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US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

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171–180 of 864 posts

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#171

There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently. The general premise is this: U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps o…

Making a high altitude balloon highly visible (eg, put lights inside it) and sitting back and waiting is actually a terrific tactic for finding out maximum operational ceiling of interceptors when the number is non-public.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

John Kirby of the National Security Council said he would not call it a balloon, according to NBC News. What was it then?

A drone of some sort, something with an engine if they used a heat seeking missile.

Didn't they use a heat seeking missile on the balloon in Carolina?

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#174

Pot calling kettle black. The US has been sending armed drones into several countries without coordination with local ATC or consent of the local government. Soleimani and a number of Iraqi military officers were taken out by a US drone.

> Soleimani and a number of Iraqi military officers were taken out by a US drone. Good. Right?

Sure, but that was still a violation of sovreign airspace. It would be like having a foreign drone targeting George W.Bush. Both are war criminals, but I'm not sure it suddenly makes violating foreign countries ok.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#175
post #114

I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance. "They shoot down our surveillance balloons, giving us precedent to shoot down their high altitude drone planes or satellites in the future."

This is a very reasonable explanation for the otherwise mysterious question of why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites. It may not be exactly what they have in mind, but I think it's the right way to think about the question - they are engineering scenarios which work to their advantage no matter how the US responds. US shoots them down? Play outrage…

> why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites.

The balloon floated about 100x closer to the surface than a satellite in low-Earth orbit and travelled much slower, making it potentially easier to collect signals/images.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The laser is real. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373672

I've read about those but I'm more referring to the cost comment. In eve it is common to hedge a loss as "ISK Positive" if the value of the ammo that blew you up costed more than your ship, as tallied up on the killmail.

I can't not shake my head reading comments like this.

Seriously, the concept of weighing the cost of an action vs the cost of inaction was not... exactly invented by Eve Online players. The entire point of warfare is to make waging war more expensive to your opponent than to yourself, whether in terms of men, materiel, dollars, or popular support. And the concept of a Pyrrhic victory is likely as old as war itself – even our very term for it derives from a battle fought 2300 years ago!

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#179
post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We spend more on Healthcare and education per capital than almost any other country. Don't let people bullshit you on the amount spent. Now results on dollars spent is a different question with a different answer.

Interesting, didn't know that. I imagine it includes private/public spending as well?

We spend more per capita just in public money than some peer states do to provide universal healthcare, while ours isn't universal.

It makes more sense when you consider how many programs we have—a pretty high percentage of our population is covered by public spending, and—crucially—the ones who are are in some cases among the most expensive to care for.

1) Medicare (old or disabled)

2) Medicaid (poor)

3) Tricare or whatever they call it now, since I think the name changed (active and IIRC retired-with-full-benefits military and their spouses and kids, at least for the active-duty ones, can't recall if that part carries over in retirement)

4) VA (military veterans, including those with short terms of service)

5) Federal employees

6) State employees

7) County employees

8) City employees

9) Cops and firefighters and such, if not covered under any of the above.

10) School district employees (there are lots of these)

Not all of these are cases in which all the spending is covered by public money, but some of them are, and in other cases a great deal of it is. Also I've probably missed some programs.

[EDIT] Oh and that's not counting public money that goes to private companies but ends up paying for healthcare for those companies' employees and families, who are employed expressly to work on those publicly-funded projects—I can see arguments either way for counting that, depends on what you're trying to understand.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#180

Spying happens all the time, even between allies. From what I read/understood about past spying incidents, it's only when someone starts mentioning it to the press that they want the rest of the population to be up an arms about it. Why that might be true: there are probably tons of Chinese spy events (and American spy events on China) that never made it. Was the balloon the first? Come on. If the above hypothesis is…

The thing was visible to the naked eye, and so was its demise. I don’t see any reason to believe there was some agenda at play on the US side. They couldn’t have covered it up if they wanted to.

I dunno, AFAICT the previous 3 or 4 balloons over the US weren't noticed by the general public
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