501–510 of 864 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
And it works because almost no one else on earth can gang radar to missile systems. So they can't shoot ours down. And we can shoot theirs down.
In case anyone else was unfamiliar, the usage of "gang" here appears to be the following: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gang#Verb_2
Given the Chinese have been complaining to the UN for the last year about American Low Earth Orbit satellites spying on them (Starshield, Space Development Agency, etc..) this balloon thing is pretty clever.
Also maybe gives China cover/justification to start shooting down these low satellites.
I feel sorry for the pool soul who decided to send up their DIY weather balloon with gopro to get that space shot. Who knows he might even have a video of a F-22 sending a missile over.
How much does a weather baloon cost? ...compared to a F22 flight, a missle + all the logistics? If it's cheap enough, there will probably be youtubers and tiktokers buying them en-masse just "for the lulz".
If this is an actual spy object you also need to factor in the cost of the surveillance. How much money does the military lose due to the sensitive information being lost. Or how much does the military need to spend to regain strategic advantage? That probably costs more than a F22 flight and a missile.
Obviously this depends on the number of objects that one needs to respond to. Cheap surveillance devices can obviously overwhelm this and then you have a war of attrition.
In the example of the article we need to consider the cost of flights being downed (which they down when considering the cost of hitting an object and downing an aircraft. Quite expensive). Flights being canceled and/or delayed is expensive.
I like how the measurement unit seems to be either small cars or school busses.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How much does a weather baloon cost? ...compared to a F22 flight, a missle + all the logistics? If it's cheap enough, there will probably be youtubers and tiktokers buying them en-masse just "for the lulz".
I heard rumors that during the bosnian war they were making fake SAM sites using microwave ovens with the door taken off. Get them to fire an air-to-ground missile at a device you got from the junkyard and an extension cord.
I mean maybe I'm just not up to date on recent history, but when was the last time we shot down anything in our our airspace prior to last week?
Can't find anything remotely recent on a list of shoot-down incidents on Wikipedia (aside from these balloons), but I'd not be surprised if a few smuggling-related drones have been shot down in the last couple decades, depending on what we're counting.
I feel sorry for the pool soul who decided to send up their DIY weather balloon with gopro to get that space shot. Who knows he might even have a video of a F-22 sending a missile over.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Funny, though tbh it seems like there are cheaper ways to cause the US to spend gobs of cash. I even hesitate to mention some ideas that immediately come to mind that would be easier/more efficient to really nail than the Pringles can idea. Plus many of the more prominent base-personnel sightings land quite a bit far from that particular ballpark. Take a look into the Rendlesham Forest incident for example. The probl…
> it seems like there are cheaper ways to cause the US to spend gobs of cash. Yeah, the Mig-25 / F-15 thing comes to mind. Soviets develop a super secret jet, very big, very fast.. it must be very impressive fighter jet! America is spooked so tons of resources are poured into the F-15 to make the absolute best possible air superiority fighter jet they can, to counter this new Soviet threat. Except then it turns out t…
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.
We need to base the number of occurances against our average training flight time/ammo expenditure. Currently we train a hell of a lot more than we actively shoot down targets so the expenditure is practically nothing. Now if a lot more show up that's a different equation.