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US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

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Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#371

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

65a wrote: post #366
MichaelMoser123 wrote: post #291

China seems to be testing the US air defense system, is this a sign that China is getting serious over Taiwan?

I think so; the volume of comments implying that either: 1. The US is just amplifying this to justify a war 2. The balloons are totally civilian 3. Aliens Strike me as a relatively coarse influence campaign, notable mainly for its volume. Not sure if the ramp up is to save face, or part of a larger effort. Similar efforts were notable before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

the Russian military had this strange anti-satellite missile test - last January, right before the war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvdQcDDUV1o

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#372

Post by pohuing »

doodlebugging wrote: post #303

I was curious about part of the description given by the pilots who shot down the object off the coast of Alaska. It was described as being at about 40000' altitude (12192 m) and moving about 40 mph (64 kph) with no visible means of propulsion. To me, that implies that it was drifting in the wind at that altitude since it had no visible means of propulsion. I took a look at Ventusky (ventusky.com) to try to get an id…

Not very fun fact: Japan tried to use the jet stream to bomb America via incendiary balloon. It was largely unsuccessful of course, but still a creative way of bridging the Pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb?wprov=sfla1

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#373

Post by simlevesque »

1over137 wrote: post #358
tempestn wrote: post #339

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the second article you linked: > Should Canada have acted when it flew into Canadian airspace? > The short answer, according to military experts, is no. > "To say that, oh, Canada should have shot this balloon down on its own — that's just silly," said University of Calgary history professor and military historian David Bercuson. > "That just completely ignores the fact that NORAD exists that we're part of it an…

Your first quote, about "should", is not relevant, as I was talking about "could". The second part, about it being 'potentially out of range for those jets' is indeed what I was talking about.

But it makes no sense. You can't view it like that. Canadian fighter jets are part of the same organization as the American fighter jets.

We don't need to own those jets for them to be useful for us. Why would we buy jets for this purpose if the US is already guarding our skies with jets having this capability ?

Why does it matter ?

Also, the articles you linked aren't saying that "the RCAF can't defend their territory". They are stating capabilities. You are twisting facts or you really don't understand what is going on. Canadian medias are not making that mistake you make.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#374

Post by westhom »

butterlesstoast wrote: post #296

Does anyone else think these have been happening a long time but now they make front paper news because of recent activities?

I have a strong hunch the US had known about them for a long time and maybe decided it’s better to let them hang out so they can be studied and secretly test measures against them, versus reveal response patterns and weapons capabilities. But something recently has made that calculus change.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#375

Post by krashidov »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #367
justin66 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone else think these have been happening a long time but now they make front paper news because of recent activities? Possibly. I wouldn't use that information to be overly dismissive of the importance of the news. "Well shit, let's just start shooting them down" is a newsworthy change in a government's policy regardless of what it applies to.

To me this sounds like a Chinese victory. If a couple of (supposedly bad and kinda not working) chinese spy baloons were suffient to suddenly make the US go nuts, and spend a lot of defense budget scrambling fighters around and shooting down UFOs, that was a lot of bang for the buck.

Yes I’m sure they will bankrupt the USA one balloon at a time. Do you really think the objective here is to get us to waste money ?

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#376

Post by toomuchtodo »

37 wrote: post #313
butterlesstoast wrote: post #296

Does anyone else think these have been happening a long time but now they make front paper news because of recent activities?

Which recent activities? House hearings on weaponization? Hersh's article on Nord Stream? Something else?

China has been providing military support to Russia. With a certain lens, you can see the proxy war growing from Russia and Ukraine to Russia-China and Ukraine-NATO.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/04/china-h...

https://www.ft.com/content/3146a413-9aba-4fd4-86a7-671bce0e6...

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#378

Post by Miraste »

justin66 wrote: post #349
lakomen wrote: post #302

I feel like I'm thrown back to the 80s, all this military and fear mongering and propaganda and war.

> I feel like I'm thrown back to the 80s, all this military and fear mongering and propaganda and war. I can't imagine what sort of lens you were using to view the last thirty years, such that those were the peaceful, propaganda-free times and all this shit with balloons is troubling.

The 80s is too far back, probably 2003 was the last peak, but since it became clear Afghanistan and Iraq were disasters the war propaganda complex was muted for years. Remember when Romney said Russia was the US's biggest threat in 2012, and Obama mocked him? Now both parties are back in on the war machine with Ukraine and Taiwan, and the propaganda's running at levels we haven't seen for twenty years.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#379

Post by petre »

JohnBooty wrote: post #308
AlbertCory wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a radar expert, but maybe someone who is can enlighten us? They can detect an incoming missile, so I don't see the problem. Maybe the one today IS a lot smaller; I don't think we're getting a whole lot of details on that. As for the money: definitely. The same would be true of drones.

The USAF (and any functional air force) has lots of flight time budgeted for its pilots: for training, patrols, etc. Active duty pilots must fly X number of hours per month to maintain their fight status. Essentially, they practice like athletes (because they are literally athletes, among other things) So intercepts like these, and even silly stuff like sports event flyovers, come out of their existing budgets. To ac…

If they do that, the USAF/US Army missile defense is going to zap their pesky baloons with lasers or regular ammunition.

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/12/07/us-army-laser-stry...

So far they're offering good sport for the USAF. I'm glad they decided to take action and shoot'em down instead of letting them pass undisturbed through US airspace. This should send a clear message to uncle Xi to keep his lantern festival at home.

Re: US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

#380

Post by justin66 »

ElectricalUnion wrote: post #367
justin66 wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Does anyone else think these have been happening a long time but now they make front paper news because of recent activities? Possibly. I wouldn't use that information to be overly dismissive of the importance of the news. "Well shit, let's just start shooting them down" is a newsworthy change in a government's policy regardless of what it applies to.

To me this sounds like a Chinese victory. If a couple of (supposedly bad and kinda not working) chinese spy baloons were suffient to suddenly make the US go nuts, and spend a lot of defense budget scrambling fighters around and shooting down UFOs, that was a lot of bang for the buck.

> spend a lot of defense budget scrambling fighters around and shooting down UFOs

I doubt if the expenditure has been significant. The US has a lot of air to air missiles, pilots who need flight time, etc., and a lot of that stuff is a sunk cost.

There could potentially be a big increase in cost in the days that follow, for the US and for Canada. It's valuable, fragile human beings who need to do dangerous things like dive for surveillance balloon parts, or go out onto the ice to collect them, but the cost of scrambling some fighters and firing some Sidewinders by itself can't be that high. If scrambling fighters was all there was to it, the costs could probably be rationalized as a valuable training exercise.

I would venture to guess that if you tried to reduce everything to a dollar cost, the cost to the civilian economy of closing a portion of the airspace on the East Coast a few days ago to facilitate the interception of the balloon was higher than the cost of all these military operations to date.

> make the US go nuts

Yes, measured by the whole "make the Americans act crazy" metric, they're doing great. It's like Judo or something: we Americans just need a little push...

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