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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

#451

Post by benatkin »

esperent wrote: post #438
ziftface wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you be more specific? I'm from a country that people would consider part of "The West". However we've never attacked anyone except invaders in entire country's history. I'm sure you could dredge up some connection to the US and get angry with us about it, if you were an Islamic extremist or something. More realistically though, you could find fault with any country with that attitude. Speaking of current geopolit…

This would have to be addressed knowing the details of the country. It's hand-waving to say that a country has never attacked. For instance, Ireland lets attacking aircraft use their facilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_neutrality

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

#452

Post by c3534l »

willis936 wrote: post #414
c3534l wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are you sure they haven't only tested/demonstrated that capability? I haven't heard of an actual satellite warfare incident yet. That would be a very huge deal.

I'm getting superfluous search results because of recent news, but yes, this was a decent news story many years ago. The US basically said "fair enough."

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

#453

Post by seanmcdirmid »

beambot wrote: post #432
georgeg23 wrote: post #6

Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space Development Agency: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm More details: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Star…

Mind you, Google was flying hundreds of high-altitude balloons at one point too via the now-defunct Project Loon: https://x.company/projects/loon/ Rather than being all secretive, it would be just as easy to blame some new upstart company being a little more cavalier than Google.

Google was pretty open about their balloons. As far as I know, no one in China has taken responsibility for the balloon, or at least provided a plausible story behind it. They are leaving everything up to our imagination, which is a lot during an otherwise boring week.

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

#454

Post by ck2 »

alxmng wrote: post #434
ck2 wrote: post #427

So far that's two million dollars in sidewinder missiles (that we know of) How much food and housing, medical care and education could that have provided? They need to find a way to deal with this for $100 a pop or it's going to get stupid.

US military budget is 700 billion annually.

It's several times more than that when you add up all the related divisions that are purposely separated.

ie. Homeland Security is military. Not part of the Pentagon budget.

But 2000 balloons would be a billion dollars if they keep using sidewinders because "they can so why not".

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

#455

Post by [deleted] »

arwineap wrote: post #446
localplume wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surveillance satellites are very different to directly flying this equipment into US airspace, including the fact that this equipment could hold paylods other than ISR. Not to mention this comment implies China does not have equivalent spy satellites, which it does. Also the UN is an absolute joke. That article links has China and Russia complaining about the West being aggressors so honestly its kinda BS. Also forge…

I'm failing to understand how balloons are different from satellites, save for altitude; those sats could be carrying payloads other than ISR as well.

[deleted]

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

#456

Post by godelski »

esperent wrote: post #438
ziftface wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Can you be more specific? I'm from a country that people would consider part of "The West". However we've never attacked anyone except invaders in entire country's history. I'm sure you could dredge up some connection to the US and get angry with us about it, if you were an Islamic extremist or something. More realistically though, you could find fault with any country with that attitude. Speaking of current geopolit…

> So, tell me again about why everything is the fault of "The West", including all the western countries who have never attacked anyone, in your mind?

Not the person you're responding to, but I think it is important to recognize that the US is practically the military of The West (and some more like Japan and Korea), or rather those on the side of democracy in the cold war. Lots of this is because after a bunch of very big wars in Europe (Napoleonic Wars, WWI, WWII) -- and a bunch of smaller wars -- the countries essentially decided that it was best to have smaller militaries and out source it to somewhere that didn't have a long history of border disputes. Helped that the US already had a strong military, were an ocean away, and their bordering neighbors aren't major competitors. On the flip side, the USSR was essentially this same thing but for the communist side (till China started to rise in power). Some military historians suggest that the rise of super powers was a big component for the long peace. There's a lot to this history that's way more complicated than can be put in a singular comment and involves much more of the globe than just Europe (even the US's, Mexico's, and Canada's independences rely and exacerbated on these conflicts). People use this history to write a wide variety of narratives.

Long Peace: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Peace

Borders in Europe from 1000AD to now: https://youtu.be/UY9P0QSxlnI?t=409

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

#457

Post by KarlKemp »

arwineap wrote: post #446
localplume wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Surveillance satellites are very different to directly flying this equipment into US airspace, including the fact that this equipment could hold paylods other than ISR. Not to mention this comment implies China does not have equivalent spy satellites, which it does. Also the UN is an absolute joke. That article links has China and Russia complaining about the West being aggressors so honestly its kinda BS. Also forge…

I'm failing to understand how balloons are different from satellites, save for altitude; those sats could be carrying payloads other than ISR as well.

It’s impossible to operate satellites if you need approval from every single country you might fly over.

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

#458

Post by IAmGraydon »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #308
phpisthebest wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure everyone knows they can take IR photos from the Plane... That is not really a secret. Plus I reject the idea of secrecy from the citizens, government can not be "for the people by the people" if they keep secrets from the people

It’s amazing what you can learn about capabilities from a picture. Apparently German scientists during ww2 used the diameter of the Hiroshima explosion from the newspapers to calculate the mass of uranium involved.

You can’t tell the mass of the uranium from the size of the explosion unless you already know exact details of the bomb design (in which case you would already know the mass of the uranium).

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

#459

Post by nl »

ShredKazoo wrote: post #390
gambiting wrote: post #153

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.

It's interesting to me that this has become such a common internet talking point. A while ago, I finished reading a history of the UN (the one by Stanley Meisler), and I definitely got the impression that the founders of the UN wanted it to be more than just a forum. E.g. here are some passages I hilighted from Chapter 1: "Americans could envision the Soviet Union joining the United States in policing the peace in th…

> It's interesting to me that this has become such a common internet talking point. A while ago, I finished reading a history of the UN (the one by Stanley Meisler), and I definitely got the impression that the founders of the UN wanted it to be more than just a forum.

It's worth thinking about this context when considering the Korean War when it was UNC (UN Command) that was the primary defense force: https://www.unc.mil/History/1950-1953-Korean-War-Active-Conf...

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

#460

Post by dylan604 »

amelius wrote: post #174
DebtDeflation wrote: post #5

On the one hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a balloon.

> Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. Are the electronics in these balloons recovered eventually? Or is it just basically e-waste?

There are websites ([0] as an example) that will help you predict where your balloon will land. When I was involved in a launch, we had a cheap GPS tracker, a couple of GoPros, a battery pack, and an Arduino with a bunch of shields to take readings. I don't remember the specific site we used at the time, but it was pretty damn accurate. It was especially useful in that the original location we wanted to launch from predicted the landing spot would be near the runway of an Air Force base. We moved our launch location based entirely on where this site predicted it would land.

Not only did our balloon have the parachute and radar reflector, we also put blinking lights on it. Since there was no transmitter on it, I had to call 2 different phone numbers to give status updates to report anticipated altitude progress. The first was the regional airport, and the second number was the larger airport 2 hours away that we were in the line of their approach pattern. The first airport would then notify the closer joint air base that they did not feel like we needed to call directly. At one point, we lost contact with our cheap GPS because it reached altitudes beyond what the company anticipated civilians to be doing. ATC informed us they were tracking it, and we were a little off in our altitude estimates within 5000'.

All of that to say, no, it was not e-waste. we got it all back minus the bits of the balloon that exploded into pieces no longer attached.

[0]https://www.stratoflights.com/en/tutorial/weather-balloon-to...

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