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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

#171
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.

This may be true, but it's awful hard to get visual confirmation and then shoot down a false positive.

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

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 forge…

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

#173

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.

What’s the service life on such equipment? Sales of new Huawei telecom equip have been banned outright in the US for a couple months. https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-bans-e...

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

#174

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.

> Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily.

Are the electronics in these balloons recovered eventually? Or is it just basically e-waste?

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

#175

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.

A balloon that requires a missile to be brought down has to be really big, like soccer field big. In which case it won’t cost just $10k.

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

#176
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I don't understand the ambiguity from the government and military. They have to have pictures of these things. Show us what they look like. Tell us if they are balloons. Are they under power against the wind? What speed? All these details must be known, it's been days, why aren't they telling us?

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.

It sounded like they are hovering at altitude which is hard to do. And they came from great distance. It would make more sense if they were triangle shaped and flying. Also, there was no balloon, they should be stealthed and not show up on radar.

My suspicion is that the descriptions have been of the payloads. They sound like balloon payloads. Maybe the balloon is low visibility. But doesn't explain why government doesn't mention balloons.

The outside possibility that isn't aliens is anti-gravity. I would strange that anyone who developed anti-gravity would keep secret and use it like this.

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

#177

I sure hope this isn’t a distraction to get us to look up while something goes down under the sea.

Not to be conspiratorial, but if it is an intentional distraction, the balance of probabilities favors the misdirection coming from the US (whether media, politicians, etc). This still feels like a case of seeing more because we've been told to pay attention to it, vs a new phenomenon. Let's see

Yes, the timing with the Chinese weather balloon was no coincidence. Either policy changed or radars were recalibrated.

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

#178

Do we know why they are shot down? How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)?

> Do we know why they are shot down?

Because they are potential hazards and threats.

> How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)?

Any material falling from a high altitude is dangerous, which figures into decisions about where and when to shoot them down. But if someone is floating hazardous payloads without permission and notice over your airspace, you probably don’t want to give them the choice of whether and when they come down....

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

#179

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 need to understand that if you’re being attacked by a FTL capable alien invader, you are so incredibly f**ed that it just does not matter. People don’t write popular sci fi novels about realistic alien invasions because they would be so utterly one sided and brief that it simply wouldn’t make a good story.

I liked Titan A.E.'s take on that. An alien race (the Drej) attack and destroy the Earth and the Moon, while simultaneously attacking evacuation shuttles. Most of humanity is wiped out in mere minutes. No silver lining. No happy ending at this stage. What's left of humanity is slowly dying in drifter colonies scattered around the galaxy. It takes a miracle, the Titan project, for humanity to be given a new hope again.

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

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which has been taken off the front page remarkably quickly, given its large number of votes in a short time. Perhaps there’s some system where downvotes encourage a post to be taken off the front page quicker. But I suspect moderator involvement. Which is misguided if so: people will simply post dupes and continue to upvote them. Thus, the story is still on the front-page, but in a fragmented manner.

Until we get some more information about what these are, it just invites wild speculation. Even just an image of the objects would help, but at the moment we have nothing and there is not much opportunity to provide insightful comments.

But it’s surprising just how much information we do have. What reason did the military have (both US and Canadian) to leak info about the shape of the objects?
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