261–270 of 864 posts
> Officials said the object was far smaller than the previous balloon, did not appear to be maneuverable and was traveling at a much lower altitude. "Not maneuverable" and "previous balloon" so is it fair to assume that it's a balloon as well?
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No, it is just as likely to be a reporter's garbled understanding of an explanation. In mysterious matters wait until you have 2 or 3 datapoints before using a heuristic.
Agreed, but the "previous balloon" part may be unnecessary. User dTal is on the same train of thought as I was regarding the "not maneuverable" part. What other type of object exists which can fly and yet does not have the ability to maneuver?
Airplane on autopilot with dead/sleeping pilot
Control surface problem (e.g. 737 elevator jackscrew excursion scenario)
(Just thinking out loud/adding ideas, not contradicting).
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> The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon. This seems like conjecture. Is there any reliable data on how much said balloon cost?
>This seems like conjecture. It's conjecture for me to presume the sky is blue without looking out of my window, but it's a safe bet on days with good weather. Unless this balloon -- or whatever it was -- was diamond-bedazzled and platinum-plated and filled with alien technology it's a safe bet that it was a fair amount cheaper to produce/launch/maintain than sortieing one of the most expensive and exclusive modern a…
That’s all before bringing up that the person I quoted claimed off-hand that it’s an order of magnitude difference. They’re probably rather similar in cost.
I mean maybe I'm just not up to date on recent history, but when was the last time we shot down anything in our our airspace prior to last week?
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Yeah, a $50k missile to save even a single unoccupied house is a missile that paid for itself. And if it saves a few human lives then it was positively cheap. If bankrupting Israel by forcing them to expend Iron Dome interceptors is Hezbollah's plan, it obviously isn't working.
I wonder how much is going into location technology much like ShotSpotter but for rockets and mortar and all that sort of thing. They may already know the origins of fire but maybe can't fire back at that precise location or something?
One such system operated by Israel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EL/M-2084
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> Welcome to America, we're broke because we spent all our money on guns rather than infrastructure, healthcare and education. This sentiment is completely untrue. Defense is approximately 12% of US government spending, healthcare approximately 24%, education approximately 15%, and social security roughly 20%. Infrastructure is harder to categorize, but the truth is that the US government spends at least 4x more on h…
> the US government spends at least 4x more on healthcare, education and welfare And we’re terrible at all three vs nations that spend fractions less…
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I'd rather my own government spy on me than China. I'd rather Hannibal fucking Lecter be able to see me through my webcam than China.
I would too but Europe sold all its companies to the US and China.
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I don't think it's a fair comparison because a rocket hit could be much more expensive in direct and collateral damage than 50k
True. But they're unguided, almost none of them will cause real damage, but you have no choice but to take all of them out to prevent the losses from a lucky shot - at great expense. It's a great way to drain your enemies funds, great asymmetric warfare. Casualties are just icing on the cake.
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That video helps explain one property one of the UFO videos (the rotation) but doesn't explain the rest. Doesn't explain the Tic Tac videos. It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well. While some of the videos have explanation, I would kindly encourage you to look at this with more curiosity.
> It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well. The lens flare was caused by the camera looking at the ass end of another jet. The radar saw the other jet. For even one of these videos to have a mundane explanation that should have been obvious to the Navy upon investigation, I think that discredits the lot. Either the Navy couldn't figure it out themselves (which seems highly improbable), or for some…
But why?
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…
If so, the previous balloon was a pretty fuckin' stupid way to do that, since letting it wander all over the US was obviously going to be used by political adversaries to attack the administration (justly or unjustly, doesn't matter).