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US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

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

#331

Post by LarryMullins »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #281
V99 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's only so much you can spend on a bag of helium; anything is cheap compared to satellites or stealth long range recon aircraft.

The bag of helium isn’t the expensive part I consider. I’m wondering how much computer hardware “the size of multiple buses” costs. I’m sure much of that is casing but much of it also is not. How much effort went into designing these things? There’s probably a significant price tag on these bags of helium all things considered.

Jurassic Park taught me that heavy things are expensive. It stands to reason that light things must be cheap.

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

#333

Post by O__________O »

As reminder, Pentagon has been testing mass surveillance balloons across the US for long time. Here’s story from back in 2019, but these have been flying around much longer and would not surprise me if China got the idea from the US.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34727444

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

#334

Post by soupfordummies »

pvaldes wrote: post #209

So we finally have our explanation for all the strange attempts to resurrect UFO interest in the last years. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23942463 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970609 You could fly a flashing cow in this times and nobody would stop looking down at their phones.

Could you spell out the "explanation"? I'm not quite picking up whatever subtext you're putting down.

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

#335

Post by khuey »

JohnBooty wrote: post #329
XorNot wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most US missiles can shoot above the operational height of their planes.

Sorry. I should have been clearer with that "it." The Pentagon said the F-22 was flying at 58K feet and the balloon was at 60-65,000 feet. https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32... Of course, that could be a lie too!

There's not really any reason the Pentagon needed to state the F-22 was at 58k if that was actually new information (I haven't investigated the previously admitted service ceiling). They could have just as easily have claimed it was at 50k when it fired.

EDIT: Wikipedia claims the service ceiling of the F-22 is 65k feet anyways.

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

#337

Post by mostlysimilar »

bailoon wrote: post #243
arcticfox wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid at least in the US, I don't think anyone is really interested in covid anymore enough to require any distraction. Maybe that argument makes sense in China.

What? Many want fauci, the pfizer ceo, etc arrested. People want answers to how covid started, the lockdowns, masks, etc. Everyone here is over covid as a pandemic, but that doesn't mean we don't have questions that we want answered.

What? Who are these "many"? Who is "we"? Source?

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

#338

Post by reso »

nostromo wrote: post #204
r3trohack3r wrote: post #95

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…

Those UFOs were lens flares. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs Turns out we like to spend gobs of money even when we're just chasing our shadow.

I agree the videos are thoroughly debunked as being aliens, but there still are credible reports that navy/air force see craft observing them periodically. That doesn't have to be aliens for the reports to be true.

e.g. The video that got debunked as Bokeh (accurately) is still someone on that ship attempting to video a craft that they see nearby them. It's only viewers of the video who get confused and believe that the bokeh effect is what they are supposed to be seeing in the video.

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

#339

Post by mrleinad »

samwillis wrote: post #278
1970-01-01 wrote: post #20

We need a cheaper way to down these spy balloons. The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon. Send over the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler (HELIOS) to protect the west coast.

A "sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs" are a rounding error in the national security budget. The experience and lessons learnt from using it are valuable to all layers of the military and administration, significantly more so than the financial cost. (I'm British and so not a US tax payer, just a spectator, but would argue the same here)

What lessons might shooting some balloon from an F-22 might give you that you don't already know?

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

#340

Post by tastyfreeze »

My first thought was maybe it was something like an unmanned survey drone owned by an oil company or some resident's experimental aircraft. But... The Air Force chases off manned Russian aircraft with some regularity. Maybe Russia decided to go unmanned to see how far they could push into our airspace instead of flying something like a Tupolev Tu-95 like they normally do.
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