, even across oceans, so such "UFO" doesn…

To my understanding the latest object traversed from Montana to Lake Huron in less than 24 hours. Can any such balloon really travel that fast?

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#126

Post by FleurBouquet »

gleenn wrote: post #76
kranke155 wrote: post #2

Ok so it’s either a massive foreign program or UFOs.

There has been speculation that China is testing our response. It seems unclear what the purpose of hovering over Montana is. Maybe they are actually testing something they'd like to attack or monitor Taiwan with and the way to test in an obfuscated manner is releasing them over the US to get the response without triggering the idea that they are preparing for another, real target.

[dead]

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#127

Post by blindriver »

moose_man wrote: post #63
georgeg23 wrote: post #6

Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space Development Agency: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm More details: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Star…

China could do the same thing if they wanted. That isn't a good excuse to violate national airspace. Maybe they want to intercept cell phone data.

They have Huawei equipment is almost every cell tower installation to do that already.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#128

Post by pixl97 »

r00fus wrote: post #77
lost_tourist wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you know what sets it off? Seems like it wouldn't be from impact as these balloon materials couldn't be comparable to say hitting another plane, right?

These payloads are duds - all you need to do is to pierce the balloon.

A little research on the Canadian Ballon shootdown a number of years back show that isn't exactly the case. A larger balloon was shot with a (20mm I believe) cannon and continued to float a long distance.

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#129

Post by HL33tibCe7 »

anigbrowl wrote: post #114

An unnamed congressional aide claims the object was shaped 'like an octagon.' Sounds like BS, but you'd like to think the Wall Street Journal has some capacity to to identify and filter quality sources. https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...

This is being widely reported, and Rep Bergman also said this

Re: Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

#130

Post by Turing_Machine »

KerrAvon wrote: post #82
Redoubts wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shame they can’t just gun them down with a tucano. This all seems like a large waste of money.

Have you ever seen the budget for the department of defense? Whatever they're doing here is less than the pocket change they lose in the Pentagon seat cushions.

Also, pilots generally need to fire a certain number of missiles every year just to stay in training. At least this saves the additional cost of a drone (the usual target for training missions, I think).
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