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

abcnews.go.com

211–220 of 593 posts

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

#211

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 guess if you're going to suspend a solar panel / sensor array below a balloon you can do worse than an octagon...

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

#212

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 am sorry, if the Aliens are invading we will just have ChatGPT upload a virus to their system while at the same time we fly one on of their space planes with a nuke to take out their mother ship

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

#213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever seen the budget for the department of defense? Whatever they're doing here is less than the pocket change they lose in the Pentagon seat cushions.

Also, pilots generally need to fire a certain number of missiles every year just to stay in training. At least this saves the additional cost of a drone (the usual target for training missions, I think).

No, they don't. Most peacetime pilots would likely fire one missile during their entire careers if they were lucky.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also the UN is an absolute joke UN is literally just a forum for countries to meet and discuss matters. Nothing more nothing less. I have no idea why people expect UN to take action, when UN is explicitly not an organisation for taking any actions.

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.

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

#217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also the UN is an absolute joke UN is literally just a forum for countries to meet and discuss matters. Nothing more nothing less. I have no idea why people expect UN to take action, when UN is explicitly not an organisation for taking any actions.

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…

You're right of course, but in the context of China and the US this doesn't really seem relevant. Being invaded by UN blue helmets isn't something that happens to any member of the UN Security Council, which both China and the US are. When it comes to relations between these two countries, the UN is "just a forum".

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

#218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>Also the UN is an absolute joke UN is literally just a forum for countries to meet and discuss matters. Nothing more nothing less. I have no idea why people expect UN to take action, when UN is explicitly not an organisation for taking any actions.

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…

> The UN is certainly something more than that, and not literally just a forum.

Maybe it depends if you're a UN member with a veto or not. It's possible that having a veto changes how one would perceive and interact with the UN.

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

#219

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.

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

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's happening in Ohio? As non-american I have no idea.

Train derailed with ecological consequences

As per usual, these things are flashy and attention grabbing, but not really relevant in the grand scheme of things. It's microplastics, fertilizer runoff, and CO2 that's killing the world, not train crashes that happen once or twice a decade.
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