US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-shoots-down-unknown-flying-object-175f9078d1df36e392b2956ba771001e

by Nrbelex • 3 years ago

400 782 3 years ago

h2odragon2• 3 years ago

My pull quotes:

The Pentagon downed an unidentified object over Alaska on Friday at the order of President Biden, according to U.S. officials.
Mr. Kirby said the object was traveling at 40,000 feet. He said officials were describing it as an object because that was the best description they had of it.
A recovery effort on the debris will be made, Mr. Kirby said. He said the object was “roughly the size of a small car” — much smaller than the spy balloon that had a payload the size of multiple buses.

themodelplumber5• 3 years ago

I wonder if it's a drone from an HK cargo ship like the ones that flew onto / around US Navy ships in the past.

- Drones can be the size of small cars

- 40K feet is not a problem for a drone

In such a case it'd be more about the class / properties of the drone...

ksherlock2• 3 years ago

40,000 feet is within class A airspace and flying into Alaska means crossing the ADIZ so it has no business being there whatever it is.

Ninjinka2• 3 years ago

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?

Rebelgecko4• 3 years ago

WW2, I think

yamtaddle6• 3 years ago

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.

sandworm1018• 3 years ago

Shoot down a smuggling drone? Better to track it and arrest all involved than possibly drop drugs/guns onto some random neighborhood.

TedDoesntTalk• 3 years ago

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

jacobsenscott3• 3 years ago

Because blowing shit up is awesome, and gets votes.

joenot4432• 3 years ago

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.

irrational2• 3 years ago

Maybe Japanese fire balloons during WWII?

"One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” directed at the mainland United States. Starting in 1944, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons, each loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives. Amazingly, these unmanned balloons originated from over 5,000 miles away in the Japanese home islands. After being launched, the specially designed hydrogen balloons would ascend to an altitude of 30,000 feet and ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. Their bombs were triggered to drop after the three-day journey was complete—hopefully over a city or wooded region that would catch fire.

Nearly 350 of the bombs actually made it across the Pacific, and several were intercepted or shot down by the U.S. military. From 1944 to 1945, balloon bombs were spotted in more than 15 states—some as far east as Michigan and Iowa. The only fatalities came from a single incident in Oregon, where a pregnant woman and five children were killed in an explosion after coming across one of the downed balloons. Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil during World War II."

https://www.history.com/news/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-wo...

sandworm1018• 3 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estevan_Point_lighthouse

Much like this story, many Japanese planners did not appreciate the vast size of the American west. A hundred random firebombs were basically irrelevant compared to the many thousands of yearly lighting strikes that also regularly cause fires. Who knows how many Japanese balloons are out there hanging from some tree undiscovered.

ok_computer2• 3 years ago

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

dendrite93• 3 years ago

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

wizofaus3• 3 years ago

Hawaii was still an "incorporated territory" of the US though, surely it would have qualified as "US soil"? I gather at least some deaths did occur in Honolulu itself too.

dingaling• 3 years ago

On the contrary there was the infamous Battle of Palmdale in 1956 wherein the USAF failed to shoot-down a rogue drone

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-sep-11-me-then1...

jaclaz2• 3 years ago

Thank you, didm't know about this episode.

The site of the people that found the remains of the plane is online and has a nice old-times look (with frames):

https://www.thexhunters.com/

https://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/f6f-5k_accident.html

https://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/f6f-5k_hunt.html

xqcgrek2• 3 years ago

Imagine if this is how first contact is made.

h2odragon2• 3 years ago

Some think it happened in Roswell NM. in 1947.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roswell_incident

I've got a fanciful notion that the "foo fighters" are living creatures. The Air Force supposedly gave someone some of the excretions to examine and they found "unearthly isotopes" or some such.

I figure something that lives, say, a couple hundred miles down inside a planet might only even notice the surface phenomenon that are the most dense, energetic, and anomalous (certainly at first), and pay more attention to those things. How might such beings interact with us and could we discern their efforts as such if we wanted?

sys32768• 3 years ago

They didn't let this one hang for a few days to finish its torrent seeding?

snerbles2• 3 years ago

Their private tracker ratio is at an acceptable level now.

Ninjinka2• 3 years ago

Briefing happening now: https://www.c-span.org/video/?525994-1/pentagon-briefs-downi...

sschueller3• 3 years ago

Would be hilarious if they shutdown some high school project with a Go-Pro attached to it.

dtx1• 3 years ago

Even more hilarious if it's a UAP.

unsupp0rted2• 3 years ago

The object, which the U.S. learned about on Thursday evening, was described as "roughly the size of a small car," Kirby said.

flangola72• 3 years ago

A high school project could definitely launch a car sized balloon.

SketchySeaBeast2• 3 years ago

That would probably make it some of the best non-armed forces footage of an F-22 in action, wouldn't it?

kylehotchkiss3• 3 years ago

In northern Alaska? How are they getting this level of helium in the region as consumers?

lamontcg4• 3 years ago

Buy a K cylinder from Airgas in Fairbanks and ship it to wherever you are.

moose_man6• 3 years ago

Probably not a great sign of things to come.

bmitc3• 3 years ago

Probably didn't help that an Air Force general was openly and loudly proclaiming that war is inevitable. I looked up some speeches of his, and he is off the rails, like the German general in All Quiet Along the Western Front.

throwbadubadu• 3 years ago

Would be great if just more people had read this great book nowadays (and please, not watch that super bad recent movie that doesn't deserve to bear the same title (: ).

And cannot belief statesman proclaiming that now everywhere :( War should always be seen as evitable, at least that belief needs to hold up til the last second.. and even further. But who am I...

moose_man6• 3 years ago

I mean, it's nothing compared to the internal speeches that China gives its troops. Heck it's nothing compared to the speeches Xi gives internally to troops. Chinese troops are currently training on their missile corp on models of US aircraft carriers.

Edit: Chinese propaganda video of attack on Guam - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBOho1AOKYY

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/36598/chinese-air-forc...

https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-builds-mockups-us-...

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

Do you have a link or name of the guy? I haven't heard about this

nostromo3• 3 years ago

That is entirely up to China and what it decides to do with regards to Taiwan.

Xi has made it very clear he would like to invade Taiwan, and soon. If Ukraine was going well for Russia, he may have already invaded.

HillRat• 3 years ago

Yeah, he’s … a little excitable. Dude runs Air Mobility Command, he could stand to remember he’s not running ACC, he’s FedEx for things what go bang.

krapp5• 3 years ago

Warmonger tries to sell a war. Film at eleven.

MonkeyMalarky• 3 years ago

I'd say it feels like a return to the era of cold war tensions but I wouldn't know, I was born around when the Berlin Wall fell. What say you older HNers, is this what it was like?

moose_man6• 3 years ago

The Cold War had expectations, guardrails, rules. Those don't exist in the current setup. China didn't even pick up the emergency hotline in the first balloon crisis.

reaperducer2• 3 years ago

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.

mikewarot3• 3 years ago

It feels to me like things are just starting to spool up. Unlike during my youth, I think the playing field is much more tilted in the United States favor.

I had lots of nightmares about seeing a bright orange flash in the window back in my youth. I've had a few recently.

If they decide to take out the Steel Works in Gary, I'll be toast. If not, fallout is something that can be avoided by staying inside, away from exterior walls and the roof, and waiting it out for at least a week.

I've had Potassium Iodide in stock for my child's use since the Fukushima meltdown... I bought a new bottle when Ukraine kicked off.

snozolli• 3 years ago

I would say the tensions seem similar, but the consequences seem different.

In the 80s, it felt like you might find yourself vaporized or living in a nuclear apocalypse hellscape at any moment, likely due to a misunderstanding or malfunction.

These days it seems like we're more likely to just be in a long-term adversarial position with likely proxy wars.

I feel like the WWII and Cold War eras were more about existence, whereas these days the aggression is more about how much more bounty do we want. Look at the Chinese land grabs around disputed islands versus Japan. They don't need them, but it would be nice to have them.

The whole thing just seems like a bunch of unnecessary, ego-driven B.S. on every side.

dctoedt• 3 years ago

What say you older HNers, is this what it was like?

I'm old enough to remember the Cuban Missile Crisis — to borrow from Dustin Hoffman's character in the movie Wag the Dog, "This? THIS is NOTH-ing!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jR4gld-nUA

csa2• 3 years ago

I agree with dctoedt.

This is nothing.

busyant• 3 years ago

I was a teenager in the 80s. It’s hard to say how similar these events are, at least to me.

Information and and disinformation travels so much faster and so much more thoroughly these days that it’s hard to compare.

For example, in the 80s, I couldn’t even tell you what Russia looked like through photographs. there was just very little available information.

There was a big gray outline of the Soviet union on my high school history class wall, and that was about it. I had seen a few pictures of the Kremlin …the onion domes and what not. And maybe I had seen one photo of Brezhnev shown every so often on the news, but that was about it.

It’s amazing how much things have changed as far as the wealth of information is concerned.

So I’m not really answering your question, but the sheer magnitude of the lack of information … let’s say about four decades ago… is something that I really don’t see pointed out much so I thought you might find it interesting.

So in the 80s, the Soviet union was worrisome for the most part. But mostly it was just the blackest of black boxes to me.

Edits: sorry… numerous typos…typing on treadmill.

throwaway4good2• 3 years ago

I like how the measurement unit seems to be either small cars or school busses.

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

American no abstract good

jffry• 3 years ago

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.

tedunangst2• 3 years ago

It incorporates error bars. A mini is a small car, but maybe a mustang is a small car, too.

mynameishere• 3 years ago

"The US announced today that it destroyed a balloon the size of a traditional Islamic wedding feast."

ddoolin• 3 years ago

Something they should be very familiar with the size of, at this point.

Dalewyn• 3 years ago

"Japan announced today that it sighted a UFO five Tokyo Domes large."

nemo44x2• 3 years ago

Dark but rather brilliant.

amelius3• 3 years ago

"The US announced today that it destroyed a balloon the size of Putin's oval meeting table"

jacooper• 3 years ago

*Gulf feast, there isn't really a fixed feast in islam

yosito3• 3 years ago

Americans will measure with anything except the metric system.

backtoyoujim• 3 years ago

the legalized cannabis industry is doing all it can, man.

arbuge• 3 years ago

For sure...

https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36593/20220314/asteroi...

Koshkin2• 3 years ago

1/40,000,000 of the Earth’s circumference does not make sense to me, but the foot does. (As does the school bus.)

13of402• 3 years ago

Funny story: I was in Spain several years ago and was talking to a guy I met about sailboats. I mentioned I had a boat, and he asked how big. I thought for a second and said "7 meters" so as not to be an ignorant American. He thought for a second and said "huh, 21 feet".

sockaddr• 3 years ago

I read somewhere that it was traveling at about three football fields per Abraham Lincoln fart.

jjtheblunt• 3 years ago

it's ironic because as a little kid in the US in the late 1970s we all learned the metric system, but we see the "imperial" system everywhere still....like the conversion just never got around to happening. it's confusing.

teawrecks• 3 years ago

Won't touch the metric system with a 10ft pole.

mulmen10• 3 years ago

This is such a tired cliche. The actual history is far more interesting. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_the_United_St...

The US was an original signatory of the Meter Convention. Our customary units have been based on metric units since 1893. Our food packaging features metric units. Our scientists use metric units. Our school children learn the metric system. Our military uses the metric system. Our cars are built with metric fasteners.

Changing informal habits takes decades and has questionable benefit. Canada tried it in the 70s and is going to take another generation at least to fully convert for informal use.

doodlebugging3• 3 years ago

How many Olympic-sized swimming pools is that?

timeon2• 3 years ago

For better picture, Olympic-sized swimming pool is 50 meters long.

Koshkin2• 3 years ago

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

iancmceachern2• 3 years ago

Also, fruit

ncr100• 3 years ago

If that unit causes you any pain, @throwaway4good, here is a translator perhaps to more native units:

https://www.converttobananas.com/

1 car == about 26 bananas.

Improvement?

wizofaus3• 3 years ago

If that were a volume conversion, bananas must've grown a whole lot bigger in the US since I was last there.

sph3• 3 years ago

Which car? Or you mean a ISO Standard Reference Car?

thinking001001• 3 years ago

I dread to think of all the state-funded technology companies with backdoor-ed firmware/software coming out of China

sschueller3• 3 years ago

I don't see much difference between Chinese routers having back-doors and what Cisco has peddled to its customers all these years either willfully or just incompetence.

horsawlarway2• 3 years ago

Yeah... I would say a large part of why I'm skeptical of Chinese made computing devices is because I understand what the US has been doing with ours over the last 50 years.

That said... from a national security perspective - it is still the right call to be wary of devices that are likely compromised by another nation. You should just be assuming that if you didn't make them locally (as in under your own territorial control) they are compromised during production. For everyone. Everyone should be acting with that as the default.

kazmerb• 3 years ago

I'd rather my own government spy on me than China. I'd rather Hannibal fucking Lecter be able to see me through my webcam than China.

mikrotikker4• 3 years ago

The difference is huawei routers in the west are gathering intelligence on and setting up network to disable, western infrastructure.

But Cisco in China is gathering intelligence on and setting up network to disable, chinese infrastructure.

I live in the west and happen to like our infrastructure. So while I don't think Cisco should be doing what its doing, I would completely ban Chinese gear from the infrastructure be it backbone or consumer level.

refurb3• 3 years ago

The difference is US companies and the government isnt actively hostile towards in the way China is.

Same way if i found out the UK was spying on me as an American. I wouldnt be happy, but its not the threat China is.

billyhoffman• 3 years ago

While RSA isn't a state-funded technology company, they did accept a $10M payment from the NSA to make their BSafe security product default to use the DUAL_EC_DRBG cryptographically secure pseudorandom number generator. Which the NSA had designed and backdoored...

https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-mill...

XorNot3• 3 years ago

Are the primary sources on this story from the Snowden leaks available somewhere? Even the article here points to another Reuters article which isn't available any more, and I've never been able to find out which documents people were referencing about this?

throwingrocks• 3 years ago

I imagine this comment is relevant somehow.

sph3• 3 years ago

I still remember an article on here of a person trying to get access to their Huawei router with a JTAG or something, and once inside after looking around they said en passant "weird, there is a user here with a preconfigured ssh authorized_keys file. LOL must be a backdoor, am I right?" and just moved on with no further mention of this, as did the HN comments. I still think about it.

EDIT: found my astonished comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22694150

larrywright2• 3 years ago

The F-22 has gone from zero kills to two in under a week.

themodelplumber5• 3 years ago

Indeed. If you charted those it'd be likely show as a breakout event vs. relevant moving averages at this point.

So from that POV, one may start to think about a quick buildup of momentum in the general direction of F-22s shooting things down, or air combat, or just combat, etc.

Not so much to predict the future, as to ideate and prepare frames of mind for potential changes in circumstance.

adversaryIdiot• 3 years ago

Technical analysis is astrology!

harles• 3 years ago

Extrapolating from here, expect 2^52 objects shot down by F22s this time next year.

tshaddox• 3 years ago

Now even with the number of fatalities in the F-22's flight history, I believe.

larrywright2• 3 years ago

And now three.

ALittleLight• 3 years ago

Why are they calling it an object. It seems like a huge deal what kind of "object" this was. Was it another balloon? Missile? Private plane? How could they not know, and if they do know, why would they not say?

Edit - this video isn't loading for me, but I've just watched what I assume is the same briefing on Twitter. They have a pilot assessment that the object was unmanned - but they can't tell us balloon, missile, drone? I'm not understanding how a pilot could see the thing, communicate ("I'm looking at an unmanned object, should I shoot?") and somehow not convey what the object was. I appreciate the speed of this briefing, but I would prefer they wait at least until they know what they are saying. In the briefing below the guy says NORAD has been tracking it for a day - and they still don't know what it is? I guess that rules out missile, at least.

LinuxBender2• 3 years ago

"Object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight" and "Object the size of a small car" [1] according to General Ryder

No details beyond this yet due to classification restrictions.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=544hoprTeTw

sammalloy• 3 years ago

John Kirby of the National Security Council said he would not call it a balloon, according to NBC News. What was it then?

mancerayder4• 3 years ago

Spying happens all the time, even between allies. From what I read/understood about past spying incidents, it's only when someone starts mentioning it to the press that they want the rest of the population to be up an arms about it. Why that might be true: there are probably tons of Chinese spy events (and American spy events on China) that never made it. Was the balloon the first? Come on.

If the above hypothesis is true, it means the U.S. is trying to rile up / ready / etc. the population to view China as a threat.

Kind of ironic given the intense scrutiny and fears prior to Trump getting elected that he would trigger a depression or war because of his isolationist attitude about China specifically.

But more importantly what does that mean now? Will it justify laws passed to further isolate China?

justinclift2• 3 years ago

If the above hypothesis is true, it means ...

In your comment, you say "it means the US is trying to rile up / ready /etc" the population. That's not the only plausible (or even most likely) scenario though.

The publishing of this info could indeed be for that purpose. Or it could be for something else, such as to influence the currently-ongoing negotiations with other players (eg European) at a critical time.

Or it could be for some other purpose again, that's neither of those. :)

mancerayder4• 3 years ago

You mean influence the population of European allies or their leaders?

The hypothesis above is roughly connected to this wider idea about international relations that the 'big ideas' happen behind closed doors, and there is a second 'public' face. Here the balloon type incidents leak to the public strategically while other incidents go unmentioned except in private or in some esoteric place.

If true, why would the US press and mainstream media be headlining it when of course it'll enrage the population. It was a choice to publicize it and a choice for our political parties to point fingers at each other over it, as part of the typical spin cycle.

bspammer• 3 years ago

The thing was visible to the naked eye, and so was its demise. I don’t see any reason to believe there was some agenda at play on the US side. They couldn’t have covered it up if they wanted to.

Rebelgecko4• 3 years ago

I dunno, AFAICT the previous 3 or 4 balloons over the US weren't noticed by the general public

mancerayder4• 3 years ago

Really? It's all over the press. I didn't happen to notice the balloon floating in the sky. We don't all have one collective eye. The press and politicians platformed the story.

yamtaddle6• 3 years ago

If the above hypothesis is true, it means the U.S. is trying to rile up / ready / etc. the population to view China as a threat.

If so, the previous balloon was a pretty fuckin' stupid way to do that, since letting it wander all over the US was obviously going to be used by political adversaries to attack the administration (justly or unjustly, doesn't matter).

krapp5• 3 years ago

Political adversaries will always attack the administration, that's par for the course.

But regardless of what the actual facts on the ground (er, in the sky) might be, or what party A says about party B, the media and online commentariat are framing them within a narrative of aggressive threats from China, and of war being imminent, possibly even necessary. Our consent is clearly being manufactured for something.

1970-01-012• 3 years ago

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.

jabroni_salad3• 3 years ago

You must be an eve online player.

1970-01-012• 3 years ago

The laser is real. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34373672

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF6• 3 years ago

The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon.

This seems like conjecture. Is there any reliable data on how much said balloon cost?

serf• 3 years ago

This seems like conjecture.

It's conjecture for me to presume the sky is blue without looking out of my window, but it's a safe bet on days with good weather.

Unless this balloon -- or whatever it was -- was diamond-bedazzled and platinum-plated and filled with alien technology it's a safe bet that it was a fair amount cheaper to produce/launch/maintain than sortieing one of the most expensive and exclusive modern aircraft in the world and shooting off a missile that costs 600k/ea -- and that's not even considering collateral costs associated to the action.

poutine• 3 years ago

The balloon last week could have easily been an order of magnitude more expensive than the AIM-9X. It was hundreds of feet in diameter with a suspended gantry with a multi-kw solar array. You don't put that much solar on to power nothing, so presumably there was a ton of military grade comms equipment on it.

pixl974• 3 years ago

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.

someweirdperson• 3 years ago

If shooting the balloons replaces the traing it is cheaper overall. No more expenditure for artificial targets.

Waterluvian• 3 years ago

Don’t necessarily disagree and I don’t know sufficient details to form a responsible opinion, but I imagine there’s expenditure for training, whether they hit actual stuff or not?

nsxwolf4• 3 years ago

For some number of balloons N, the operational experience our fighter pilots get is priceless.

rocqua• 3 years ago

What keeps a cannon from working? That would already reduce the costs by a lot, and from the visual identification it seems that 40,000 feet is well within the flight ceiling of fighter jets

adolph• 3 years ago

Why Shooting Down China’s Spy Balloon Over The U.S. Is More Complicated Than It Seems https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/why-shooting-down-chin...

See also:

F-22 Shoots Down Chinese Spy Balloon Off Carolinas With Missile (Updated) https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-22-shoots-down-chine...

U-2 Spy Planes Snooped On Chinese Surveillance Balloon https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/u-2-spy-planes-snooped...

F-22 Shoots Down “Object” Flying High Over Alaskan Waters https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-22-shoots-down-new-o...

The Soviets Built Bespoke Balloon-Killer Planes During The Cold War https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-soviets-built-besp...

nradov• 3 years ago

Cannons are very short range. The fighter would have to approach the balloon at a high closure rate, creating some risk of a mid-air collision.

With a missile, the pilot can shoot from several miles out and never has to fly directly at the target. So, it's much safer.

dharmab• 3 years ago

Balloons and airships aren't easily downed by gunfire- the holes create slow leaks that can take days or weeks to deflate the balloon. Fighter jets' guns are mostly an air-to-ground weapon these days.

cm21873• 3 years ago

The big balloon from earlier this month was more like a satellite hanging from a balloon. Not sure it was that cheap.

The problem is what can you fly that has a cannon and can reach those altitudes. Apparently only the F22 and F15 could, and that was their very limit.

oceanplexian2• 3 years ago

That’s definitely not their limit since they can shoot down satellites at the altitude of the International Space Station. And that’s the stuff we’re allowed to know about.

jcrites2• 3 years ago

The shootdowns did not involve using airplane guns/cannons. Those are less accurate, especially at the engagement range (the aircraft were at 40,000 ft., IIRC, and shooting at 60,000 ft. balloons), and would have likely damaged the payload.

The shoot-downs used AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles (per TFA). We also don’t know the ceiling altitude of the F-22 since it’s classified.

However, the F-22 can carry the AIM-120 Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile (AMRAAM) which has a disclosed engagement altitude of 70,000 feet - capable of engaging even higher altitude balloons than these. As I understand it, the Extended Range AMRAAM-ER is believed to have an engagement ceiling of 85,000 feet.

Meanwhile, the US also has the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-ballistic missile system, an air defense system capable of engaging targets at very high altitude. While its capabilities are classified, its max engagement altitude is at least 490,000 ft. or 93 miles … though using it to attack a balloon is like swatting a fly with a sledgehammer. THAAD is mobile and could be deployed in response to a high altitude balloon threat (some of which can fly 120,000 ft.)

heartbreak• 3 years ago

Earlier this month? It was last Saturday!

lazyeye• 3 years ago

What would be ideal would be some kind of anti-balloon weaponry/recovery system. Some kind of balloon-based counter-balloon technology that could take control of the balloon and bring it to the ground intact. Would be a fun project to say the least.

samwillis• 3 years ago

A "sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs" are a rounding error in the national security budget. The experience and lessons learnt from using it are valuable to all layers of the military and administration, significantly more so than the financial cost.

(I'm British and so not a US tax payer, just a spectator, but would argue the same here)

mrleinad• 3 years ago

What lessons might shooting some balloon from an F-22 might give you that you don't already know?

sundvor5• 3 years ago

Absolutely. The value of F-22s actually launching some $400k AIM-9Xs not at training targets with a 100% success rate would be far, far greater than those unit costs.

It's a crying shame the F-22 production line was shut down, so it's great to see it performing well.

(Speaking as a DCS sim pilot with a long time interest in military aviation).

smegger0013• 3 years ago

the problem is as long as the target you send up are cheaper for you to produce than the countermeasure used against them you can spam your opponent and bleed them financially while having a minimal impact on your own budget.

Air to air missiles cost on the order of $300,000.00 weather balloons cost and order of magnitude less.

ianburrell2• 3 years ago

The balloon shot down last week was likely order of magnitude more expensive than the Sidewinder that shot it down. Someone posted link to similar sized NASA balloon that cost $1 million for just the balloon and maybe platform but not the payload.

It might be possible to shoot down balloons with unguided rockets. It depends on how close the fighter can get and how accurate the rockets are. Rockets are super cheap.

mrexroad• 3 years ago

Yeah, but that’s a NASA balloon which adds one or more “0” to the price tag just so it can source components from, and support jobs in, all 50 states. (Ok, being sarcastic, but I’m curious on the actual cost.)

csa2• 3 years ago

We need a cheaper way to down these spy balloons.

Probably fits nicely in the training budget.

willis9363• 3 years ago

Then it's a good thing the US spends an order of magnitude more on weapons than anyone else.

The world will run out of helium before the US runs out of missiles.

Gustomaximus• 3 years ago

If this became a frequent occurrence. Infrequently does it cost much more?

The airforce would have thousands of missiles. Assuming they have some FIFO system they would use missiles heading for expiry.

Not sure how pilot training goes but would assume they have training hours requirement. If a mission covers those hours all the better for more real experience on what they would be flying anyway.

Anyway I don't know this as an expert, but logically seems costs are largely sunk regardless of an infrequent balloon incident.

petre• 3 years ago

An F-22 fighter jet shot down the object using an A9X missile

What a waste if $200k, shooting Chinese baloons. These shold be zapped using lasers.

Scoundreller• 3 years ago

Lots of zaps needed. But I guess if you cut a big enough line (or circle) it’ll do the job.

buildsjets• 3 years ago

The YAL-1 747 Airborne Laser had a megawatt class chemical oxygen-iodine laser. In an unclassified presentation I was at they claimed a hubcap-sized (30cm-ish?) spot diameter firing from Seattle to Wenatchee (~200 km) with the capability to melt thru an aluminum ICBM skin in just a few millisecond pulses. I think we could pop that balloon.

horsawlarway2• 3 years ago

Don't most f-22s come with a 20mil cannon? Wonder we we're preferring the missiles to just plain old lead?

durandal1• 3 years ago

At those altitudes the combination of a very high closing speed (air is thin) and the short range of the gun creates a real risk of flying into the target you're trying to hit.

davidmr• 3 years ago

It turns out that high altitude balloons don’t pop when you put small holes in them: https://apnews.com/article/268893fddde785d029d5a51b136951eb

hot_gril3• 3 years ago

Idk, but I'm guessing they treat it like target practice for the missiles.

Zetobal• 3 years ago

There is always stock that has to be used up before they go bad and the pilots and machines need flying time no matter what. It's not as bad as it sounds and the rockets have their warheads removed.

Phlarp• 3 years ago

The US defense industry will absolutely find a way to make the marginal cost of shooting the laser be $200k or more.

lame-robot-hoax• 3 years ago

Ordinance doesn’t last forever. Might as well use them if you’ve got them.

exabrial2• 3 years ago

"Not sure what the object was"

"Shot Down using an Aim9x"

That actually narrows it down a bit. Heat seeking warhead.

snerbles2• 3 years ago

Unlike previous Sidewinder iterations with a single-sensor thermal seeker, the AIM-9X has a thermal imaging seeker - it was used to shoot down the much larger balloon last week.

https://www.navair.navy.mil/product/AIM-9X-Sidewinder

jollyllama3• 3 years ago

So it doesn't really narrow it down that much, then. Could be a plane, could be a balloon.

pmccarren• 3 years ago

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, told reporters Friday that an F-22 fighter aircraft based at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson shot down the object using the same type of missile used to take down the balloon nearly a week ago.[0]

[0] https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-shoots-down-unknown-flyi...

themodelplumber5• 3 years ago

It's considered a "system-guided" missile, not heat-seeking. It's much more advanced than the original heat-seeking concept and integrates additional optical technology in the fuse.

mikewarot3• 3 years ago

I just learned (yesterday[2]) about the rolleron[1], a stabilizing mechanism that prevents roll. It uses the airstream to spin up a gyroscopic mass.

The AIM9 is the only use I'm aware of.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolleron

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cfzj3rRIVU4

post_break2• 3 years ago

His long hair dangling by that spinning disc while he demos it... ugh.

consumer4513• 3 years ago

Officials said the object was far smaller than the previous balloon, did not appear to be maneuverable and was traveling at a much lower altitude.

"Not maneuverable" and "previous balloon" so is it fair to assume that it's a balloon as well?

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF6• 3 years ago

That's an interesting catch. Still, it's known that the previous object was a balloon, so I'd say it makes more sense to expect those words are shorthand for "previous object (which was a balloon)". This new object may still be a balloon, but those words aren't admission of that.

dTal4• 3 years ago

Not many other types of non-maneuverable flying craft.

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

Would a smaller balloon fly lower? Seems likely.

andirk3• 3 years ago

I think the main issue of an object being really high up in the air is the lack of air density which, to achieve equilibrium, will get pulled apart (think: the opposite of being smashed). It's also extremely cold.

I assume a weather balloon can handle those issues though. [0]

[0] https://youtu.be/jaUgTwKu6vs

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

No, it is just as likely to be a reporter's garbled understanding of an explanation. In mysterious matters wait until you have 2 or 3 datapoints before using a heuristic.

consumer4513• 3 years ago

Agreed, but the "previous balloon" part may be unnecessary.

User dTal is on the same train of thought as I was regarding the "not maneuverable" part.

What other type of object exists which can fly and yet does not have the ability to maneuver?

fnordpiglet• 3 years ago

I’d love to use that heuristic but I need 1-2 more data points.

mulmen10• 3 years ago

I wondered about this too. But even balloons are maneuverable in some sense, by changing their altitude. So maybe the meaning is more like "didn't maneuver in response to our presence".

zardo• 3 years ago

But even balloons are maneuverable in some sense, by changing their altitude.

Most balloons are not equipped to actively change their bouyancy.

susiecambria• 3 years ago

John Kirby called it an object today during the White House press briefing. He also said it was the size of a small car, unlike the balloon from China that was the size of 2-3 buses. Finally, Kirby said that the object could not direct its own propulsion or direction and was at the whim of the wind.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/rHGWmyyb9nI?feature=share

BbzzbB3• 3 years ago

No propulsion, wind-controlled, motor vehicle-equivalents... Yeah it's a balloon.

HarryHirsch• 3 years ago

Weather balloons are disposable, they rise and expand in the process until they burst - the maximum size is somewhere between 5 and 10 meters, between a large car and a white van. The payload tends to have a parachute and a phone number (the ones from the Weather Service do).

There was something about fear being the mind-killer. Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam to the Red Telephone please - paging the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam!

cormacrelf• 3 years ago

The man does not misspeak.

perihelions• 3 years ago

Hopefully this isn't on that kind of hair-trigger that shoots down civilian airliners by mistake. It's happened literally dozens of times [0], so it's hard to believe any kind of blanket "this can't possibly happen because..." logic.

Seems to be particularly likely to happen in panicky situations, or when someone has something to prove. E.g., the Soviet-American tensions surrounding an American spy plane, a RC-135, were a factor in the Soviets shooting down KAL-007 (they thought it was the RC-135) [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007

whateverman23• 3 years ago

It wasn't a hair-trigger decision. From the AP article [0]: "U.S. pilots who flew up to observe it determined it didn’t appear to be manned"

[0] https://apnews.com/article/pentagon-shoots-down-unknown-flyi...

kayodelycaon• 3 years ago

Protocol is to visually identify the target. In the case of an airliner, they try to make visual contact with the pilots if they don’t respond by radio. There are visual verification methods commercial pilots are trained on.

And airliners have transponders and flight plans. If a civilian plane stopped talking to ATC, the Air Force is likely already involved.

Additionally, we’re not on a high-alert war footing like during the Cold War. As far as I know, we don’t have hostile military aircraft routinely flying with transponders off on our coasts.

Even if we did, I’m pretty sure the larger military radar systems that would be used to track this stuff can read transponders and separate out which plane is which.

api• 3 years ago

So what’s the deal with these balloons? Provocation? Do they think nobody will notice?

bitL2• 3 years ago

Laser mapping of military POIs before a war in a few years? See the recent laser rays on Mauna Kea.

mulmen10• 3 years ago

Can you elaborate on this? My understanding of the Mauna Kea lasers is that they are used to adjust the mirrors for atmospheric conditions in real time.

elmomle• 3 years ago

It's boundary-pushing.

They're unmanned and ambient, yet are clearly a provocation and give China an information advantage over where it would be without the balloons, and in a geopolitical sense it asserts Chinese ascendency. At the same time, it's hard for the US or other powers to figure out an appropriate response. Very similar to Russian/NK/Chinese/Israeli/American state-sponsored hacking groups--it continually forces the adversary to ask "where do we draw a line, and what consequences do we give for crossing it?"

markdown2• 3 years ago

Surely the appropriate response is to release some "weather" balloons from Taiwan.

kelseyfrog• 3 years ago

It sounds similar in goals to the Regan-era PSYOP described by Peter Schweizer

"It really got to them," recalls Dr. William Schneider, [former] undersecretary of state for military assistance and technology, who saw classified "after-action reports" that indicated U.S. flight activity. "They didn't know what it all meant. A squadron would fly straight at Soviet airspace, and other radars would light up and units would go on alert. Then at the last minute the squadron would peel off and return home."[1]

Peter Schweizer, Victory: The Reagan Administration's Secret Strategy That Hastened the Collapse of the Soviet Union

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

If I were Russia (which is not far from Alaska) I would launch these at random intervals with junk COTS electronics just to confuse matters. The cost of each launch can probably be denominated in thousands.

wheelie_boy• 3 years ago

Part of the provocation is that China has been seen testing balloons as a weapons delivery platform for high-speed gliding munitions

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23758/video-appears-to...

andbberger• 3 years ago

nah, SIGINT. great way to probe the air-defense capabilities of your opponent

yosito3• 3 years ago

it continually forces the adversary to ask "where do we draw a line, and what consequences do we give for crossing it?"

Sounds a lot like parenting a toddler.

krolden• 3 years ago

Who is 'they'?

assimpleaspossi• 3 years ago

I'm pretty sure nobody here knows.

LarryMullins13• 3 years ago

provocation

Quite possibly. Minor provocations that by themselves are too inconsequential to warrant a response, nothing to start a war over, but incrementally provokes the target into lashing out in some way that is advantageous for China.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_salami_slicing_strateg...

(Other countries do it too, of course..)

yamtaddle6• 3 years ago

Probe detection & response times for various approaches and altitudes, sigint for radio chatter that doesn't reach past the US, similar for active radar targeting high altitudes, wasting more US money than they cost China by a long shot, trial-run for a mass launch of these with potentially more interesting payloads than these sacrificial trial ones are carrying (even just as a kind of attention- and resource-wasting chaff during, say, an attack on Taiwan), radio-signal mapping for some crazy new passive guidance system. Lots of possibilities.

specialp• 3 years ago

It could be to gradually increase reaction expectations so it would not be surprising if China shot down one of the USA's drones. Or perhaps escalate by using their previously demonstrated ability to blow up satellites. The balloon was a very public microaggression that forced the USA to respond in a very public way. China tried the public "oops it was a weather balloon" to give the USA a chance to back off the public response (but know that China was still provoking them). But it was too brazen to accept.

The USA is already on their doorsteps by having bases in almost all the neighboring countries, and conducting operational freedom exercises by flying and sailing through disputed areas.

riku_iki6• 3 years ago

few oil tankers which go to China attacked by unidentified drones will shut them up for very long time.

mensetmanusman4• 3 years ago

China is the only one disputing those areas because they decided to invent new landmass.

FollowingTheDao• 3 years ago

IMO, the balloons are an excuse to raise tensions with China.

Regnore• 3 years ago

Wouldn’t it be prudent in this situation for China to just not send these balloons over the US mainland if they didn’t want to offer the US an excuse to fear monger them?

mensetmanusman4• 3 years ago

America is forcing China to send balloons towards America so that America can raise tensions with China?

Unfortunately, tensions are already quite high in China, due to state media being the only source of propaganda. The state and most tv-watchers have therefore decided that America is the cause of all their problems.

UncleOxidant• 3 years ago

It's not like this is new. We know there were 3 during the T administration. Now for some reason we've decided we need to be paranoid about them.

LarryMullins13• 3 years ago

Now for some reason we've decided we need to be paranoid about them.

That last one getting noticed by the public probably had something to do with it.

batch12• 3 years ago

From what I have read these 3 were just recently 'discovered' and weren't known prior to Biden coming into office. How this can be true, I have no clue. Either way, I don't remember people posting balloon pictures a few years ago. I have a feeling that if they had transited during the previous administration, and people knew, they would have nailed this criticism to Trump too.

omegaworks• 3 years ago

It's a boogeyman, a harmless prop hyped up by the GOP in an effort to heighten tensions with China and criticize a tepid response by the administration.

The Biden White House seems happy to play along, justifying more equipment from top donors Raytheon and Boeing.

The balloon panic helpfully distracts from the massive freight derailment chemical disaster currently spewing vinyl chloride into the atmosphere over Ohio.

TheAdamist• 3 years ago

Cheap balloon vs expensive missile, seems a good way to bankrupt us by sending continuous balloons.

0xbadcafebee• 3 years ago

A government that spends more money on their military than the rest of the world combined isn't at risk of bankruptcy from firing a couple missiles.

We're at risk of bankruptcy because our debt is 31 trillion dollars and in June we won't even be able to issue securities to continue bullshitting ourselves out of cutting spending. Welcome to America, we're broke because we spent all our money on guns rather than infrastructure, healthcare and education.

pixl974• 3 years ago

We spend more on Healthcare and education per capital than almost any other country. Don't let people bullshit you on the amount spent. Now results on dollars spent is a different question with a different answer.

ajross• 3 years ago

Standard reply to debt rhetoric: US debt service costs measured against the economy are not particularly high historically: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYOIGDA188S

The 80's were much, much worse. If we were ever going to go bankrupt, it was in the early Clinton administration due to the Reagan/Bush spending boom. We got through just fine. Those bonds were all paid off decades ago.

Be very very very cautious any time someone comes at you with this kind of hyperbole about federal debt. They're selling you something.

avalys2• 3 years ago

Welcome to America, we're broke because we spent all our money on guns rather than infrastructure, healthcare and education.

This sentiment is completely untrue. Defense is approximately 12% of US government spending, healthcare approximately 24%, education approximately 15%, and social security roughly 20%. Infrastructure is harder to categorize, but the truth is that the US government spends at least 4x more on healthcare, education and welfare (combined) than defense.

https://www.usgovernmentspending.com/year_spending_2023USrn_...

The fact that this 12% of government spending amounts to the largest military on earth is in large part a consequence of the fact that the US is really, enormously wealthy compared to most of the rest of the world, has a fairly large population, and still has a larger GDP per capita than any other large or even medium-sized country.

ronsor• 3 years ago

We already spent the money on the missiles, may as well use them.

markdown2• 3 years ago

The US Department of Attack budget for 2023 is $1.9 trillion dollars. A couple of missiles is petty cash.

bombcar2• 3 years ago

China will need to send nine million five hundred thousand balloons and then the budget will be all used up.

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF6• 3 years ago

Cheap balloon

I'm surprised this seems to be such a common point. Why is it believed that it was cheap?

V99• 3 years ago

There's only so much you can spend on a bag of helium; anything is cheap compared to satellites or stealth long range recon aircraft.

kylehotchkiss3• 3 years ago

Yeah, these balloons that can hold small car to school bus sized payloads are not like a commercially available thing. It seems like they'd require truckloads of helium, which is a hard gas to store and not always available in massive quantities (seems like it should be prioritized for keeping MRI scanners cool instead of balloons). The balloons are probably really hard to produce, not made in great numbers, and require specialized equipment and processes to launch without puncturing. Not quite an airplane's cost but this isn't the send-a-gopro-to-100,000ft type of trick that relied entirely on products available to consumers.

It's also possible whomever is running this operation doesn't care about their staff at all and they just use hydrogen.

hot_gril3• 3 years ago

They shot down a couple of balloons using whatever they had. If balloons were a common target, they'd design something more suitable. Maybe a monkey throwing darts.

BbzzbB3• 3 years ago

What about a monkey in a superman suit shooting lasers?

tobyjsullivan• 3 years ago

I think I’ve played this game.

14u2c• 3 years ago

It's sad to see comments that are so obviously bait on HN.

jacobsenscott3• 3 years ago

The USAF pops off live missiles while training from time to time, so these could just come from that supply, and not really cost anything. Shooting down balloons is a good enough training exercise.

BXLE_1-1-BitIs1• 3 years ago

Pot calling kettle black. The US has been sending armed drones into several countries without coordination with local ATC or consent of the local government. Soleimani and a number of Iraqi military officers were taken out by a US drone.

JoeAltmaier• 3 years ago

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.

areyousure• 3 years ago

In case anyone else was unfamiliar, the usage of "gang" here appears to be the following: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/gang#Verb_2

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

Soleimani and a number of Iraqi military officers were taken out by a US drone.

Good. Right?

mardifoufs• 3 years ago

Sure, but that was still a violation of sovreign airspace. It would be like having a foreign drone targeting George W.Bush. Both are war criminals, but I'm not sure it suddenly makes violating foreign countries ok.

gattilorenz• 3 years ago

Wasn’t Soleimani Iranian? Are you at war with Iran? Did he receive a fair trial?

pvaldes5• 3 years ago

Not, in fact is bad, because what is good for the geese is good for the gander.

This increases the risk of being killed by a drone for everybody, even if is as collateral damage. If international laws can be so easily violated for free, why do we need them? Do we really want a world without rules?

r3trohack3r3• 3 years ago

There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently.

The general premise is this:

U.S. adversaries realized they couldn't compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They'd occasionally get caught (perhaps on purpose) and cause a base to scramble to intercept. The proposed theory on why they'd get caught on purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a response would be flying through the airspace.

It's possible they've been doing this for more than a decade and the military has gotten caught with egg on it's face having ignored the reports for so long.

themodelplumber5• 3 years ago

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 problem with "summing up UFO contact" is that the variety of encounters is absolutely insane. Compare Rendlesham to Varginha, etc.

It really starts to bring out the "inter" in the more colorful inter-dimensional contact theories.

r3trohack3r3• 3 years ago

Had never heard of the Rendlesham Forest incident - what a rabbit hole. Thank you for sharing.

GartzenDeHaes• 3 years ago

If you know something about how the USAF responds to incidents, the idea of the deputy base commander and disaster preparedness running around in the middle of the night chasing UFO's is hilarious. It's obviously a practical joke that got out of hand.

JohnBooty6• 3 years ago

    Funny, though tbh it seems like there are cheaper ways 
    to cause the US to spend gobs of cash.

Yeah.

My best understanding based on watching a lot of retired military personnel is that isolated incidents cost the US almost exactly zero additional dollars.

The way an Air Force base works is this: there is a budget. This covers the (considerable) costs of the base itself, the personnel, the equipment, and so on.

Active-duty fighter pilots must fly a certain number of hours per month to remain on active status. Just like any other demanding activity (sports, competitive gaming, whatever) their skills require constant maintenance. These flying hours are of course budgeted. (This will be true of literally any air force; it's not specifically a USAF thing)

Things like these incident responses, and even things like flyovers before sporting events, come out of those predetermined budgeted flying hours that they were going to fly anyway. So isolated incidents like these don't really increase USAF expenses in a meaningful way. Those $400K/ea missiles will presumably need to be replenished but this must be compared to the USAF's total budget of $180 billion.

To put any strain whatsoever on the US's capabilities our foes would need to start sending large amounts of drones: essentially, a saturation attack. More than we can comfortably respond to. Which is of course... extremely possible.

But as long as these remain isolated incidents we can surmise that our adversary's goal is not "cost the US a bunch of money."

LarryMullins13• 3 years ago

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 that the Mig-25 was never a fighter jet, it was an interceptor that was very fast in a straight line but not much more. 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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-15_Eagle#F...

Come to think of it, maybe China is going low-tech with balloons to avoid this dynamic?

voldacar• 3 years ago

Pringles cans have never been observed to move in ways that violate Newton's laws

x3n0ph3n3• 3 years ago

Nor has there been good evidence of UAPs doing so.

krapp5• 3 years ago

Given the possibilities of an alien spacecraft observed on Earth violating the known laws of physics, or some error on the part of the observer, I'm going with the latter every time.

First, prove that everything we know about physics is wrong at a fundamental, irreconcilable level. Then explain why our completely wrong models of physics still work as well as they do. Then explain the Fermi Paradox in light of the apparent existence of easy faster than light/antigravity technology and confirmation of the existence of other technologically advanced civilizations in the universe. Then I'll be willing to concede the still practically nil chance of any of those aliens actually being here given the vast size of the observable universe as being likely enough to consider.

Don't get me wrong, I want it to be true. I desperately want it to be true. I've been fascinated by UFOlogy and sightings and the related folklore for decades. I want some fate for humanity other than us slowly choking to death on our own poison, alone on this island in the midst of vast seas of infinity. It's just that the bar for proving any other possibility is higher than a third-hand account of someone seeing a light in the sky that moved really fast.

tedunangst2• 3 years ago

If we don't know what it is, we don't know it's not a pringles can.

NikkiA• 3 years ago

Making a high altitude balloon highly visible (eg, put lights inside it) and sitting back and waiting is actually a terrific tactic for finding out maximum operational ceiling of interceptors when the number is non-public.

JohnBooty6• 3 years ago

Mission accomplished. The previously published ceiling of the F-22 was 50K feet. The Pentagon said it (edit: by "it" I mean the F-22) was flying at 58K feet when it shot down the first balloon. Guess it can do (at least) 58K.

This was probably not entirely groundbreaking news to anybody including China. Everybody knows that the published specs of military hardware are intentionally distorted in one direction or another.

The F-15's known ceiling is 65K feet for example. So it's not surprising that newer fighters can match that.

nsxwolf4• 3 years ago

It's like Israel's "Iron Dome" interceptors. $50,000 each to take out what amounts to a $50 Estes model rocket.

TheGuyWhoCodes• 3 years ago

I don't think it's a fair comparison because a rocket hit could be much more expensive in direct and collateral damage than 50k

PM_me_your_math3• 3 years ago

That analog for a $50 Estes rocket can blow a family apart into little pieces. The discipline is sound - protect your citizens from external threats, no matter the cost. That's the purpose of government and by extension, its military.

nostromo3• 3 years ago

Those UFOs were lens flares.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsEjV8DdSbs

Turns out we like to spend gobs of money even when we're just chasing our shadow.

united893• 3 years ago

That video helps explain one property one of the UFO videos (the rotation) but doesn't explain the rest. Doesn't explain the Tic Tac videos. It does not explain why these were observed on radar as well.

While some of the videos have explanation, I would kindly encourage you to look at this with more curiosity.

herbstein2• 3 years ago

Mick West's videos are so good, specifically because the analysis are based on what's actually shown in the interface in the videos. There's no big "like, comment, subscribe"-section either. Just a pure explanation of why the object shown isn't as mystical as it appears at first glance.

newZWhoDis• 3 years ago

Mick Wests videos on the topic have been thoroughly debunked by fighter pilots and experienced aviators.

He also completely ignores the eyewitness testimony and radar data.

He’s one of the least credible debunkers you can find.

reso• 3 years ago

I agree the videos are thoroughly debunked as being aliens, but there still are credible reports that navy/air force see craft observing them periodically. That doesn't have to be aliens for the reports to be true.

e.g. The video that got debunked as Bokeh (accurately) is still someone on that ship attempting to video a craft that they see nearby them. It's only viewers of the video who get confused and believe that the bokeh effect is what they are supposed to be seeing in the video.

ren_engineer• 3 years ago

why does every debunking focus on the footage and ignore the fact the objects were also confirmed on radar? Do they just assume the Navy is filled with morons who decided to report this through the chain of command based on nothing but footage and didn't consider a lens flare?

xwdv• 3 years ago

They need to stop doing this. If they send out thousands of cheap balloons it would be like a denial of service attack!!

We don’t have the bandwidth to basically dog fight thousands of aircraft simultaneously!! We’ll go bankrupt!

Eduard2• 3 years ago

We don’t have the bandwidth to basically dog fight thousands of aircraft simultaneously!! We’ll go bankrupt

The defense industry will go ritch, though

thedorkknight3• 3 years ago

That was actually similar to a concern from CIA director Walter Bedell Smith:

According to Smith, it was CIA’s responsibility by statute to coordinate the intelligence effort required to solve the problem. Smith also wanted to know what use could be made of the UFO phenomenon in connection with US psychological warfare efforts.

https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/cias-role-in-t...

JohnBooty6• 3 years ago

    The proposed theory on why they'd get caught on 
    purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a 
    response would be flying through the airspace.

It's certainly the most likely explanation.

Accordingly, it seems highly possible that the countries targeted by such incursions (a) realize their response time is being tested (b) fuzz/delay their responses by some certain amount of time in order to frustrate such efforts.

cjg_• 3 years ago

More or less the premise of this 2021 article: https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones...

PM_me_your_math3• 3 years ago

This is a cat and mouse game that we've been playing for decades. USA has surveillance aircraft in the air at all times, especially near ADIZ. It also has at least one of two national command and control aircraft in the air at all times. The USA has been probed more times than can be counted, and we've probed other countries just as much. What's new is ignoring a threat while over territorial waters or sparsely populated areas and letting it glide across the country before deciding to shoot it down.

mtnGoat2• 3 years ago

I don’t think that’s new based on the most recent incident. I recall the pentagon saying this has been going on for a few years. But if, by saying new you mean the last decade, that’s fair.

John238322• 3 years ago

It’s not theory, it’s actually military practice.

Adversaries spend 100k for a military grade drone. What do shoot it down with? A 1M dollar Patriot? Whatever you choose will be orders of magnitude more expensive than the drone.

Israel’s Iron Dome has the same issue. It costs massively more for defense than attack.

jeremyjh• 3 years ago

It would be an air to air missile like a sidewinder which still costs $400k. Just scrambling a couple jets would cost tens of thousands on top of that I’m sure.

sandworm1018• 3 years ago

Missiles have a finite lifespan. They use the older ones first. Firing one the day before it has to go back for refurbishment might save money. You won't have to ship it back. Fired missiles are also generally not replaced, under the assumption that a new stock of better missiles will likely be ordered in a few years anyway.

And the cost of the plane is also complex. This pilot/aircraft renewed some quals on this flight, reducing training needs. The aircraft was likely going flying that day anyway. So the net cost of the operation was likely minimal.

anonymousiam2• 3 years ago

One of the oldest tricks in the (SIGINT) book is to trick the enemy into activating their radar and/or trigger a response to an incursion to collect all of the resulting signals intelligence.

Stevvo• 3 years ago

Drones are constantly being shot down by ZPUs and other obsolete AA guns mounted on technicals. Costs even less than the drone you are shooting.

m3kw9• 3 years ago

Ain’t like 100 of ballon’s were shot down. So it doesn’t apply here

2OEH8eoCRo0• 3 years ago

When the US spends on the military, where does the money go?

UberFly• 3 years ago

Military stuff.

ProAm• 3 years ago

To the US economy.

mtnGoat2• 3 years ago

Contractors mostly, since everything they use must be acquired from a vendor.

jshzglr2• 3 years ago

Other countries are trying to spy on the US’s super advanced “UAPs”. Pet theory of mine.

ProjectArcturis2• 3 years ago

What are UAPs?

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon

toomanyrichies2• 3 years ago

https://www.google.com/search?q=What+are+UAPs%3F&ei=6L_mY7_5...

jshzglr2• 3 years ago

Historically known as UFOs

brindidrip• 3 years ago

I noticed some odd things while watching the press conference. Pat Ryder had a potential Freudian slip and said that it was taken down because it "posed a threat to civili..." and he enunciated the "li" as if he were going to say "civilization," but he then paused and corrected himself to say "civilian." Another odd thing was when Pat Ryder answered a question about why the President's decision to take down the object was necessary. Pat mentioned something like, "Presidents usually make decisions when certain threats in our airspace pose a danger to civilians on the ground."

It's extremely odd to me that they were able to identify the object by sending our own airmen to visually confirm it, but if that's the case, wouldn't they be able to definitively conclude that it wasn't a balloon? Pat kept it ambiguous and kept insisting that it was some sort of object.

next_xibalba• 3 years ago

I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance.

"They shoot down our surveillance balloons, giving us precedent to shoot down their high altitude drone planes or satellites in the future."

dTal4• 3 years ago

This is a very reasonable explanation for the otherwise mysterious question of why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites.

It may not be exactly what they have in mind, but I think it's the right way to think about the question - they are engineering scenarios which work to their advantage no matter how the US responds. US shoots them down? Play outraged. US leaves them alone? US looks weak.

hughw• 3 years ago

Obvious, provocative.... and unsteerable.

nonethewiser5• 3 years ago

Presumably if not shooting them down looks weak, then shooting them down looks competent. And playing outraged confers no advantage to China.

consumer4513• 3 years ago

when China has perfectly good satellites.

We need to move past this whole "why use spy balloons when we have satellites" thing. Even Scott Manley repeated it.

The USA has what are likely the most capable surveillance satellites in the world yet the USA still employs spy planes.

For one thing, RF signals suffer from path loss over distance. The difference is >140km in distance. That's a lot of signal loss. Another factor is loiter time.

jallen_dot_dev• 3 years ago

why even use an (obvious, provocative) balloon in the first place, when China has perfectly good satellites.

The balloon floated about 100x closer to the surface than a satellite in low-Earth orbit and travelled much slower, making it potentially easier to collect signals/images.

yamtaddle6• 3 years ago

That precedent already exists. Trespassing planes were shot down during the cold war, when they could be, and China knocked a US intelligence plane out of the sky over "contested" airspace (way south of China, near some of the islands they're claiming in a move to gain sovereignty over as much of the sea route via the Straight of Malacca, and sea routes to SE Asian states like Vietnam, as they can) in '01 (kinda by accident, probably, but that didn't stop them from claiming it was OK for them to do that and detaining the flight crew until an apology was issued)

bailoon4• 3 years ago

I've wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance.

It's more likely a coordinated event to get people to talk about something other than covid and the last 3 disastrous years. Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid. Now that the covid era appears to be over, what better way to distract people than "war".

They did the same thing with 9/11. Uncomfortable questions about 9/11 was overshadowed by war and iraqi "wmds". Eventually people forget or move on.

Call me a cynic, but china ends covid lockdowns and all of a sudden we get "surveillance" balloons. And the entire media apparatus has us talking about silly balloons instead of wondering what the last 3 years of covid was about. My guess was a staged "terrorist" attack somewhere to transition us from the covid news cycle. Turns out we got balloons instead. Whatever works in the end.

arcticfox2• 3 years ago

Lets be honest here, neither china nor the US wants people asking uncomfortable questions about covid

at least in the US, I don't think anyone is really interested in covid anymore enough to require any distraction. Maybe that argument makes sense in China.

pkaye• 3 years ago

People moved on from Covid long before these balloons.

cpursley3• 3 years ago

This is exactly what Larry Johnson (former CIA) at sonar21.com suggested.

nkurz2• 3 years ago

Or more directly, maybe they intend to start shooting down our balloons. There were stories last year that the US military was planning to deploy surveillance balloons over Russian and China. Have we indeed been doing so? Here's one of the stories: https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloo....

motohagiography2• 3 years ago

It doesn't matter what the object was, it's that America's adversaries know they can do it without consequences, and what makes them believe this is what matters about this story. That is the irreversible change it signifies, imo.

SketchySeaBeast2• 3 years ago

If other reports are to be believed this has been happening for a while, and isn't some sort of new irreversible change. This is just the first time the public has become aware of it. The difference here seems to be that it was shot down (possibly because it had become so infamous).

password11• 3 years ago

it's that America's adversaries know they can do it without consequences

There was a consequence -- we shot it down.

That is the irreversible change it signifies, imo.

It's not irreversible. Additional consequences can be initiated at any time.

motohagiography2• 3 years ago

You don't need to convince me, convince the people who keep sending the ballons, invading allies, and using NATO countries as rocket flyover paths.

jasmer7• 3 years ago

Having it shot down is not a consequence.

Diplomatic or economic retribution of some kind would be a consequence.

ginko2• 3 years ago

I've always wondered: Is your nick a reference to Moto Hagio[1], the shojo manga artist?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moto_Hagio

edmundsauto• 3 years ago

It’s been what - a week or two? Since the first balloon made the news.

Were you hoping the US would react without thinking through their options?

Personally, I want a considered, measured response. We can always add sanctions or start a nuclear war later. Right now it seems important to understand what happened, discuss with other leaders, and figure out a smart response.

But yeah a lot of people just want to escalate every situation.

tempestn4• 3 years ago

Agreed. And perhaps given China claims it was an accident, for this incident shooting it down is response enough. Can always choose to escalate further (or not) if/when it happens again.

twobitshifter• 3 years ago

Sounds like you think someone sent a trial balloon

mikeyouse• 3 years ago

There's a weird set of specifications with this one since they seem to be making a distinction between the balloon last week and whatever this is;

* Flying at 40k feet altitude

* Size of a small car

* Not manned

* Didn't appear to be maneuverable

* Shot down with an AIM-9X heatseaking missile

What could that be? Also, seems premature to assume China again when Russia is far closer to the Alaskan coast and just as antagonistic.

kylehotchkiss3• 3 years ago

the equivalent of a satellite being hung from a balloon. "Non maneuverable" is still sort of ambiguous because these types of vehicles navigate by selecting the altitude with the most favorable winds and using controls to attain that altitude, either with a more advanced gas fill/release system or dropping ballast. It sounds like the previous balloon had a good amount of these systems so it could be aimed and this one likely had a more rudimentary version?

leucineleprec0n4• 3 years ago

Yes. The whole “non-maneuverable” line is kind of a blurry one with modern algorithms/comms and the altitude adjustments possible

dang• 3 years ago

We merged all the threads into this one, since it seems to have been first.

We changed the url from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-... to what appears to be the article with most recent updates (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34745940 - thanks yabones!).

flurdy• 3 years ago

In other news - a Richard Branson type balloon enthusiast has just gone missing in Alaska...

dustractor• 3 years ago

We should figure out a way to harvest the helium.

yummybear• 3 years ago

Actual weather balloon?

pcmaffey2• 3 years ago

Shoot first ask questions later? Why not intercept it, disable it, and then dismantle it to figure out what and why it is?

judahmeek• 3 years ago

What's the difference between disabling a flying object & shooting it down?

pcmaffey2• 3 years ago

How many pieces it’s in, I suppose.

pvaldes5• 3 years ago

So we finally have our explanation for all the strange attempts to resurrect UFO interest in the last years.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23942463

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10970609

You could fly a flashing cow in this times and nobody would stop looking down at their phones.

thedorkknight3• 3 years ago

The director of national intelligence explicitly said in a Congressional hearing last may that they want to destigmatize UAP sightings so that pilots will actually report them when they happen. It hasn't really been a big mystery why some people in the government have been trying to change the attitude around UFOs recently - that's why they use the term UAP instead, less cultural baggage

pvaldes5• 3 years ago

So either they have info about an imminent alien arrival, or will have to admit that this is happening since several years ago, in at least three waves (probably), and that they knew about it.

jasonwatkinspdx• 3 years ago

I'm sorry this just isn't an honest description of what's happened. Destigmatizing reporting UFOs is good. What factually happened is a handful of wackos from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_the_Stars_(company) funded by the front man of Blink 182. They befriended billionaire Robert Bigelow that pulled influence for them in congress and hence they got their little scam project a veneer of legitimacy it frankly does not deserve.

These are the same clowns that have claimed to have extant physical samples of extraterrestrial materials, but only offered them to independent examination once, which didn't go well supporting their claims, and have paraded an endless number of excuses since while doubling down on claims it offers incontrovertible proof.

There's no big mystery here, these are relatively unsophisticated conspiracy nuts that got above average traction. That's it.

soupfordummies• 3 years ago

Could you spell out the "explanation"? I'm not quite picking up whatever subtext you're putting down.

ithkuil3• 3 years ago

Perhaps that pilots were not reporting balloons sightings because of stigma associated with reporting an unidentified flying object?

Overtonwindow3• 3 years ago

Part of me thinks they wanted to shoot down the first balloon, but the president was kind of incapacitated and unable to give the order. That's the only thing I can think of for why they didn't shoot the first one down when it was over Alaska, but they shoot this one down when it is.

andybak• 3 years ago

Which part of you thinks this?

georgeg234• 3 years ago

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.

georgeg234• 3 years ago

Also maybe gives China cover/justification to start shooting down these low satellites.

meepmorp2• 3 years ago

No. Shooting down satellites is a very different thing.

boc• 3 years ago

That’s an escalator that China can’t afford to ride.

The US would deorbit everything China ever put into space if they started shooting at satellites. Those satellites are part of the strategic triad and would be a direct threat to the US nuclear umbrella. The AEGIS systems off the Chinese coast would take care of any attempts to add satellites back into space.

JKCalhoun3• 3 years ago

I don't see an equivalency. Low Earth Orbit satellites are above the ionosphere, balloons below. I suspect if it is radio traffic that you are interested in listening in on then one of those is much more effective.

georgeg234• 3 years ago

LEO satellites are great for RF reconnaissance for frequencies between 100MHz and 100GHz which easily penetrate the ionosphere. They can even geolocate the source on the ground by measuring the observed Doppler shift (caused by the spy satellites own fast motion)

V__• 3 years ago

My out-there pet theory:

Russia made some weird looking (but non-threatening) drone and mimicked some Chinese flight path. Thus, hoping to stoke a bit more drama between the US and China after the balloon affair.

Overtonwindow3• 3 years ago

Why was it faster this time?

asimpletune• 3 years ago

because it was a danger to air traffic

Overtonwindow3• 3 years ago

_whiteCaps_• 3 years ago

The previous one wasn't in civilian airspace.

ksherlock2• 3 years ago

New explanation from the Senate Appropriations subcommittee:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...

tl;dr - nothing important in Alaska

----

Pentagon officials, in testimony to a Senate Appropriations subcommittee on defense, said that the balloon wasn’t deemed to be a threat as it crossed Alaska where it didn’t pass over sensitive sites.

They added that no analysis had been done at that point on where the debris from the Chinese craft might fall. The risk to people on the ground was considerable, they said, given that the balloon was 200 feet tall and carried an equipment array the size of a small airplane.

Shooting down the balloon in the waters off Alaska would likely have made recovering it more difficult due to the depth and frigid ocean temperatures, said Melissa Dalton, a senior Pentagon official with responsibilities for homeland defense.

Lt. Gen. Douglas Sims II, director of operations for the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, cautioned that shooting down an intruding craft not seen as an imminent threat might encourage other nations to act hastily if Western planes approached their borders.

“Once you take a shot, you can’t get it back,” Gen. Sims said. “I think it’s important for us to remember that if we establish that precedent… we may meet the same precedent.”

“We may create something that is to our detriment,” he added.

The U.S. has conducted reconnaissance flights in international airspace close to China’s territorial limits, drawing frequent objections from Beijing. In December, a Chinese J-11 fighter flew within 20 feet of a U.S. RC-135 surveillance plane near South China Sea islands controlled by Beijing.

The Pentagon testimony didn’t assuage some lawmakers, particularly Sen. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska. Ms. Murkowski said that the Pentagon appeared to be treating potential threats to her state as a secondary concern.

“At what point do we say a surveillance balloon, a spy balloon coming from China is a threat to our sovereignty?” she said. “ It should be the minute it crosses the line, and that line is Alaska.

bombcar2• 3 years ago

The “danger to the ground” thing is weird. Either they didn’t know about it until civilians reported it (and it was over populated areas afterwards but I find that hard to believe) or they didn’t care about it.

Because if they really wanted to they’d have issued a “everyone get the fuck indoors we gonna shoot some shit” order and done their best. Montana and those places aren’t heavily populated at all.

JoshTko• 3 years ago

This is a pretty cheap way for foreign adversary to test our detection capabilities.

maxerickson• 3 years ago

How soon after identification are they shooting them down?

Like if they are watching the launch and then waiting 2 days, the adversary isn't learning the whole story.

panza• 3 years ago

Best to assume the US also knows this and is revealing (or not revealing) its capabilities accordingly.

willis9363• 3 years ago

Those are advertised as a "don't even bother" signal. There's a reason NORAD is a relatively vocal agency.

The full capabilities of satellite and sonar are hidden, but they're easily past the "good enough" line for any relevant military activities.

O__________O• 3 years ago

As reminder, Pentagon has been testing mass surveillance balloons across the US for long time. Here’s story from back in 2019, but these have been flying around much longer and would not surprise me if China got the idea from the US.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34727444

jacobsenscott3• 3 years ago

I'm trying to think of anything valuable you can learn from a balloon flyover that isn't already public domain, and I'm coming up blank. Anyone have any examples?

ithkuil3• 3 years ago

Nobody knows because it's a secret.

If you knew that secret you'd understand what to look for in order to unveil the next secret.

thepasswordis• 3 years ago

Balloons can linger over an area and gather a time series of events.

So can geosynchronous satellites, but they're much further away from earth.

vorpalhex3• 3 years ago

I mean, I'd geolocate and sample comms traffic. Capture and send back what I can.

tastyfreeze2• 3 years ago

My first thought was maybe it was something like an unmanned survey drone owned by an oil company or some resident's experimental aircraft. But... The Air Force chases off manned Russian aircraft with some regularity. Maybe Russia decided to go unmanned to see how far they could push into our airspace instead of flying something like a Tupolev Tu-95 like they normally do.

packetslave• 3 years ago

A Tu-95 Bear coming anywhere close to a U.S. ADIZ is very likely to get an introduction to Mr. Sidewinder or Mr. AMRAAM, considering their primary role is to deliver nuclear ordnance.

matthewdgreen2• 3 years ago

I feel like I’m reading a very upsetting children’s book.

biesnecker• 3 years ago

Happens all the time. Here was one last October: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-f-16s-intercept-two-russian-...

snake_doc• 3 years ago

F-22 entered service 2005

Air to air kills since entered service:

2005-2022: 0

2023: 2

airstrike• 3 years ago

By late next month F-22s will have shot down over four dozen balloons!

westhom2• 3 years ago

Wonder how they picked who the lucky pilot is to get the first F-22 air to air kill. Draw straws?

mikequinlan• 3 years ago

Throw darts at a balloon.

mjfl• 3 years ago

2 balloons

ascotan• 3 years ago

Do you become an ace after 5 ballons or do the ballons need to shoot back?

nikcub4• 3 years ago

I was also wondering if those jets now have stencil paintings of balloons on them with big X's marked across them as kill markers

jlkuester7• 3 years ago

In WWI, shooting down an observation balloon was considerably more difficult (and prestigious) than another plane.

In this case, though, I imagine the difficulty (and associated prestige) is considerable less... :)

sam345• 3 years ago

It's like when a lawyer tells the client not to do a 2 billion dollar deal after a 5 minute conversation and charges $1 million for his time. It's not the effort, it's what was avoided. They call it the Department of Defense for a reason.

jmnicolas• 3 years ago

What was avoided in this case? A balloon isn't much more than a low flying satellite.

pnt12• 3 years ago

It used to be the Department of War, but Defense sounds nicer. Lots of countries did the shift in name.

Reminds me of George Carlin's joke: shellshock becomes battle fatigue becomes PTSD. Don't make it better, change the name!

Velc5• 3 years ago

I’m releasing a high altitude balloon soon for a prize competition. Whoever guesses the closest landing zone of the balloon wins a new cybertruck. Just a silly promotion for my startup. I really hope my balloon gets shot down by a US jet, the free pr would be great for us. Unlikely my balloon will cross the pond though.

jonplackett• 3 years ago

Where can I enter? I want a cyber truck

Velc5• 3 years ago

https://moby.finance/app/competition

Funnily enough I just launched this competition about 2 hours ago so nobody has entered yet.

To get a free entry you need to get 5 likes on a post.

xur172• 3 years ago

I'm not sure if you're serious, but some friends and I launched weather balloons with a payload (aprs broadcasting location) twice. Tons of fun, and there is a bunch of software out there you can use to estimate the crash location.

On the first balloon we failed to acquire enough helium, and ended up "floating" the balloon in the upper atmosphere overnight. Our prediction system kept indicating it was going to land in Africa.

analog313• 3 years ago

I wonder if hydrogen would be a better choice. It's an application where the device is unlikely to endanger anybody if it catches on fire.

Velc5• 3 years ago

Yep, 100% serious. Sounds like a blast. You can actually further protect the balloon with uv repellent paint to stop it popping as easily.

gnabgib• 3 years ago

Daytime temperatures Friday were about minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).

Oops.. minus 27 degrees Celsius. Yes, you might assume the `minus` applies to both, you only have to go up 17 degrees Fahrenheit for the signs not to match (better to be specific).

mzs• 3 years ago

latest: https://www.voanews.com/a/us-shoots-down-mysterious-high-alt...

According to the Pentagon, the object first moved into U.S. airspace late Thursday and was tracked by U.S. Northern Command as it moved over the skies of northeastern Alaska, staying consistently at about 12,000 meters (40,000 feet).
Pentagon and White House officials said U.S. planes approached the object, said to be the size of a small car, and determined that no human was in it before one of two F-22 fighter jets sent on an intercept course shot it from the skies with an AIM-9x Sidewinder missile.

…

"This was an object ... it wasn't an aircraft per se,” Ryder said, briefing Pentagon reporters. “We have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose or origin.”

…

“We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell on our territorial space but on what we believe is frozen water,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a separate White House briefing. “We’re hopeful that we’ll be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it."

derbOac• 3 years ago

I'm curious what the definition of an aircraft is, because I'd think anything manmade that is meant to traverse the atmosphere would qualify.

WestCoastJustin• 3 years ago

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.

poly_morphis• 3 years ago

That’s funny, because this was my exact thought. How can they distinguish the difference when they say ‘unknown’ object…

luxuryballs• 3 years ago

He would be in trouble but if it turns out that he had notified the FAA and some wires got crossed then that would be pretty wild.

godelski5• 3 years ago

They flew a F35 next to the object. "Unknown" is an overloaded term and it isn't binary (known vs unknown). Plus, they said it was the size of a small car (remember the other balloon's payload was the size of a bus). So while you don't know what exactly that payload is and is doing, you do know it isn't just a go pro. You also know it isn't a velociraptor or Felix Baumgartner.

ajsnigrutin3• 3 years ago

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".

hinkley4• 3 years ago

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.

justapassenger• 3 years ago

Add cost of SWAT team raiding your home, getting on the terrorist watch and few other fun things.

godelski5• 3 years ago

How much does a weather baloon cost? ...compared to a F22 flight, a missle + all the logistics?

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.

paranoidrobot• 3 years ago

Depends on your payload weight. Some random searching found a 300g payload baloon for USD$30[1]. That excludes filling costs and other bits.

Anyone stupid enough to do it without following FAA rules (assuming launched in the US) is going to find themselves in some serious trouble.

[1] https://www.highaltitudescience.com/collections/all

LastTrain• 3 years ago

The national weather service already launches > 180 weather balloons PER DAY.

jayknight• 3 years ago

This guy launches lots of balloons with homemade taking beacons.

https://ham-tv.com/balloon/

ck2• 3 years ago

Each one of those sidewinder rockets is half a million dollars.

Think about how much healthcare, food, housing, we are burning up with this nonsense.

mulmen10• 3 years ago

Marginal cost? Zero. We fire more than two missiles in a week in training.

Technically whoever launched this thing saved us money on the target. So the cost was negative.

amelius3• 3 years ago

The cost doesn't matter much. It's a great drill for the military.

hencle• 3 years ago

If not equipped with anything cheap ones cost less then 100$

tenpies• 3 years ago

Early on in the whole balloon situation, there was discussion about how - having seen the US response - the most logical course of action would be to launch 10 balloons.

Then 100. Then 1000.

By all means, let the US military shoot as many as they want.

Let the propagandists call it "a great military display".

Then, just like the West is doing with Ukraine when it comes to artillery rounds, watch the Western arsenal of A2A missiles drop to critical levels that they won't be able to rebuild with any sort of expediency.

It should be a lesson the US learned a thousand times over, but we just saw them do it again: the aeronautical equivalent of bombing a farmer with an AK-47 and calling it a "victory".

colechristensen• 3 years ago

If you're actually responsible you get appropriate approval for time and place for balloon launches. It's not hard and not doing so can get you just enormous fines.

joe_the_user• 3 years ago

I think anyone sending stuff into the sky with a go-pro has to be reconciled that the chance of loss is pretty high. And if they got footage of the F-22, it's probably worth a lot more than their go-pro.

YourDadVPN• 3 years ago

The footage would be cool, but isn't one of the selling points of the F-22 that it can fire missiles from very far away?

yobbo• 3 years ago

Or they now have recordings of the targeting radar/whatever from an F-22 and a missile.

kobalsky• 3 years ago

It's possible that a gopro isn't even detected.

The chinese balloon, and I quote the article: "was like two or three buses". That thing was big.

wkat42424• 3 years ago

A $400k missile and an F-22 sortie costing probably a similar amount. I really hope for their sake the government doesn't try to charge them that cost.

It does indeed sound like something like that. The size of a small car would mean a tiny payload as those balloons get huge in the stratosphere. One thing I wonder is why it didn't burst. Weather balloons are meant to burst as soon as they get that high.

hnthrowaway0315• 3 years ago

My first thought: wow is that an X-COM operation? Make sure you have some brave souls, and don't overload them...

Research med kit and laser too.

mountainb• 3 years ago

Damn, I guess everyone's job from here on out will be down at the laser cannon factory from here on out, but at least it will mean the government will finally pay off the national debt with the proceeds.

partiallypro2• 3 years ago

I saw a joke that the CCP has trolled us into shooting down an alien space craft.

bandyaboot• 3 years ago

Having shot down the Centaurian ambassador, the humans had inadvertently started the first of the great galactic wars. Sadly, they would not be around long enough to take part.

krapp5• 3 years ago

At least it wasn't the Minbari.

PaulWaldman• 3 years ago

Is there a reason F-22s are being used to take these balloons down?

Is it to take advantage of a training opportunity? I would think less advanced aircraft may be more cost effective to operate.

Server6• 3 years ago

Probably to send a message to China more than anything.

CydeWeys• 3 years ago

The F-22s are the most capable and are thus what are actually on-station as a reaction force, plus they have the highest flight ceiling which is relevant for taking out some of these balloons.

willis9363• 3 years ago

Two kills in two weeks? What an amazing 334 million USD aircraft. We should have more!

acdha• 3 years ago

Consider that having already spent the money, they’d be paying for training flights anyway. You’re only hearing about this because they used a live missile.

eqmvii• 3 years ago

First rule of government spending: why have one when you can have two for twice the price!

gateorade2• 3 years ago

The f-22 is also the US fighter with the highest combat ceiling. I believe the actual number is still classified. The f22 took the shot on the balloon last week at 58 thousand feet, which is higher than many fighters can fly.

This one was considerably lower. But IIRC Alaska is a common station location for f-22s so may have just been coincidence.

jonnybgood• 3 years ago

Yes, there is a reason. The F-22 is an integral part of the US Integrated Air Defense System for the homeland. Any foreign engagement by air of the US homeland will first be met with F-22s.

blueprint• 3 years ago

homeland

hyperific• 3 years ago

If it's a balloon why waste an AIM-9X when the F-22's cannon will get the job done?

riku_iki6• 3 years ago

US likely have stockpiles of aging 9x due to replacement.

barsonme2• 3 years ago

Canada tried this like 20 something years ago. It, uh, didn’t work.

westhom2• 3 years ago

At what altitude does something stop being geographic territory and start being a plane in the atmosphere?

mey• 3 years ago

There is no agreed upon height where territory boundaries end.

Legal Eagle actually covers that detail a bit in their coverage of the prior balloon.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=P43wVDiZs8k

idlewords• 3 years ago

Fingers crossed it's not a Korean airliner

pengaru• 3 years ago

"unknown object flying" Pretty sure we have a well-known acronym for that...

justinator• 3 years ago

Yeah: "UOF"

hyperthesis• 3 years ago

similar balloons passed over U.S. territory on four occasions during the Trump and Biden administrations

from linked article https://apnews.com/article/politics-united-states-government...

11235813213455• 3 years ago

reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flights

Aren't civilian flights more a threat for the planet? Not suggesting to shoot them, just to stop them

avgcorrection3• 3 years ago

As your President, I promise to be tough on crime and UFOs, unlike my opponent over there.

numlock86• 3 years ago

So the Raptor is all about shooting down balloons?

US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

Related Stories