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

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

#371

Post by alecfreudenberg »

kiddz wrote: post #363

It seems like the reporting is that two out of three objects are said not to be balloons. I don’t know of any terrestrial technology that can be that large (size of car) aloft for multiple hours/days that hovers. Am I correctly groking the news here?

this is what I'm seeing as well.

pilot selection of aim9 over guns due to difficulty/risk of engagement is concerning. would really like recoverable intel, or at least some more detailed assessment prior to engagement.

I'm assuming this information is just not being released, but it begs for obvious scrutiny.

we want a picture

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

#372

Post by ericmay »

dirtyid wrote: post #358
ericmay wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not favorable because the strategy is flawed by assuming the US hasn’t already or can’t respond. Assuming China continues to engage in activities the US will further escalate to stop the activities and force a war with a favorable hand.

Which assumes US has a favourable hand to escalate since non of the posture improvements for US are due until after 2030s assuming PRC doesn't keep closing gap. Meanwhile these reciprical activities will likely continue because I surmise PRC leadership thinks it's not flawed and proportional to US ISR activities on PRC that has exploded in past few years. I don't see PRC backing down unless US does as well.

> Which assumes US has a favourable hand to escalate

US has the favorable hand

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

#373

Post by c3534l »

anigbrowl wrote: post #114

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...

Why does that sound like BS? That's a fairly standard drone shape.

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

#374

Post by htag »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #294
moose_man wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have their own space station dude. They also have tons of satellites, including LEO satellites. China is not some poor country.

If you don't have a large enough LEO constellation you will have sporadic and predictable coverage. This is especially true if you want global coverage to monitor a military like the USA with a global presence.

1. Wouldn't these balloons provide even more sporadic coverage? They seem to be detectable.

2. These gaps would be measured in minutes, and are zero when you considered the combined coverage of all none-nato countries. Anything that we don't want seen is done under cover.

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

#375

Post by agentwiggles »

oneoff786 wrote: post #151
akmarinov wrote: post #11

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 said the same to a conspiratorially minded friend today ... Like dude, if they're aliens who are capable of finding us and then _coming here_ they're not going to be getting shot down by the Air Force.

Just think of what kind of technological advancement it would take for _us_ to determine there was life on some planet, and then the subsequent advancement we'd need to actually send something there. And then, imagine actually bothering to do so, when you're at the level of technology that it would imply to have the ability.

Why bother?

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

#376

Post by [deleted] »

ALittleLight wrote: post #364
kube-system wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would imagine that if these are small and hard to detect, you may not want everyone to understand the exact extent of your capability to detect them. The first balloon didn’t have this consideration because it could be seen from the ground.

This seems like an argument to not shoot them down. If we can identify and track them then obviously we can determine their speed. If we can fly by with fighter planes then we can get a visual look. I don't see how we'd be giving anything away about our capabilities by sharing these things.

[deleted]

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

#377

Post by c3534l »

yalogin wrote: post #290

Do we have international agreement about what constitutes sovereign space in the sky and what doesn’t? I mean at what height does it make it not okay to shoot down an object another country sent up? Is it at the height of the low orbit satellites? Should it be out of the earth’s gravitational pull? Or can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace?

China killed one of our spy satellites with a ground-based laser. I think a good rule of thumb is if we can shoot it down, its trespassing.

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

#378

Post by mensetmanusman »

kirubakaran wrote: post #346
mensetmanusman wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disagree. I’m here too much and see few flame wars.

That just means the false negative rate of the detector is low. Says nothing about the false positive rate.

How would we read all the banned flame wars though?

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

#379

Post by tomohawk »

haimez wrote: post #243
erentz wrote: post #3

Couple of interesting twitter threads on this from Tyler (The Drive). He suggests this has been coming/happening for some time. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162414986417840128... Also that we are seeing a lot more now because we have turned down/off the filters on the radars. Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162461466198661120...

His article on the matter from 2021 is quiet helpful in understanding what’s (probably) going on here: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...

It seems like the government is way better at disinformation than it is about demonstrating competence. Like most governments in history. For the platinum plated price, we should expect more, though.

> I believe that those in power who snicker about credible reports of strange objects in the sky and stymie research into them, including access to classified data, have become a threat to national security themselves. Their lack of imagination, curiosity, and creativity appears to have built a near-perfect vacuum that our enemies could exploit and likely have exploited to an astonishing degree.

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

#380

Post by Udo »

oneoff786 wrote: post #151
akmarinov wrote: post #11

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.

> 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.

This, and I'd raise the bar even further: if we were to be attacked by any alien civilization, no matter if they have FTL or other Clarke tech or even if they have no special tech at all, we're incredibly f**ed.

It would be trivial to hurl asteroids at us until we're all dead. It would be trivial to engineer deadly pathogens, or to flood our planet with hunter-killer drones, or to roast the Earth with solar mirrors. And those are just the low tech options. We chose not to colonize the solar system, and thus we have no possible way of countering a civilization even if it was on the same developmental level as us.

Maybe we'd be able to mount a counter strike against one alien craft if they're unlucky and don't eradicate us outright. But that's a very big if.

However, I sleep well at night knowing that we have so far not seen anyone else out there, and we definitely have not seen a large space ship entering our system. Assuming they're bound to known physics, we'd definitely pick up their deceleration burn as they approach. If someone wants to eradicate us, a risk-free strategy would probably be to bombard us from outside the solar system.

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