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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

#311

Post by rapjr9 »

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...

An octagon is a standard shape for a radar reflector, which are frequently attached to balloons to make them more visible to aircraft:

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/china-seen-using-radar...

https://www.overlookhorizon.com/how-to-launch-weather-balloo...

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

#312

Post by tzs »

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.

The hours in flight probably should not count. Those planes and pilots fly a lot of training hours. They could just use some hours that would otherwise be training to go deal with a balloon.

As far as missiles go, I wonder if you even need any weapons to down a balloon? A supersonic pass in its general vicinity would hit it with a shock wave and a lot of turbulence. Would that be enough to damage it sufficiently to down it?

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

#313

Post by s1artibartfast »

bagels wrote: post #305
s1artibartfast wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that basically all of these balloons require missiles due to their altitude, not because of their structure. Edit: looks like I was wrong. The balloons were only 40-60k feet, which is within the range of military aircraft. reply

Do we the modern jets have guns still?

Yes, some do.

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

#314

Post by jtdev »

RajT88 wrote: post #245
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...

Schumer came out and said each of these objects was a balloon of some sort. https://nypost.com/2023/02/12/latest-2-objects-shot-down-by-...

[dead]

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

#315

Post by mensetmanusman »

anigbrowl wrote: post #270
dang wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It set off the flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it. Normally we'd merge the comments into the earlier post, but since this article has more information, I'll merge them hither instead.

tbh, I don't think HN's flamewar detector is much good.

Disagree. I’m here too much and see few flame wars.

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

#316

Post by [deleted] »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #219
elorant wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

My understanding is that basically all of these balloons require missiles due to their altitude, not because of their structure. Edit: looks like I was wrong. The balloons were only 40-60k feet, which is within the range of military aircraft. reply

[deleted]

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

#317

Post by dirtyid »

sph wrote: post #279
dirtyid wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PLA use USN activities in SCS and recon off her shores for training as well but US activities persist because there's mutual intelligence gathering going on, usually favouring the gatherer since the trade is info on one ISR platform vs said ISR platform gathering from host of sources. PLA probably knows alot about US P8s but those P8s learn about PLA navy, air bases, coastal defenses, radars etc. PRC can't simply shu…

Not enough acronyms in your comment. EDIT: judging from your post history, I wonder if you're a ChatGPT bot trained on US military documents. You do love the lingo and unnecessary acronyms.

Im a bot trained on us and chinese military documents, i contain multitudes. But TBH my grammar to lax to be bot. Anyway they're entry level acronyms for anyone following defense.

pla peoples liberation army

usn us navy

scs south china sea

isr intelligence surveillance reconnaissance

p8 recon plane

conus continental united states

ew electronic warfare

tldr you learn more rummaging through someones house than going through their mailbox. You can limit how much the house owner knows about you by limitting what you carry. Previously US mostly rummaged through PRC house and mailbox using very expensive tools. PRC limited to US mailbox but broke into the house using a paperclip. The price of tools matter less than the kind of new info that can be gathered. US also not happy PRC is finally in her house. US family more opinionated and may compel US to reveal she would otherwise not want to reveal to kick chinese home invader out. Chinese s family locked in the basement and don't know any better.

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

#318

Post by stonogo »

oneoff786 wrote: post #151
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 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.

Consider Harry Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken" for a different take.

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

#319

Post by handedness »

philippejara wrote: post #214
handedness wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UN is certainly something more than that, and not literally just a forum. They have an active duty peacekeeping force of approximately 81K people. While that's similar in size to the active duty forces from a nation like a Peru or Chile, the Blue Helmets have had a de facto quasi-blanket immunity when committing war crimes, and have some pretty horrifying history in places like Central Africa. For example: "Consi…

is there no mechanic for them to be prosecuted by the UN itself? as some kind of court-martial or something? Or even their own countries, sounds absolutely insane to expect the judicial system of a country that needs a peacekeeping force to come in to deal with it.

Right, that's the crux of it. All these other comments saying "[actors] subject to [entity] also did bad things" miss the point. Immunity is supposed to only apply to acts performed in their official capacity, but it in practice it has often been applied much more broadly than that.

In fairness to the UN, it's not an easy problem to solve: who's going to volunteer to act as a peacekeeper in a place where if the wrong faction ultimately prevails, you will be subject to the local jurisdiction and all of the corruption that may entail? Unlike military service, UN peacekeepers do not have the same degree of national backing to rely on when things go south.

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

#320

Post by XorNot »

themitigating wrote: post #224
lolc wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a decent strategy until you realize you're just providing target practice on sorties the enemy would fly anyway. Shooting one missile a day is not affecting that budget. And pilots need constant training.

That depends on the cost difference between training and the missiles. May they have to use more fuel maybe the person on duty didn't need training. I'm being picky but still

Flight hours are flight hours is my understanding: all the pilots involved are in the air a certain minimum number of hours per month just to keep their qualifications up.
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