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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Given that it was visible to the naked eye and people were talking about it, it's silly to blame this on the government.
>Given that it was visible to the naked eye But why did this garner so much attention compared to the weather ballons that the US launches on a regular basis?
It's some cold war boogieman horseshit. And it's depressing to watch here on Hacker News, too, any comments that question the beating of those war drums go dead.
Yesterday I heard someone bemoan the supposed lack of patriotism today, and wish we could be 'united' like we were after 9/11. You know, that time we rushed headlong into two useless forever wars that ended hundreds of thousands of human lives and brutally disrupted millions more. The time we saw Sikhs assaulted in the streets for daring to sort of look like Muslims in the eyes of uncultured hicks. And when the entire media apparatus, 'left' and 'right' rallied to pump out war propaganda for years and years.
Disgusting and depressing. And it's where I fear we're headed every time I see China in US headlines anymore.
I had seen reports that the balloon was the length of 3-4 school busses but it appears that was misreported and just repeated. The PAYLOAD was the length of 3-4 school busses. I haven’t been following this much until today/ vaguely aware as an amusing background story. But, has anyone seen high res photos of the balloon or someone doing back of the envelope math on the size of the balloon portion? I ask simply becaus…
In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected
I had seen reports that the balloon was the length of 3-4 school busses but it appears that was misreported and just repeated. The PAYLOAD was the length of 3-4 school busses. I haven’t been following this much until today/ vaguely aware as an amusing background story. But, has anyone seen high res photos of the balloon or someone doing back of the envelope math on the size of the balloon portion? I ask simply becaus…
Multiple people reported that it was visible to naked eye from the ground, it must have been huge for that.
In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected
What did they use to shoot it down?
> An F-22 Raptor fighter from the 1st Fighter Wing at Langley Air Force Base, Virginia, fired one AIM-9X Sidewinder missile at the balloon.
This seems like a worse idea than just collecting the thing and putting it in a faraday cage.
How would you collect it?
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It would have been hilarious if those turned out to be ADS-B receivers launched by plane tracking enthusiasts but AFAIK it's confirmed that those are with Chinese origin and I find it unlikely being benign because in that case the Chinese would have informed the US about these unlike they seek escalation. I also find it fascinating that these balloons were not discovered sooner, reminds me of the stray soviet era mil…
Is there any proof that it wasn't discovered earlier? It's difficult to prove a negative. It could have been discovered earlier but monitored differently and then when it became news, monitored overtly for different reasons. If it isn't an immediate threat that you have to stop, why let an adversary know your capabilities (that you can detect them).
And there were suggestions they might also have been used elsewhere, not just in the US/Canada.
As for what intel they could collect - a payload of that size would be equivalent to an airliner full of ELINT systems, rather like the US Rivet series. So that would include possible decryption of comms, and potentially precision mapping, analysis of traffic patterns, tests of local backdoor access, and so on.
Not all of that is easily done by satellite.
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How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they want to, but exactly how high is probably valuable intelligence). Weather balloons on the other hand fly much higher. This would have been likely (I don’t know) between 60,000 and 120,000 feet. You certainly couldn’t just do a gun run at that altitude. Clippi…
I was actually surprised there wasn't some energy-based laser that could be shot at it, even if from an aircraft, but I agree with your assessment. Which brings up an interesting question: would launching thousands of balloons at the US be a good strategy to completely drain the A2A missile stockpile? It seems like a balloon would also be absurdly cheaper than the missile, not to mention having to get a plane out to…