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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

#351
post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world, and it would be coming down somewhere anyway. Even if it was full of plutonium, there probably is no better place for it to come down.

> It’s over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world, Lake Huron is neither particularly remote (from, say, civilization) nor is it land.

Hah, wrong thread! The other one was!

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

#353

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...

I'd like to think my congresspeople hire aides that have some capacity to identify and name shapes correctly. It's not unreasonable that something with an octagonal cross-section could also be described as cylindrical - from a distance it could be hard to tell, or one description was intentionally a bit vaguer.

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

#354
post #257

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 lot of other comments have covered other aspects, and here's another one. If balloons become commonplace, I'd bet that they don't scramble the latest and greatest to shoot them down. It could probably be done with a turboprop. The F-22 was probably used in the most popular case as a show of force.

Turboprops have a max ceiling of around 30,000 ft, while these types of balloons can easily be more than twice as high. Really not the right mission profile

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

#355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s just the fabric. What about all the equipment you’ll put inside? And for the US to bother to shoot them down my guess is that they’re doing something really funky with what they’re carrying.

If you fly dummies for the purpose of having them shot down, they wouldn't have to carry much. It's probably nothing too expensive or they'd put it on a satellite. If they're flying really expensive stuff at commercial flight levels, that's pretty dumb since it will be shot down.

IF they’re dummies why bother shooting them down?

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

#356
post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

There was an amusing short story called "The Road Not Taken" about that. In it gravity manipulation technology turns out to be really simple. It is something every civilization (except one) discovers early, like before they reach what on Earth would have been medieval technology level, and then all their technological development is focused on their gravity technology. The one civilization that somehow missed gravity…

And how do our machine guns fare against a single ship traveling at the speed of light colliding with the earth?

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

#357

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.

[deleted]

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

#358

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…

It’s not favorable because the strategy is flawed by assuming the US hasn’t already or can’t respond. Assuming China continues to engage in activities the US will further escalate to stop the activities and force a war with a favorable hand.

Which assumes US has a favourable hand to escalate since non of the posture improvements for US are due until after 2030s assuming PRC doesn't keep closing gap. Meanwhile these reciprical activities will likely continue because I surmise PRC leadership thinks it's not flawed and proportional to US ISR activities on PRC that has exploded in past few years. I don't see PRC backing down unless US does as well.

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

#360

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...

I want to read more comments like this, there seems to be a very clear trend to frame this like an alien invasion. It’s unnerving, even if it’s just click bait driving the narrative…
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