US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64614098

by vinni2 • 3 years ago

221 467 3 years ago

bbc.com

Multicomp• 3 years ago

Surely this is not the world's slowest declaration of war?

Whoever country is sending whatever these artificial objects are, what can they possibly gain from this?

ajsnigrutin3• 3 years ago

I was joking in the other thread, that soon people will be buying weather baloons and setting them off "for the lulz" (youtube videos, tiktok, or whatever) :)

ALittleLight2• 3 years ago

I would watch a TikTok of "F22 shoots down my balloon."

zabzonk2• 3 years ago

usa vs canada!

it has happened before.

ineedasername• 3 years ago

Pig War 2.0!

enra• 3 years ago

Could be for observing the response of US.

Russia did, and I guess still does, this a lot. Flying their planes constantly in European airspace to see if what the response is and also make it more normal occurrence. If they one day attack it’s harder to tell if this again one of those random times or an actual attack

partiallypro8• 3 years ago

That is one of the reasons the US left the Open Skies treaty, Russia kept breaking the agreement doing things like that making the entire thing a handicap to the US.

hindsightbias• 3 years ago

Trolling is cheap

drekipus3• 3 years ago

Trolling is a art

lsh1232• 3 years ago

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

whoisthemachine• 3 years ago

The Soviets recovered many of these balloons and their temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened film[8][9][10] would later be used in the Luna 3 probe to capture the first images of the far side of the Moon.

Poetic.

bullfightonmars• 3 years ago

War? Chill with the historonics. Surveillance is not war.

bagels• 3 years ago

Shooting missiles at aircraft can be though.

crystalmeph2• 3 years ago

I don’t know exactly how fast the air currents at 40,000-60,000 feet will drive a balloon, but I would assume that this most recent balloon was already airborne by the time the previous one was discovered. As long as they don’t launch anymore starting last week, this particular episode should wind down peacefully.

As to why use balloons instead of satellites, the most reasonable speculation I’ve seen is that they’re collecting signals intelligence (radio traffic, etc.) which is not accessible from orbital distances.

LarryMullins• 3 years ago

Large controllable balloons could probably be 'recalled' by instructing them to crash into the ocean. If any more big ones like the first balloon show up, it's probably on purpose.

singularity2001• 3 years ago

The hawaii balloon had ground measuring lasers

dqpb4• 3 years ago

I propose we launch our own balloons, with razor blades. Last balloon wins. World's slowest war.

andrewflnr2• 3 years ago

Actually, though, sling some detcord over the enemy balloon and set it off... (I don't know if detcord really works like that, but I'm pretty sure razor blades won't do the job either. :D)

option• 3 years ago

are Canada’s air forces non existent?

lom• 3 years ago

In the article it said both forces scrambled to down it, but it seems like the americans just got luckier.

Yoric• 3 years ago

According to the article, they were also dispatched.

I guess the US air forces received order to shoot earlier?

capableweb• 3 years ago

Second paragraph:

Both Canadian and US aircraft were scrambled to track down the object which Trudeau says was taken out by a US F-22.

So clearly not.

Waterluvian2• 3 years ago

The article answers the question pretty early on: both air forces scrambled fighters.

NORAD is NORAD. They collaborate very closely and it becomes kind of moot who specifically does what.

berkut• 3 years ago

Their F-18s can't fly as high (without doing zoom climbs) as the F-22 (which has very large control surfaces which help with this).

Rebelgecko2• 3 years ago

Does the plane have to be at the same altitude to launch the missiles?

arecurrence• 3 years ago

It was shot down in the Yukon, jets from Alaska were likely the closest to the target.

version_five• 3 years ago

Canada contributes to North American air defence and it's F-18s (to become F-35s) fly norad missions. Americans also contribute, and obviosuly have more fighters. The article says both countries dispatched planes, the americans ended up shooting it down. It was over the Yukon which is very close to Alaska so not surprising both were present. It would have been a bit odd if it was over saskatoon or something

kzrdude• 3 years ago

Compare with UK and Ireland, where Ireland indeed has a non existant air force and UK a right to defend.

marcell• 3 years ago

How much if this is just awareness bias, where the media reports commonplace events that were previously ignored?

mancerayder• 3 years ago

It's much more likely that the US government is wanting to tell the press, leak to the press and get the spin cycle going. There are spy events all the time, it's rare something gets actually reported proportionally.

kneebonian3• 3 years ago

I've noticed that as well recently an increase in coverage of Ukraine and antagonistic articles of China while at the same time what could be termed as "anti-woke" media.

Seems to me like the military-propaganda apparatus is spinning up to prepare the populace for a war. But it's more of a gut feeling at this point.

avalys• 3 years ago

The response is certainly novel. The F-22 had zero recorded air-to-air kills a week ago, and as of today has three.

Whether these intrusions by unknown objects were commonplace and previously had been ignored, is something I've wondered about myself.

jpalomaki• 3 years ago

Based on quick search, these have been happening also before.

"an official revealed during a briefing on Saturday that the U.S. was aware of three other instances during the prior administration and one instance earlier in the Biden administration that such an apparatus “transited” the country."

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3844511-chinese-balloons-...

partiallypro8• 3 years ago

Yeah, but if you read, they didn't know about the incidents until well after they happened; also, they never shared if they were over US coastal waters or over actual US soil.

dham• 3 years ago

Anytime the media gets focused on unimportant things like this, I'm looking to see what the actual news is? Is it the Ohio train thing? Covid treatment stuff? Who knows?

dinkumthinkum4• 3 years ago

Slow news day?

POiNTx• 3 years ago

I wonder what the cost is of sending such a balloon vs shooting it down. If I was China I would be sending thousands of these. It's not going to cause an all out war, but it does impose some security threat which should be dealt with and can't be ignored.

digdigdag2• 3 years ago

I don't see how China would willfully continue send these balloons without expecting a symmetrical escalation. Sure, they managed to send a few relatively undetected until the past recent weeks, but continued attempts would surely produce a physical response from NATO states, whether that's sending balloons of their own or overflying Chinese territory with other aircraft, or increased signals intelligence operations.

interestica• 3 years ago

symmetrical escalation

So like what, a similar but bigger balloon?

legitster• 3 years ago

The last two objects shot down were not balloons.

infradig• 3 years ago

Source for that?

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

This is the wrong question. Large militaries spend a fortune anyway on firing ordnance anyway for training purposes. Doing so in actually uncertain conditions is in many ways more valuable than pre-planned exercises. There's also a political attention focusing effect that allows rapid realignment of priorities away from status0quo maintenance towards novel readiness postures. So in strategic terms, it can be a net benefit rather than a net cost.

The flip side of this is adversarial observer(s) can learn all sorts of things about readiness, detection networks, response times, and tactical doctrine if well-prepared in advance to acquire and integrate that information.

Kinda wish I had a way to bet on the popularity of search terms because I can practically hear the rattle of doctrinal articles being furiously drafted at military institutions of higher learning right now.

cma• 3 years ago

It might not be the best thing to do our training with complex adversarial information gathering devices rather than more inert target dummies under our control.

ALittleLight2• 3 years ago

I've not looked into it - but it's possible there is zero or negative cost to shooting down a small number of balloons. Imagine each pilot needs X hours of training or to fire Y missiles in training. A couple balloon missions could just replace training exercises, on net saving money because we wouldn't need to setup the target.

ianburrell2• 3 years ago

Also, the US has a ton of Sidewinder missiles. I thought I saw 20,000 of AIM-9X; it is at least 5,000. The US may have a ton of older variants but it sounded like they need the imaging sensor in the new variant for balloons.

There may be cheaper ways to shoot down balloons. Unguided rockets might work. There are guided rockets that would work better and still be cheap.

GenerocUsername• 3 years ago

Foreign countries providing our training targets free of charge!

abduhl• 3 years ago

So the F-22 is now 3-0 against balloons? And people had the audacity to call this plane a "failure"!

deadlydose• 3 years ago

Would you prefer they only shoot down living targets or are you just here for the snark?

drekipus3• 3 years ago

I think it was a joke dude.

vba6162• 3 years ago

Who called the F-22 a failure? Are you thinking of the F-35?

And anyway, isn't the F-22 due to be retired before the end of the decade, so wouldn't debating its merits be beating a dead horse?

partiallypro8• 3 years ago

Even F-35 criticisms don't hold all that much water, at least in terms of cost, given they are actually cheaper than the F-14 was when you adjust for inflation.

HyperSane• 3 years ago

The F-22 was never called a failure. The main criticism is that we didn't make enough of them.

yokem55• 3 years ago

Well, it has a very niche application. It is absolutely the best at what it does, but an air superiority/dominance fighter is not typically useful in the conflicts that the US has been involved in since the F-22 entered service. The fact that it has been in service for almost 15 years before seeing any air to air action has meant it has been a cost that is tricky to justify.

none_to_remain• 3 years ago

So how long has the CCP been sending these balloons and what caused the USG to start talking about them?

colechristensen• 3 years ago

There was a big one easily observed by ordinary people which got news attention. This is why it’s being talked about now.

Alifatisk3• 3 years ago

So in other words, China have been doing this a long time and it wasn’t up until now when the public noticed it that the US interfered?

godelski2• 3 years ago

They've been doing it for a few years. The US did it in the 50's. The reason we're talking about them is two fold: 1) the "first" one had such a massive payload that people could see the object from the ground. People were posting a bunch online even before the media picked it up. 2) It became a political issue about the US's strength in response to China. That amplifies the former to be a larger and broader discussion(s).

This could also indicate China's surveillance capabilities. Need to use balloons to get high resolution rather than relying on satellite imagery (kinda why we don't really use U2s anymore and why that Trump tweet was seen as a big deal). It could also be trolling. It could also be testing (including of cameras that would be put on satellites). It is hard to say anything with certainty tbh. Militaries work in secrecy and that's why information is so valuable (despite what many think). But the objects will be recovered and you'd be surprised what can be reverse engineered from an exploded pile of scrap.

userbinator• 3 years ago

...with Canada's permission; I think that should be said explicitly.

marstall• 3 years ago

article states that it was on Canada's orders.

I didn't know that was a thing, Canadian PM having the power to command US jets.

Can anyone who knows more about NORAD weigh in with an ELI5?

kylehotchkiss2• 3 years ago

Authorize US jets you mean? Canada is a close US ally, norad allows both US and Canada to learn about the object at the same time, and US may have offered to shoot it down with Canada’s permission since we probably have some new patrols in the area since Friday’s ballon

dehrmann• 3 years ago

Maybe they played the NATO card.

larrywright2• 3 years ago

NORAD is North American Aerospace Defense. It’s bi-national - both US and Canada.

JohnBooty8• 3 years ago

Because of our shared landmass USA and Canada cooperate closely via NORAD.

The US and Canada have gameplanned for all sorts of scenarios similar to this, and up to and including full nuclear war. They have established playbooks for alllllll kinds of scenarios. Because when shit goes down, you there is NO TIME to gameplan. No, you pull binder #568 off of the shelf and get to work executing gameplan #568, "US jets pursue craft into Canada" or whatever.

There is a playbook for this kind of thing, and they are following it. The playbook possibly does include some kind of explicit authorization from the Canadian PM for the final shootdown.

So in reality this is certainly more "Trudeau authorized it" than "ordered it", because the US and Canada definitely can't order each other do things. However, for obvious optics purposes, they phrased it as "Trudeau ordered the shootdown." Because it looks sort of weak to the untrained eye if Trudeau just sort of allowed it.

However, the actual wording is sort of irrelevant. The reality is that it was a fairly seamless bit of cooperation between two close allies.

peeters• 3 years ago

It's not so much that he commanded US jets, he gave an order for the object to be shot down by the first able aircraft, and included authorization for that to be US aircraft. I don't anything is implying that the US pilot bypassed US chain of command to do so. Trudeau had obviously been discussing strategy with the US, but it's important for Canadian sovereignty for the order to come from Canada.

le-mark• 3 years ago

This is third shoot down we’ve been told about. First was the Chinese balloon, second was the small less maneuverable vehicle off of Alaska, and this third one in Canadian airspace. Feels like some cold conflict we’ve been unaware of is heating up.

MonkeyMalarky3• 3 years ago

Yup, a switch has been flipped. Actions that may or may not have happened in the past, and are happening now, are no longer being tolerated. Between this and the CHIPS act I expect the current divestment from China to go from a trickle to flood..

ProAm• 3 years ago

"We have always been at war with Eastasia"

dinkumthinkum4• 3 years ago

I think TikTok is probably the most successful weapon so far, and not because of spying or privacy concerns.

jb1991• 3 years ago

not because of spying or privacy concerns

go on... why is that?

rgbrenner3• 3 years ago

I think China erred by sending such a large balloon that was visible to the naked eye, causing the American public to demand it be shot down.

There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins.. a lot of times they fly too high for planes to reach, and under certain circumstances balloons are allowed through national airspace.. so if the balloon isn't causing a problem (like being a hazard to air traffic), people just ignore it... weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time.

But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down, even if it caused an international incident.. and luckily nothing serious happened. So now that the cat is out of the bag, we're going to shoot down every balloon that hasnt filed all of the required paperwork that enters out airspace that's reachable by our aircraft... because 1) the public demands it; 2) it'll become political fodder if the white house doesn't; and 3) the international issue it generates is easier for the white house to handle than the political criticism.

If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.

Edit: bobbyjo pointed out this link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/chinese-balloon-carried-antenna...

Since that likely settles the balloons intent… we can add 4) now that we know it’s a spy balloon, we’re going to shoot down all the balloons. Before the large balloon was shot down, no one would have bothered to check. No one is stopping weather balloons at the border. Big mistake on chinas part.

themodelplumber2• 3 years ago

They are probably going to keep making blunders like this, now that internal leadership (source of many internal blunders in recent years) has been consolidated / stabilized, and they are still aiming for more international power.

The degree of de facto stabilization will dictate whether e.g. the US may be able to transform this opportunity into an effective new policy framework aimed at leverage in rather obvious blind spots. That could be pretty huge.

I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.

Right now Chinese leadership does not want to be seen "bending" in this way or that, by their internal audience. But not doing so is a huge risk factor for them in international diplomacy.

Whether the US or any other country really takes advantage of the opportunity and resulting partial leadership vacuum in the international space will be interesting to see.

8ytecoder• 3 years ago

It's the classic dilemma that most people who prefer expedient governance don't always understand. When a government is paralysed by too much bureaucracy and corruption, everyone craves for something lean and expedient. Anyone who wants to combat that will want to consolidate power. Once they have successfully consolidated - usually by eliminating anyone in the way irrespective of whether they're someone who speak truth to power or a bureaucrat trying to preserve their fiefdom - all that's left are the yes-men. Then starts the bungling and fumbling and doubling down and over-corrections.

DoctorNick• 3 years ago

I have a hunch that we'll also see an increasing number of opportunities for the US or other nations to effectively call out China's future tendency toward expeditionary blunders in South America, Africa, etc.

Yeah, that’s OUR racket!

raverbashing• 3 years ago

And might I add, their reaction after it was shot down was anything but reassuring (that it was just a weather balloon)

godelski2• 3 years ago

If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.

As evidence to this claim, you'll see that many articles are actively discussing the fact that these balloons are relatively common. The big difference here, American citizens could see this object with just their eyes (uncommon for a balloon). I do buy the argument that China overplayed their hand.

dirtyid10• 3 years ago

erred by sending such a large

I surmise you need large balloon to carry required instruments on one platform. Going forward IMO PRC just going to fly them higher, US can keep shooting them down... possible until they can't, both will reveal US capabilities. At minimum, finding out f22 + missile ceiling is worth the cost. PRC isn't going to stop program just because US domestic politics goes full retard, if anything, that's strategically exploitable especially if PRC can make current WH admin look weak by flying a balloon at height that can't be shot down. Medium/long term, PRC building/exposing CONUS vunerability is net benefitial for PRC posture - it's their version of, in DoD parlance, integrated deterence. IMO US analysis missing strategic calculus on PRC side.

Overtonwindow• 3 years ago

Serious question: was there ever any doubt that US military could shoot something down out of the sky no matter how high it flies? If they are doing this to determine capabilities, it's like staking at a grocery store to see if it sells milk.

Ancapistani2• 3 years ago

Higher would be more expensive to shoot down, but given that we have missiles designed to shoot down satellites - at least in LEO - I don’t think it’ll be possible to use altitude as a means of evading response.

jjtheblunt2• 3 years ago

You could just pop them with a laser instead of bothering to scramble jets and missiles, I’d think.

Vecr• 3 years ago

I don't think they can send a balloon the US can't shoot down, but the problem with using ground or sea based interceptors, or longer range jet-launched missiles launched from below is identification and proper targeting. The US might not want to take the risk of hitting the wrong thing/a misidentified object.

golem142• 3 years ago

I actually wonder why not burn holes in them by laser… maybe the US doesn’t want to show their capabilities, but that was the first thing that came to mind

s3p• 3 years ago

I don't fully agree with the political assessment because the WH gave the Pentagon permission to shoot it down when they deemed appropriate. They didn't order the pentagon to do it immediately. I'm not sure (someone please chime in if you know) if the WH 'ordered' the Pentagon to shoot it down in the sense that it HAD to come out of the air at some point, or if the message was just "shoot it down if you think that's the best thing to do".

colanderman2• 3 years ago

With respect to judging nuance, I think you're giving the American public too much credit.

Consultant324522• 3 years ago

US officials explicitly said recovering the payload was a high priority. In part, that is why they chose that particular location to shoot it down. https://www.businessinsider.com/us-officials-recovering-chin...

kylehotchkiss2• 3 years ago

Weather balloons are tiny, enough so they need to attach a specific device to reflect radar signals properly and these massive payloads are not innocent climate collection devices

rgbrenner3• 3 years ago

That's speculation on your part. The DoD has not released any information on what the payload of any of these balloons contains.

And going by the size isn't conclusive. The ICESat-2 weather satellite is over 3000lbs, for example. So instruments larger than found on a typical weather balloon clearly do have their place in weather/climate science.

benatkin• 3 years ago

Maybe in the near future you won't be able to attach a full tube of toothpaste to a weather balloon and send it high up into the air, just a 3 oz size.

chipsa• 3 years ago

Weather balloons are tiny, yes, but they aren't tracked by radar anymore. Generally, it's a set of meteorological instruments and a GPS to track the location. It's a bit easier to get that to work, as you no longer need to make sure your radar works, but rather, just that the GPS is working before you let go. That said, payload is substantially smaller than these things (<1 kg for current tech).

ksherlock2• 3 years ago

There's no hard rule about where national airspace ends and space begins

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? There's no hard rule about when life begins but killing a 5 year old isn't a 22nd trimester abortion, it's murder. 18-60'000 feet is class A, controlled airspace in the US and Canada.

When the US sent U2s over the USSR, the rationale wasn't that 70,000 feet was "space", it was that it was that 70,000 feet was too high for soviet radars detect and and soviet planes to intercept.

oceliker2• 3 years ago

What does that have to do with the price of tea in China?

What does this mean? I don’t see a reference to tea in the comment you are replying to.

dinkumthinkum4• 3 years ago

I don’t know where the parent got their wrong information but US airspace is pretty clear to anyone that knows anything about aviation. It’s not sone vague thing no one can define. That’s pretty silly.

cdot22• 3 years ago

Ranking members of the previous administration have publicly denied that there were any previous balloons and no evidence has been presented that there were previous similar incidents.

amanaplanacanal2• 3 years ago

No evidence has been presented to us. It sounds like the info came from the intelligence community, and they likely wouldn’t tell how they know what they know.

belter2• 3 years ago

The second object has not been called a balloon by US Air Command. Most interesting are some reports of pilots saying the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes. [1]

Interfering with F-22 sensors? If they sent an airborne jamming platform over US space it's serious.

On a more positive note, now that private observers report the skies over the Artic, Northern Canada and Alaska border, have a constant presence of AWACS and other multiple airplane sorties, the Aliens everybody was talking about here days ago, seem to have vanished...

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-obj...

bombcar• 3 years ago

Pilots always claim sensor interference- it covers any mistakes they may have made.

IAmGraydon• 3 years ago

"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.

Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."

This article and any other that mentions these two things has absolutely no source for the statement. There is a 0.0% chance F22 pilots are talking to the press, so I really believe this is a complete fabrication.

thorawayz3• 3 years ago

There are absolutely hard rules about national airspace, what the hell do you think the ICAO exists for?

https://www.icao.int/APAC/Documents/edocs/International%20Ai...

TheCoelacanth• 3 years ago

Conspicuously absent from that document are any vertical measurements. At exactly what altitude national airspace stops is not clearly established.

sockaddr• 3 years ago

Too clever by half

ryan_j_naughton• 3 years ago

We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.

One plausible (though entirely speculative) explanation could be they wanted the US to react this way. Now we will waste our military resources responding to these balloons and they in turn will learn about our military readiness. They could be intentionally probing and start sending smaller and smaller balloons to figure out where our detection limit is. They could want to understand how information flows and decisions are made by our government and have already tapped into other intelligence signals that this pen test is helping them monitor.

Again all speculation. But my fundamental point is you don't know their intention to know if they erred.

Animats• 3 years ago

We are totally clueless about the PRC's objective to say whether they erred.

We don't even know if it was the PRC's object. The PRC has taken responsibility for the first balloon, but denies involvement with this one. This isn't a big-budget project. A startup company or a university could launch some balloon-borne instrument package.

It's going to be embarrassing if it turns out to be somebody's solar telescope or high altitude pollution instrument package, both of which have been launched on balloons of that size.

jasmer• 3 years ago

It doesn't matter what their 'objectives' are really.

Yeah they are not worried about our 'detection limits' and definitely not 'wasting our resources'.

They might possibly be hoping to pick up some F22 signatures or something like that but even then very unlikely. They have ships that can do that.

And given the 'free publicity' the China Hawks are going to get (not quite 'Sputnik Moment' but a bit like that) I suggest it can't bode well for them, unless are playing real 3D chess and some internal guy is trying to get America to 'wake up' so as to prevent a war!

It's definitely a wierd one.

colanderman2• 3 years ago

Might not be a probe of military capability, but rather a probe of diplomatic stance. US govt is forced to make a statement about the balloon -- which normally they wouldn't care about -- to the public: US govt can choose to either lie and save face for China, saying it was a weather balloon, thus demonstrating earnestness in building relations, or tell the truth and say it was a spy balloon, thus demonstrating unwillingness to paper over such a diplomatic faux pas.

prepend• 3 years ago

learn about our military readiness

I suspect they won’t learn much other than how the US responds to balloons. It’s not like the US is revealing anything novel or secret. They’ve used already unclassified and publicly available aircraft and ordinance.

CyanBird• 3 years ago

...because 1) the public demands it;

An appropriate quote to the situation

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. ...We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. ...In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons...who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.”

- Edward Bernays, Propaganda 1927

everdrive• 3 years ago

If China never sent that large balloon.. they could have sent a dozen more small ones and no one would have cared.. just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration.

But we certainly _should_ have cared. People want to turn this in a purely objective moral game. "Well we've spied on China, so therefore this is fine." If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours." The advantages that China can take against us matter, and it's important not to be reflexively passive.

SQueeeeeL• 3 years ago

If you think of it more in terms of war, you'd never draw such an equivalence: "Well, we've shot down their planes so it's fine that they shoot down ours."

People make these equivalencies constantly. Fortunately I don't think either side has been dumb enough to kill an soldier from the other yet, but once we get that pot cooking, WWIII here we come!

VoodooJuJu• 3 years ago

But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down

1. Where can one find evidence of this mass demand?

2. How does the US government gauge this mass demand without formal voting/polling?

Were people phoning their senators, "SHOOT IT DOWN!"? I'm sure crazies phone in all kinds of things from time to time - what's the threshold for acting on demands/mass demand?

weard_beard2• 3 years ago

The change.org poll really blew up.

tdehnel• 3 years ago

This is a really long winded way of displaying your contempt for your fellow citizens.

Sporktacular• 3 years ago

"But the US public saw this massive balloon and demanded it be shot down"

You mean saw with their eyes or on the news? If it was with their eyes then it wouldn't lead to public demand since as you say "weather balloons fly through our airspace all the time." and there's no way to attribute it to another country. If it's on the news then physical size is not relevant but detectability and newsworthiness are. People would have cared.

ecf2• 3 years ago

just like we never cared about the 3 during the previous administration

Trying to stir up an impeachment case over the response to the first balloon is just projection as usual from the GOP.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/border-free-biden-republica...

cebu• 3 years ago

Jets seem to be eclipsing balloons as the dominant air combatant

FormerBandmate• 3 years ago

Those Wright Brothers might be onto something. Wonder if you could use their “aeroplane” to travel across the world

brindidrip2• 3 years ago

I don't know why everyone is so quick to label these other objects as balloons.

rolenthedeep• 3 years ago

Because we very famously shot down a balloon and everyone is talking about the balloon that we shot down from the air and now there's more objects being shot down from the air and everyone is talking about it.

The government is apparently not saying what these objects were, so people are assuming they're balloons.

PonySoldier• 3 years ago

Seriously! All official statements so far have been pretty clear that they're not labeling it a balloon (yet).

A CNN correspondent [0] just claimed that there were conflicting statements from the pilots that it interfered with their sensors as they approached it. And that they couldn't figure out how it was staying in the air. I have no idea where she got those updates, but it certainly adds mystery to the situation.

[0] https://twitter.com/i/status/1624544183208890369

Alifatisk3• 3 years ago

That’s little scary

dqpb4• 3 years ago

Asked if was "balloon-like," the official said, "All I say is that it wasn't 'flying' with any sort of propulsion, so if that is 'balloon-like' well -- we just don't have enough at this point."

randerson• 3 years ago

The US Government shooting down an Unidentified Flying Object sounds like the start of a science fiction film. If there were ever a bad time and place for actual aliens to come visit...

Ancapistani2• 3 years ago

The most interesting thing to me is that the US federal government isn’t calling them “balloons” - or even “lighter than air craft”. It leaves open a lot of conspiracy type theories, and I just don’t see the motivation to do that

It “feels” to me like there’s something more than US/China brinksmanship going on.

l3mure• 3 years ago

It leaves open a lot of conspiracy type theories, and I just don’t see the motivation to do that

Really? You can't think of any reason the US government would be happy to stir up disinfo and bullshit? I mean...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/us-using-...

Multiple U.S. officials acknowledged that the U.S. has used information as a weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high. Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect, as with chemical agents, and other times, as an official put it, the U.S. is just “trying to get inside Putin’s head.”

Emphasis mine.

booleandilemma2• 3 years ago

The US government loves to tease the public with speculation of aliens and UFOs for some reason.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/04/27/politics/pentagon-ufo-videos/...

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/ufo-report-go...

https://www.foxnews.com/science/nasa-team-study-ufos-release...

zxcvbn4038• 3 years ago

The first tic-tac they shoot at is going to kick their ass. No offense America but my money is on our alien overlords to win.

krapp3• 3 years ago

No offense America but my money is on our alien overlords to win.

Motherfucker when we all get shipped off to the cobalt mines on Rigel you're getting a blaster bolt up the ass.

pmontra• 3 years ago

Let's say we're at war with Alpha Centaury. They'll get news of the downing of their flying cylinder in 2027 and will retaliate in 2032. If they can't send much more than a few small ships the logistic is pretty bad for them. Even if they are loaded with nukes, it's not much damage on the planetary scale. If they can send one thousand, it's a different matter.

anigbrowl4• 3 years ago

They're really beating a dead horse at this point.

detrites• 3 years ago

Is there a plausible explanation as to why the US government has not announced objects 2 & 3 are balloons, if they are balloons? They call them "objects", yet must know what they are. They wouldn't randomly missile unknowns.

If it's for reasons of secrecy, why announce it at all? The second one was in the middle of nowhere, it could easily have been ignored, or dismissed as a military exercise if anyone had made a fuss about it.

yumraj• 3 years ago

Could be Drones?

consumer4512• 3 years ago

Drones have relatively limited range.

dogma11384• 3 years ago

Because at least the 2nd object wasn’t, it was described as a cylinder about the size of a car which is where all the UFO tic-tac victory mark memes came from.

krapp3• 3 years ago

Because at least the 2nd object wasn’t, it was described as a cylinder about the size of a car

Source?

dtx1• 3 years ago

Yeah, source please, i have not read anything about this and that would be HIGHLY interesting.

thorawayz3• 3 years ago

I recall there being myths of third Reich cigar UFOs.

Maybe Blue Beam is in effect.

stevenhuang2• 3 years ago

Could be they thought it was a balloon originally hence the immediate press conference, but now they've received conflicting accounts from the pilots (some reported experiencing sensor interference for example) so they're not sure what they are anymore.

Apparently the Alaska object shattered upon impact against the ice. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/02/pentagon-shoots-down...

bmitc• 3 years ago

I know this is Hollywood magic thinking, but in the the spirit of no dumb questions, for an object like this, are there no capture devices besides just letting it crash?

notatoad• 3 years ago

most plausibly it's because it's a balloon carrying something, not just a balloon, and the bit that is worth shooting down is the bit that's not a balloon.

they said the second object was freely drifting and not self-propelled or guided, so whether it's technically a balloon or just something that behaves like a balloon is kind of irrelevant to anybody who isn't working for whatever government department is tasked with analyzing it.

partiallypro8• 3 years ago

They are now saying they don't know how it was staying airborne (no visible balloon or propulsion) and when they approached to observe it interfered with instrumentation.

Source: https://twitter.com/ZaidSabah/status/1624527081026486274

justin665• 3 years ago

"They" are definitely not speaking for the US government.

nop_slide• 3 years ago

There’s also a 4th over Montana right now.

nmeofthestate2• 3 years ago

Turned out to be a radar anomaly AIUI.

datavirtue4• 3 years ago

Right, I feel like I'm taking crazy pills reading this thread. Just because we shot down a balloon recently everyone on here seems to assume the two new objects are also balloons.

canadiantim• 3 years ago

I think this time it legit actually is aliens. Buckle up.

unsupp0rted3• 3 years ago

Why would aliens show up this way?

tremon• 3 years ago

Because they need to get over the border wall somehow?

dumbaccount1236• 3 years ago

Any reason they would not? Maybe they just caught this time. I'm being serious btw

pengaru• 3 years ago

It's never aliens.

Alifatisk3• 3 years ago

Will we ever get to know what this ufo actually was?

brindidrip2• 3 years ago

Foreign Ministry of Defense for Canada confirmed it was not a balloon, but a small cylindrical object.

ANumberlessMan• 3 years ago

Do we know it wasn't just random lightweight trash that has been blown out of proportion?

thorawayz3• 3 years ago

It's like nobody hear listens to George Knapp or anyone who's been saying "the propulsion tech exists, it's not a question of if but how, who and why"

dumbaccount1236• 3 years ago

"Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes"

"Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet."

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/politics/unidentified-object-...

"It was described as "cylindrical and silver-ish gray" and seemed to be floating, a U.S. official said."

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-shoots-high-altitude-obje...

"Defense Department official said it broke into pieces"

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-...

That sounds vaguely similar to the one purportedly shot down over Russia last month:

"Vasily Golubev, the governor of Rostov oblast, wrote on Telegram that a "small-size object in the shape of a ball" had been discovered flying "in the wind" at an altitude of around one and a half miles on January 3."

Any connection to the spherical metallic ball UFO caught over Iraq by U.S. reconnaissance aircraft in 2016?

https://nypost.com/2023/01/24/possible-ufo-caught-on-camera-...

2014 Chilean Navy UFO looks pretty similar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEK3YC_BKTI&ab_channel=FoxNe...

As does the U.S. Navy footage of a UFO caught off the coast of San Diego in 2019:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz-6jRrbtuI&ab_channel=TODAY

Another similar looking metallic sphere UFO caught by the U.S. Navy in 2021:

https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/K5ohaoh2ayfECjmuxtczQJ-970...

Waterluvian2• 3 years ago

Is it just me or does this sound unremarkable?

If we take one question mark from each event, we can construct a very spooky narrative. But none of the question marks, on their own, seem all that peculiar.

graderjs3• 3 years ago

HN vibe when ET life is finally acknowledged by government: “ is it just me or does this sound unremarkable? I mean think about it the universe is so big. We’ve always welcomed open minded scientific inquiry on this forum, I don’t think any of us ever seriously doubted we’d eventually find ET life. Why is this on front page? Let’s get back to bickering over the latest shiny tech fad.” Hehe

awestley• 3 years ago

Sounds like a shiny balloon to me.

dumbaccount1236• 3 years ago

Funny, they confirmed it was unmanned but they refuse to confirm whether its a balloon. Bit weird don't you think?

kakapo88• 3 years ago

It seems the aliens are invading by balloon. No one saw that coming.

TEP_Kim_Il_Sung• 3 years ago

Sounds like an MKV to me. Could be in response to the ICBM.

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/RnofCyaWhI0

partiallypro8• 3 years ago

jimbo9991• 3 years ago

Lmao "seemed to be floating".

RajT882• 3 years ago

Before we jump to alien spacecraft, the US Government was quite forthcoming about this even, so let's see what they say when they gather up all the wreckage and analyze it.

We're rolling into an election season, and the minority party loves conspiracies. I have a good feeling that information will be shared shortly about what they shot down.

dqpb4• 3 years ago

Is there nothing we can send up to take a picture of it?

Edit: ffs, Do the downvotes mean "obviously there is" or "obviously there isn't"?

kps2• 3 years ago

Not a downvoter, but yes, ‘we’ (governments) have airplanes, but that doesn't mean ‘we’ (you and I) get to see the pictures.

drekipus3• 3 years ago

ffs, Do the downvotes mean "obviously there is" or "obviously there isn't"?

Downvotes on HN are handed out like candy to mean anything. Some people think obviously there is, and so downvote, others will think there isn't and downvote. Others think this is a stupid idea and will downvote. Others might think it's a good idea but disagree with the way you framed to the question

I wouldn't really worry too much about the votes here. They mean nothing.

I predict I will get downvoted on this comment, I don't know what it's meant to signify.

riddleronroof• 3 years ago

What are the chances these are warnings by another power for Ukraine?

nl• 3 years ago

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/f-22-shoots-down-new-o...

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40638/what-we-know-abo...

larrywright2• 3 years ago

Tangentially related, but this site (and its editor, Tyler Rogoway) are my go-to news source for anything military aviation related. Consistently great reporting. He’s worth a follow on Twitter [0] if this sort of thing is of any interest to you.

[0] https://twitter.com/aviation_intel

dqpb4• 3 years ago

Used to be that everything was explained away as "probably just a weather balloon".

Now, when asked specifically if it was a balloon, the govt is like "Welllll...I can say it used no method of propulsion known to science, so if that's balloon-like..."

rossjudson• 3 years ago

Sucks to be an alien right now.

birdymcbird• 3 years ago

if this alien then bigger danger for human.

civilization that travel how many light year to get here possess technology human identify to be magic or God.

terrifying to think at least to me :)

booleandilemma2• 3 years ago

Not necessarily: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Not_Taken_(short_stor...

poly_morphis2• 3 years ago

Maybe "they" have been here all along.

alsaaro2• 3 years ago

Reuters sacrificed common sense for sensationalism, these are drones/balloons, not alien space craft, and everyone knows it.

Clickbait!

typeofhuman• 3 years ago

What's your proof?

idlewords2• 3 years ago

The headline and article say "unidentified cylindrical object", not alien spacecraft.

halayli• 3 years ago

You're confusing unidentified flying objects (UFOs) and aliens.

geraldwhen• 3 years ago

UFO just means unidentified.

alsaaro2• 3 years ago

Yeah, but my point is UFO means alien craft in popular parlance, hence the clickbait.

ihatepython• 3 years ago

This is a bit embarassing, but that was actually my balloon. Sorry guys

i_have_to_speak• 3 years ago

99 Luftballons.. As Griffin would say, "uh oh, we're in this one"..

ourmandave• 3 years ago

They keep going at this rate, we'll get to 99 before mid March.

c3534l• 3 years ago

I wonder if they're trying to figure out what we can detect and we're giving them all the information they need by publically shooting these down.

crayboff3• 3 years ago

I'm convinced that's why the balloons haven't been shot down in the past. Learning our detection abilities is probably way more important for China than anything they would be able to take a picture of.

AlbertCory2• 3 years ago

Yeah, I don't think that's it. Detecting a balloon doesn't take any exotic technology.

Now a hypersonic missile, or a stealth plane -- that would be a test. But losing one of those would be pretty expensive.

mc32• 3 years ago

People can see these with the naked eye (or with cameras). If our sophisticated defense systems are failing to match the naked eye... something is wrong.

laidoffamazon3• 3 years ago

We spent multiple days soaking information from them and monitoring them from high altitude. We almost definitely know more about them than they know about our defenses.

The immediate assumption that the Americans are being snookered comes off like reflexive anti-Americanism.

jahewson• 3 years ago

If you’ve got it, flaunt it.

RajT882• 3 years ago

My gut feeling, having read all about how the balloon was NBD, and it wasn't worth the risk of shooting down over land, it happens all the time, etc., was that the publicity of an airspace incursion this time around required a response along the lines of, "F*CK YOUR BALLOON!".

laidoffamazon3• 3 years ago

I think its usually a bad bet to assume to know better than military intelligence that has been circling these balloons for several days now (and yes, they were right about Iraq, it just was ignored as pretext to invade)

sebastien_b2• 3 years ago

It’s not the US that shot it down - it was NORAD.

pcbro141• 3 years ago

It was a US F-22. The US and NORAD are not mutually exclusive.

1over1376• 3 years ago

Says a lot about the RCAF though: they can't even defend their territory properly.

poly_morphis2• 3 years ago

Did you even read the article?

The Pentagon said the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) detected the object over Alaska late Friday evening. U.S. fighter jets from Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, monitored the object as it crossed over into Canadian airspace, where Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joined the formation.

simlevesque3• 3 years ago

No, that's not how it works, as it is NORAD.

rkagerer• 3 years ago

Trudeau and Biden talked before deciding to shoot it down. Both Canadian and US aircraft were present.

sebastien_b2• 3 years ago

NORAD shot it down, not the US.

aurelien• 3 years ago

Fucking aliens !

kneebonian3• 3 years ago

Closing down Montana airspace, two UFOs shotdown toxic train derailment in OH.... What a weekend.

partiallypro8• 3 years ago

Montana airspace shutdown was just a radar anomaly mixed with a NORAD on higher than usual alert.

bamboozled• 3 years ago

Definitely time to bring back Mulder and Scully from retirement.

1ark• 3 years ago

Again?! They were back as late as of 2018.

ck22• 3 years ago

The plan is obviously bankrupt the US one half-million sidewinder at a time.

How much does 2000 balloons cost?

graphe3• 3 years ago

There’s tons of equipment on it too.

ck22• 3 years ago

Is there though? Doesn't have to be, not anymore.

North Korea wants to agitate world, just release thousands of balloons with sand.

refurb2• 3 years ago

The military loves this stuff. Instead spending money on practice they get to do real intercepts.

tamaharbor• 3 years ago

I, for one, will welcome our new insect overlords.

graphe3• 3 years ago

UFOs are just spy drones with sensor jammers and detectors that are designed to look strange and unnerving to pilots so they will scope them out. Pilots are trained NOT to go by them or engage with them for fear of secrets leaking.

CharlesW• 3 years ago

UFOs are just spy drones with sensor jammers and detectors…

They can be, but they can also be weapons.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

vba6162• 3 years ago

UFOs can be anything, by definition.

The interesting thing here is the social phenomenon of suddenly shooting them all down.

Coincidentally, I was just reading about MH17.

graphe3• 3 years ago

in the context of this discussion,recent times, and the fact the military always sees them around I'd say all of the current UFOs are spy drones.

ErikCorry• 3 years ago

That seems like the best explanation. See https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/40054/adversary-drones... for a fleshed out version of that argument.

I think what changed is that the US decided to stop ignoring the "UFO"s. The Ukraine war has shown how important drones are and it's obvious that drones and balloons will play a huge role in any Taiwanese war.

Invictus0• 3 years ago

FYI: this article has nearly 10k words and a 35 min estimated reading time.

themodelplumber2• 3 years ago

Some, maybe. If you are going to sum up "all UFOs", there's just way too much variety in:

- Size

- Shape (considering that mission profile)

- Movement characteristics

- General capabilities

- Access to nearby air traffic

- Tech being exposed _to_ pilots, e.g. flight envelope capabilities; inter-media transitional capabilities

This is the hand-wave problem with UFOs/UAPs.

Once you start into details, they're really not a single _thing_ anymore by any rational definition.

And this more flexible POV also takes into account the possibility that some _are_ spy drones.

GalenErso• 3 years ago

Pilots are trained NOT to go by them or engage with them for fear of secrets leaking.

Cite your source.

jdrbc• 3 years ago

I wonder if the north american military is concerned about enemy aircraft seeding the countryside with weaponized drones.

exabrial• 3 years ago

Please stop using a $400k missile to shoot down a $300 party favor.

Certainly we could have a kid wave a high powered laser out of a window of a Cessna 172 for 1/10 of the price

Scalene2• 3 years ago

Cessna can't fly high enough. Child can't stabilize laser well enough to do required damage.

brianwawok• 3 years ago

It’s ok we have plenty of those. Good target practice.

quickthrower2• 3 years ago

Weird take.

refurb2• 3 years ago

China and Xi have plainly stated they plan to go toe to toe with the US.

This is just stirring the pot, intentionally so.

cc101• 3 years ago

One effect of this is that China now has more concrete information on North American air defense systems. When analyzing hostile events proceed from the effect backwards to determine motivation.

MichaelMoser1232• 3 years ago

China seems to be testing the US air defense system, is this a sign that China is getting serious over Taiwan?

65a2• 3 years ago

I think so; the volume of comments implying that either:

1. The US is just amplifying this to justify a war

2. The balloons are totally civilian

3. Aliens

Strike me as a relatively coarse influence campaign, notable mainly for its volume. Not sure if the ramp up is to save face, or part of a larger effort. Similar efforts were notable before Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

MichaelMoser1232• 3 years ago

the Russian military had this strange anti-satellite missile test - last January, right before the war. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvdQcDDUV1o

darthrupert3• 3 years ago

The confusing part is: why would enemy propaganda be focused on this relatively obscure board?

nmeofthestate2• 3 years ago

You could be right about that, but Occam's razor (there's lots of morons on the internet) is also a plausible explanation. Maybe a bit of both.

I suspect a lot of "disinformation" by hostile parties just serves to provide the idiots with material that appeals to them, and they run with it.

iancmceachern2• 3 years ago

I really hope not, but this seems to be the most logical non-aliens conclusion I've seen so far

elsonrodriguez• 3 years ago

Taiwan has enough missiles to sink and shoot down a significant portion of China's navy and air-force. This would then open them up to attacks from India or Vietnam to claim territory currently under dispute, and create openings for China's rivals to destabilize their government by agitating existing aggrieved political minorities towards action.

China getting serious over Taiwan would be them creating deeper ties with Taiwan's economy and ruling body, and just waiting a few decades.

FpUser• 3 years ago

I am curious if those "research vessels" carry whole bunch of tiny drones that can be released in places of interest and do some real surveillance.

rlt• 3 years ago

Or worse https://youtu.be/9CO6M2HsoIA

butterlesstoast• 3 years ago

Does anyone else think these have been happening a long time but now they make front paper news because of recent activities?

pyuser583• 3 years ago

Yeah, it seems we’ve just been letting these things fly through our airspace.

37• 3 years ago

Which recent activities? House hearings on weaponization? Hersh's article on Nord Stream? Something else?

thepasswordis• 3 years ago

There's a war happening in Europe right now. That's a pretty major recent activity.

TedDoesntTalk• 3 years ago

The demonization of China is politically advantageous. Publicizing incursions like this assists in the demonization (to be clear, it is think it’s warranted — the amount is espionage perpetrated by China on the US, corporate and cyber and governmental, Is insane)

pphysch• 3 years ago

Nordstream, failing Ukraine war, awkward Syria sanctions + earthquake, Ohio disaster, France protests, etc. Great time for a scapegoat.

ianburrell2• 3 years ago

The spy balloon was bigger than previous and visible from the ground. People were reporting it and forced government to respond.

toomuchtodo3• 3 years ago

China has been providing military support to Russia. With a certain lens, you can see the proxy war growing from Russia and Ukraine to Russia-China and Ukraine-NATO.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/02/04/china-h...

https://www.ft.com/content/3146a413-9aba-4fd4-86a7-671bce0e6...

SamPatt• 3 years ago

Yes. This phenomenon happens all the time. Panics are human nature.

justin665• 3 years ago

Does anyone else think these have been happening a long time but now they make front paper news because of recent activities?

Possibly. I wouldn't use that information to be overly dismissive of the importance of the news. "Well shit, let's just start shooting them down" is a newsworthy change in a government's policy regardless of what it applies to.

ElectricalUnion3• 3 years ago

To me this sounds like a Chinese victory.

If a couple of (supposedly bad and kinda not working) chinese spy baloons were suffient to suddenly make the US go nuts, and spend a lot of defense budget scrambling fighters around and shooting down UFOs, that was a lot of bang for the buck.

westhom3• 3 years ago

I have a strong hunch the US had known about them for a long time and maybe decided it’s better to let them hang out so they can be studied and secretly test measures against them, versus reveal response patterns and weapons capabilities. But something recently has made that calculus change.

lakomen• 3 years ago

I feel like I'm thrown back to the 80s, all this military and fear mongering and propaganda and war.

mouse_• 3 years ago

Except this time, no one under 40 seems to give a shit.

justin665• 3 years ago

I feel like I'm thrown back to the 80s, all this military and fear mongering and propaganda and war.

I can't imagine what sort of lens you were using to view the last thirty years, such that those were the peaceful, propaganda-free times and all this shit with balloons is troubling.

Miraste• 3 years ago

The 80s is too far back, probably 2003 was the last peak, but since it became clear Afghanistan and Iraq were disasters the war propaganda complex was muted for years. Remember when Romney said Russia was the US's biggest threat in 2012, and Obama mocked him? Now both parties are back in on the war machine with Ukraine and Taiwan, and the propaganda's running at levels we haven't seen for twenty years.

csomar• 3 years ago

Both parties seems to be ready for a war. At least, the US seems to want it. Time to prop the propaganda agenda and psychologically prepare the minions.

jeswin• 3 years ago

For all its flaws, I'd take a democracy over the Soviets in the 80s, or CCP/North Korea today. I can't imagine what the world would have looked like if the Soviets had won the cold war, or if the CCP wins the next.

logicalmind• 3 years ago

Under capitalism, man exploits man. Under communism, it's just the opposite.

-John Kenneth Galbraith

ggm• 3 years ago

Most counterfactual fiction in this space has the repressive state continuing to be repressive and normalising "othering" of <bad people> and it's a well trodden path. Robert Harris, Len Deighton, Ira Levin, Yevgeny Zamyatin. Harry Harrison, Ward Moore.

Winning under MAD is moot. There undoubtedly will be losers at scale.

Historians differ if forcing the soviets to bankruptcy was necessarily better than a rapprochement. It worked, sure but like the end of ww1 gave birth to stab in the back rightist views of history, the FSU is now a kleptocracy and minor fights in Africa and the Middle east are now entrenched social cancers.

Afghanistan and the role of US funds to Pakistan on the region. Not a net benefit all told.

throwaway290• 3 years ago

I'm Russian and I am of the same opinion.

darthrupert3• 3 years ago

95% of humanity would also, if they were given a fair choice and knowledge of all those systems.

UberFly2• 3 years ago

Never mind the 80s, I feel like I'm thrown back into the 1950s with all this talk of surveillance balloons. What kind of oddball nonsense is China playing. Haven't they heard of satellites?

doodlebugging9• 3 years ago

I was curious about part of the description given by the pilots who shot down the object off the coast of Alaska. It was described as being at about 40000' altitude (12192 m) and moving about 40 mph (64 kph) with no visible means of propulsion.

To me, that implies that it was drifting in the wind at that altitude since it had no visible means of propulsion.

I took a look at Ventusky (ventusky.com) to try to get an idea of the wind speed at that altitude so that I could know whether 40 mph (64 kph) made any sense.

Ventusky gives wind information at various altitudes though I have no idea how accurate the information may be. I checked the available altitudes for one close to 40000 feet and found a listing for 12000 m (39370 feet). That's close enough for the girls we go with as the old-timers always said.

For several days before the reported shoot-down (use the day selector at the bottom of the screen to see data for each day and the slider for time of day) the reported wind speeds were in the range of 20-35 mph (32-56 kph). As they say, close enough for the girls we go with especially when you consider the likely observational error associated with estimations made from a moving jet.

The first reported sighting of that object was over Nome, Alaska and it was tracked across Alaska until the shoot-down just off the north coast in the Prudhoe Bay area or just east of it.

Backtracking along the jet stream into China, the most likely source for the object, I decided that there was probably a balloon launch facility in north-eastern China, possibly near Harbin since a launch in that city will carry an object along that general route. It was just a guess and someone in one of those twitter threads actually found a balloon launch facility to the southwest of Harbin, near Hohhot that is a much better candidate for the origination point of these objects.

Anyway. It was fun looking at all this stuff but to me, these last two cylindrical things are balloons. The question about whether the balloons serve some intelligence gathering function for the Chinese will likely be answered in the coming days.

w4ffl35• 3 years ago

the chinese have been spying on us navy ships for a long time with drones. the public is just becoming aware because there was a big ufo awareness campaign that ran online for a few years and now we are shooting down their spy crafts.

doodlebugging9• 3 years ago

Yeah. I have been following those reports on The Drive for a long time. It is the most plausible explanation for the events reported by Naval personnel. It still doesn't change the fact that the objects shot down in the last couple of days are probably just balloons or other lighter-than-air crafts. It will be interesting to see how much information the DoD releases.

winddude2• 3 years ago

Maybe penetration testing, testing response times. Could even be trying to monitor various network traffic and communications signals in relation to activities around responses. Lots of possibilities, it's hard not to speculate.

doodlebugging9• 3 years ago

This is true. I could certainly see the utility of a platform like this for passive signals intelligence.

westhom3• 3 years ago

“ Another official from the Department of Defense told the New York Times that the object broke into pieces when it hit the frozen sea” - Guardian article on the Alaska downing

How could a balloon break into pieces? Doesn’t it need to be made of flexible material?

Edit: WSJ is now reporting unnamed sources confirmed Alaska was a metallic balloon w suspended payload.

Arch485• 3 years ago

The balloon typically suspends hardware that serves the actual function; it was likely that hardware that broke into pieces on the ice.

winddude2• 3 years ago

Lighter than air aircraft. Could have been some light weight composite.

doodlebugging9• 3 years ago

Perhaps at the temperatures in that area the material used to construct the balloon becomes brittle enough to shatter. I didn't look at temperature data from that altitude to see whether common materials would lose flexibility.

pohuing• 3 years ago

Not very fun fact: Japan tried to use the jet stream to bomb America via incendiary balloon. It was largely unsuccessful of course, but still a creative way of bridging the Pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb?wprov=sfla1

UberFly2• 3 years ago

Sadly only success was killing a church group out on a Sunday school picnic.

KennyBlanken3• 3 years ago

It was a terror weapon, and only by suppressing news of any incidents involving the devices did it "fail."

coding123• 3 years ago

What happened to UAP. We spent 15 years collectively trying to retrain everyone to say UAP. This world is so weird

JBiserkov• 3 years ago

"What we don’t yet understand is what sorts of technology are in there,” the official said. Are we at war with extraterrestrial aliens without even realizing it?! In all Hollywood movies the aliens attack the US first, so this hypothesis checks out.

ovidiusnaso• 3 years ago

According to the WSJ:

"The latest object appeared to be a small metallic balloon with a tethered payload, according to U.S. officials familiar with the situation."

https://archive.is/HEj6R#selection-319.0-319.139

modzu• 3 years ago

so america's official policy when we meet ET is to shoot first and ask questions later? can we open this debate before we're all exterminated?

mellosouls• 3 years ago

Grossly editorialised (unless the original article title has changed). "UFO" has a particular cultural meaning, and is not used in the article title:

U.S. fighter jet shoots down unidentified cylindrical object over Canada

The article places this firmly in the context of the recent shenanigans with China and makes no suggestion that we are being invaded by Martians.

exodust• 3 years ago

The URL has "UFO" in it, so probably the title was updated.

reuters.com/world/us/us-still-gives-no-details-about-alaska-ufo-new-object-seen-over-canada-2023-02-11/

deafpolygon• 3 years ago

War of the Worlds begins. In a realistic alien invasion scenario, is it likely that our governments will even say anything to us until it's too late?

Julesman• 3 years ago

For anyone who wants a bit of entirely factual context COMPLETELY absent from mainstream reporting.

US Military to Use High-Altitude Balloons Against China, Russia: Report

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2022/07/06/us-military-balloo...

iancmceachern2• 3 years ago

Yeah but we're team America world police so we can do what we want /s

wiseowise• 3 years ago

No need for /s.

gre345t34• 3 years ago

The context is that US is developing high altitude balloons for detecting hyper-sonic weapons. Developing a technology and actively using in another country's airspace are quite different things, so it's not really that surprising that articles don't find it important to include.

Jabbles• 3 years ago

They wouldn't tell us if they were, that information would almost certainly be highly classified.

Compare the balloons with this technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_SR-71_Blackbird#Opera...

jtrip• 3 years ago

I present to you Tu-128, the USSR's dedicated NATO balloon buster [0]. US found it quite funny to send in hundreds of balloons to reconnoitre and send a message[1][2].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tupolev_Tu-28#Operational_hist...

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

[2] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-soviets-built-besp...

nostromo• 3 years ago

The source article says they would be used to detect Chinese and Russian missiles. But that doesn’t mean the US had any plans to just float them over China or Russia.

It’s a stretch to present these as equivalent.

moffkalast• 3 years ago

It does however suggest a possible explanation that the Chinese are floating them over the US to detect tests of US hypersonics. It does seem like a good reason for it since just about everything else can be seen by spy satellites much more easily.

nkurz• 3 years ago

You raise a good point, and are right that the linked article doesn't explicitly say this. And searching a bit, I didn't find any other clear claims about how these would be used. But is there actually some other way that would make sense to deploy them? At 80,000 feet or so, I think it would only work as a sensor platform if it was close to the area you were monitoring, and being a balloon, it would be difficult to stay at an exact location just outside of a country's airspace.

lofaszvanitt• 3 years ago

What will happen when a real alien UFO comes. Nobody will care. Ah look, another bloody unoriginal, booring fake spaceship. People will shout: GO HOME! Not interested! :DDD

datavirtue4• 3 years ago

I'm not saying it aliens...but...

Havoc• 3 years ago

Why is the US doing the shooting?

US aircraft shoots down new airborne object over Canada

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