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US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

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Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#831

Post by culi »

culi wrote: post #629
dendrite9 wrote: post #524

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More than 500 Americans and more than 2000 Japanese died fighting in the Aleutian islands during WW2. https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/battle-of-attu-60-years.htm

Now compare that to the 800+ indigenous Aleutians that were interned during WW2, many of which died in the American concentration -- err, I mean internment -- camps. The Aleutian people were also legal citizens of the US. Edit: some more info. 881 Aleuts were gathered up, endured slave labor, and 118 died from lack of food, warmth or medical care. All extremely preventable as is evidenced by the camp just 30 miles aw…

To be clear, this is the US interning its own citizens not POW captured by Japan

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#832

Post by joenot443 »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #313
Ninjinka wrote: post #4

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?

Why did you think it would be publicized if we had?

Well this one was publicized, I imagine if the same thing happened in the 90s it would have made the news.

But who knows really, maybe the US govt is better at hiding its secrets than I give it credit for.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#833

Post by reaperducer »

butler14 wrote: post #727
reaperducer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What say you older HNers, is this what it was like? The Cold War was a lot scarier than what we have now. In the back of your mind, every day you thought that today could be the day we all get wiped out. I'm not too worried about Russia or China starting anything nuclear these days. Russia invade Scandinavia? Sure. China invade Taiwan? Absolutely. But I'm not worried that they'll nuke someone else from a distance.

You know parts of Scandinavia are protected by the UK, right?

No one is protected from nuclear bombs. That's the point.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#834

Post by iancmceachern »

iancmceachern wrote: post #596
Koshkin wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are perfectly good measurement units. (Also, football field.)

Also, fruit

Downvoted because someone doesn't think that fruit is commonly used as a definition of size? We often say things are the size of a grape, or an apple, or a grapefruit.

Weird thing to downvote folks

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#835

Post by LarryMullins »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #403
LarryMullins wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> So the US built an incredible air superiority fighter to counter a phantom of a jet that never really existed in the way America thought. Are you sure that's what really happened, or did a group of people in the Air Force want an air superiority fighter and use the Mig-25 as the excuse?

By all accounts I have read, the defection of Viktor Belenko with a Mig-25 really did change the way NATO understood the Mig-25.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#836

Post by hinkley »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #676
hinkley wrote: post #484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Microwaves transmit on a frequency nowhere near missile systems and are not modulated in any way resembling a missile fire control system, but cool story. ECM gear in US warplanes can classify a system based off its emissions and people think they're fooled by a microwave oven?

Isn't it the control circuits surrounding the magnetron that do a lot of this work? If you clip off some transistors and wire on a new one, how much can you change the frequency?

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#837

Post by troops_h8r »

jasmer wrote: post #746
troops_h8r wrote: post #610

Earlier quoted context omitted.

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO Naively, one might say "ah but that ended in 1971!" - but let me put it this way: if you spotted a cockroach in your house, you'd be a fool to think that was the only one. Also: the oversight/limits you're protected by could disappear some day, they're imaginary and socially constructed. Sure, you trust our current government to handle these powers responsibly, (though yo…

"the oversight/limits you're protected by could disappear some day, they're imaginary and socially constructed." This is the straw man of all straw mans. You could have a Totalitarian Overlord someday, after all it's all 'socially constructed'. You'd have a million other, worse problems on your hands. That your making that argument and can't provide examples of specific harm despite widespread powers of the state is…

Hey look I'm really trying to engage earnestly here. I did provide specific examples, but they were in the wiki article I linked and you didn't look at them (which is fair, no one likes being tossed a link like that). Let me summarize COINTELPRO:

# Covert & 'illegal' projects by FBI aimed at infiltrating, influencing, disrupting, and discrediting various political organizations

# Existence of the program was discovered after activists stole documents from an FBI office and leaked them to media

# Targets included: antiwar activists, feminist organizations, civil rights activists (ie MLK), environmentalists, animal rights activists, communist party, KKK, American Indian activists, far right groups

# Methods included:

* Breaking into homes, violent beatings, vandalism

* Assassination

* Smear campaigns

* Fabricating evidence, false testimony (leading to wrongful imprisonment and activist intimidation)

* Fabricating letters to discredit/humiliate people or erode their relationships, or cause conflict (leading to death in many cases)

I don't actually need to talk about hypotheticals, the US government has already abused these things to squish people or ideas it didn't like. The point about creeping authoritarianism is a secondary argument. My point is that sometimes it's better for certain tools/institutions not to exist at all.

I think we ought to treat surveillance technologies with the same type of reverence we treat nuclear tech (though maybe not to the same magnitude). Nuclear technology isn't intrinsically a bad thing: the problem is that, combined with human tendencies (tribalism, territorialism, etc), a conflict that previously would've resulted in a mere x deaths could now result in x^y deaths, or even total annihilation.

You agree that creeping authoritarianism is a general problem. Do you think it might just be in the nature of human societies? If so, wouldn't it be prudent to carefully consider what tools and institutions we leave lying around, in case the worst happens? We all accept this with nukes - there was some kind of effort at nuclear disarmament (though not enough). We should do the same for surveillance.

I'm only trying to convince you that we need to be very cautious, skeptical, and distrustful of things like the NSA, because the US govt cannot be trusted with it now, and it might get even worse in the future. What hypothetical evidence would someone have to show you, to change your mind?

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#838

Post by culi »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #711
culi wrote: post #630

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's like pacman where going off one edge teleports you to the opposite edge. A finite land that goes on infinitely

And to better visualize it we could just map it to a sphere...

I think you're on to something here...

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#839

Post by ok_computer »

hinkley wrote: post #493
ok_computer wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Geologists were able to reduce the search area for the origin of these balloons using the mineral composition of sand in the sand bags. The airforce then bombed hydrogen generating facilities nearby the suspected launch sites. Section offense and defense https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

Did we have operatives taking sand samples or was that some over-exuberant librarian who got to say "I told you so" to their bosses?

That's an interesting aspect to this story to me. Maybe it was truly based on intel and the geological survey was a farce to justify the facilities targeting. That wouldn't surprise me, there's a ton of lore around WWII and military activity in general.

Or maybe the US government chooses to fund all areas of research, like mineral surveys, in the hopes they can call on a field of knowledge repository to use in a war machine.

I'd like to believe there is a soil library that staff were doing microscope slide searches late into the night.

Re: US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

#840

Post by anigbrowl »

jffry wrote: post #366
anigbrowl wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

American no abstract good

I could tell you the Curiosity rover is 2.9m × 2.7m × 2.2m and 899kg, but it's far more immediately evocative to say it's about the size and mass of a typical sedan.

To you, perhaps. I really like getting the dimensional information; my dig was at the way news media preemptively goes for the lowest common denominator every time, and frequently omits the accurate information altogether. I think this contributes to innumeracy.
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