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U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

cnbc.com

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Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#51

Post by djmips »

downvotetruth wrote: post #43

Missile was way overkill - your tax dollars at work! It had been observed for days: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... A balloon's surface is not rigid. Clipping it with a wing would have been enough to deflate it as there is minimal to no risk of damaging a metal wing. Let alone the week or so they had to prepare a M61 Vulcan Gatling gun on an F15 that can fly at 65k ft above the 60k ft…

Are you sure it was at an altitude they could safely fly a craft to carry out your plan?

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#52

Post by noodlesUK »

downvotetruth wrote: post #43

Missile was way overkill - your tax dollars at work! It had been observed for days: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... A balloon's surface is not rigid. Clipping it with a wing would have been enough to deflate it as there is minimal to no risk of damaging a metal wing. Let alone the week or so they had to prepare a M61 Vulcan Gatling gun on an F15 that can fly at 65k ft above the 60k ft…

How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they want to, but exactly how high is probably valuable intelligence).

Weather balloons on the other hand fly much higher. This would have been likely (I don’t know) between 60,000 and 120,000 feet. You certainly couldn’t just do a gun run at that altitude. Clipping it with a wing is a great way of killing your pilot, as you’ve basically asked them to crash directly into an unknown object.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#53

Post by kQq9oHeAz6wLLS »

downvotetruth wrote: post #43

Missile was way overkill - your tax dollars at work! It had been observed for days: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... A balloon's surface is not rigid. Clipping it with a wing would have been enough to deflate it as there is minimal to no risk of damaging a metal wing. Let alone the week or so they had to prepare a M61 Vulcan Gatling gun on an F15 that can fly at 65k ft above the 60k ft…

Clipping it with a wing would damage and/or destroy a multi-million dollar fighter, and put the pilot's life in undue danger.

This isn't like the pylons at an air race, which are designed to separate.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#54

Post by anigbrowl »

nocsi wrote: post #47

In previous times, the US would ignore these balloons and quietly take them down. Instead they made a big deal out of it and milked it. Brilliant and opposite of what china expected

Given that it was visible to the naked eye and people were talking about it, it's silly to blame this on the government.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#55

Post by [deleted] »

downvotetruth wrote: post #43

Missile was way overkill - your tax dollars at work! It had been observed for days: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... A balloon's surface is not rigid. Clipping it with a wing would have been enough to deflate it as there is minimal to no risk of damaging a metal wing. Let alone the week or so they had to prepare a M61 Vulcan Gatling gun on an F15 that can fly at 65k ft above the 60k ft…

[deleted]

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#56

Post by treis »

Mountain_Skies wrote: post #32
Kibae wrote: post #12

I wonder what the cost to take down the balloon was for the US (including monitoring it) vs. the cost of the balloon for China. If the ratio is something greater than 10:1, then I would say China got a pretty good ROI on a small investment.

It was probably a much higher ratio than that. Wouldn't be surprised if it was actually 1000:1. On the other hand, the military is constantly in need of new drills to keep everyone's skills sharp. This was a pretty good one for them with no negative outcomes beyond whatever data might have been collected and sent back to China.

The thing is gigantic. It's definitely not cheap and most likely more than the unit cost of a missile.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#57

Post by mrtksn »

tristanj wrote: post #49
mrtksn wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, these were reported by civilians over landlocked states and there's no indication that the balloons were spotted earlier.

>there's no indication that the balloons were spotted earlier No, the balloon was tracked when it entered Alaska on Jan 28 https://abc7news.com/where-the-chinese-surveillance-balloon-...

Thanks!

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#59

Post by mysterydip »

rationalist wrote: post #28
7174n6 wrote: post #14

[flagged]

What information could the balloon collect that satellite or cars on the ground not collect? Air samples?

Someone in another thread said "I think the purpose for sending the balloon was primarily to analyze the radar and RF environment on approach to U.S. airspace.", which would be something dependent on reference point and not able to be done from satellite or cars.

Re: U.S. military shoots down suspected Chinese surveillance balloon

#60

Post by tenpies »

noodlesUK wrote: post #52
downvotetruth wrote: post #43

Missile was way overkill - your tax dollars at work! It had been observed for days: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/chinese-spy-ballo... A balloon's surface is not rigid. Clipping it with a wing would have been enough to deflate it as there is minimal to no risk of damaging a metal wing. Let alone the week or so they had to prepare a M61 Vulcan Gatling gun on an F15 that can fly at 65k ft above the 60k ft…

How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they want to, but exactly how high is probably valuable intelligence). Weather balloons on the other hand fly much higher. This would have been likely (I don’t know) between 60,000 and 120,000 feet. You certainly couldn’t just do a gun run at that altitude. Clippi…

I was actually surprised there wasn't some energy-based laser that could be shot at it, even if from an aircraft, but I agree with your assessment.

Which brings up an interesting question: would launching thousands of balloons at the US be a good strategy to completely drain the A2A missile stockpile? It seems like a balloon would also be absurdly cheaper than the missile, not to mention having to get a plane out to intercept the balloon, therefore this is likely to be an incredibly effective war strategy.

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