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

abcnews.go.com

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

#131

Post by localplume »

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…

Surveillance satellites are very different to directly flying this equipment into US airspace, including the fact that this equipment could hold paylods other than ISR. Not to mention this comment implies China does not have equivalent spy satellites, which it does. Also the UN is an absolute joke. That article links has China and Russia complaining about the West being aggressors so honestly its kinda BS. Also forgetting about China's [ASAT test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengyun) which has been the worst in history.

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

#132

Post by Kon-Peki »

duxup wrote: post #55
femto wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A "well behaved" balloon should also carry a corner reflector, so it clearly stands out on radar. https://www.overlookhorizon.com/how-to-launch-weather-balloo...

TIL, that's cool.

> Commercially available radar reflectors are frequently found as a sailboat supply item

Wooden and fiberglass boats are fairly invisible to radar, even with metal masts and rigging. If you are ever planning to head out into the ocean and near where you might expect commercial shipping, these are a cheap safety item for making your boat visible.

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

#134

Post by dumbaccount123 »

nyokodo wrote: post #17
kranke155 wrote: post #2

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

You overcome vast interstellar distances with a balloon and then sit there while primitive missiles blow you up?

Its not a balloon though, and for all we could know they put up a fight and the US is keeping it classified.

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

#135

Post by squarefoot »

One missing information about all other objects after the 1st balloon is their nature and speed. Why should they keep this information classified? It's like the objects were a lot more complex than a balloon (propelled drones?), with varying attitude and speed and telling what they were doing when they were detected would reveal what they were doing while still undetected, that is, giving information on military capabilities to the Chinese. Pure speculation on my part of course, still I'm puzzled by all this secrecy.

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

#136

Post by gsatic »

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...

People have forgotten 20 years ago the US intercepted Iraqi aluminium tubes. They are fully capable of detecting what ever they want to imagine. And these days American imagination is purely restricted to what collects Likes and upvotes.

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

#137

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaycities wrote: post #16
erentz wrote: post #3

Couple of interesting twitter threads on this from Tyler (The Drive). He suggests this has been coming/happening for some time. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162414986417840128... Also that we are seeing a lot more now because we have turned down/off the filters on the radars. Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162461466198661120...

> Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. Perhaps we can, but clearly we can expect to find actual UAVs corresponding to these radar signals. If these UAVs that have been shot down were domestic research balloons or some other aircraft exempt from FAA regulation, then we can expect a party to come forward and publicly acknowledge ownership/control of the UAV. However, based on the descriptions of t…

[deleted]

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

#138

Post by oneoff786 »

giantg2 wrote: post #133

Imagine if you launch a balloon for say $10k so that your adversary has to spend $400k on a missile plus $70k x number of planes x hours in flight. And now do it multiple times per week. Seems like a decent strategy.

Until the frequency of it escalates into a damaging economic conflict.

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

#140

Post by moose_man »

blindriver wrote: post #127
moose_man wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe some of the poorer networks have residual 3G equipment, but in general, the US has been cracking down on Huawei for a decade. They don't have a huge presence in the US.
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