The US Air Force may have shot down an amateur radio pico balloon over Canada

https://www.rtl-sdr.com/the-us-airforce-may-have-shot-down-an-amateur-radio-pico-balloon-over-canada/

by upofadown • 3 years ago

165 158 3 years ago

Things like these make me question how the US Air Force gets this wrong.

Meanwhile we have a chemical disaster in Ohio that’s killed untold amount of animals, fish, wildlife in a 10 mile + radius…

dylan6046• 3 years ago

how the US Air Force gets this wrong.

You are aware that the Air Force is staffed by human beings that are prone to making all sorts of mistakes, yeah?

pigbearpig• 3 years ago

Seems like the US Air Force got it pretty right to me. They were instructed to shoot down the unidentified flying object and they did.

Kon-Peki• 3 years ago

Yeah, they did a spectacular job of distracting the media so the Navy could grab the important bits of the actual spy balloon without being hounded. Making a bunch of hoo-rah never-been-in-the-military-but-I'm-really-tough Congressfolk look bad is just icing on the cake.

jacquesm2• 3 years ago

They got it perfectly right. You can only tell what kind of balloon it is by the time it is on the ground.

And there is no reason why the USA can't be both worried about spy balloons and about the chemical disaster in Ohio.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

I think they made a mistake by not considering the size of the balloons. There is huge difference between the large spy balloon and this small balloon. The payload of the former was bigger than envelop of latter. They should have been able to tell from the radar but definitely from the fighter. Most concerning is that nobody thought about it and the response seems to have been panicked.

somenameforme3• 3 years ago

This [1] article has some bemusing details on the third engagement of the Great Balloon War of 2023. The relatively immobile balloon was the size of a small car, and it took two $400k missiles to pop it, after the first one missed. So I think the answer of how it works is, "not easily"!

[1] https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/air-force-missile-miss...

Phlarp2• 3 years ago

How does a $400,000 missile "miss" it's target? Surely the bulk of that $400,000 is related to targeting and guidance?

If it takes a million dollars of ordnance to pop a balloon how are we not completely fucked in any real conflict?

partiallypro6• 3 years ago

Meanwhile we have a chemical disaster in Ohio that’s killed untold amount of animals, fish, wildlife in a 10 mile + radius…

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything on this topic, and I think the Federal Government which spends trillions a year can do more than 1 thing at a time. Statements like this are like saying Apple can't focus on the new iPhone or Apple Music at the same time. It's a ridiculous political trope.

runnerup4• 3 years ago

How do these balloons avoid causing an hazard for an accidental collision with airplanes?

myself2487• 3 years ago

There are strict rules about their mass and density. Basically the payload has to be smaller and softer than a bird, and the string can't be too strong either.

dylan6046• 3 years ago

While I'm not disagreeing that these rules exist, but I have not seen them. I say this as someone that did quite a bit of research before actually doing an amateur weather balloon launch myself. I would like see what your definition of a bird is that the payload must be smaller than, because birds come in all sizes. My payload was the size of a small tackle box. Slightly smaller than the footprint of the 15" MBP that I'm typing currently typing this message. It was about 4.5"-5" tall as well. It was made out of whatever type of plastic. Now, I've never been hit by a bird or a plastic tackle box, but I'm thinking the tackle box would not qualify as softer than a bird either.

So, if you have a link to these strict rules that are defined as you've stated, I'd love to read them just to know exactly how bad I broke the laws (shut up Beavis).

MonkeyMalarky• 3 years ago

Radar reflectors! Apparently.

jacobsenscott• 3 years ago

They are usually higher than a commercial airplane would fly. Also the sky is big.

jcrawfordor2• 3 years ago

It depends on the total mass. At low masses, nothing, as the collision risk is low. As mass increase regulations on design become applicable that include maximum payload separation force, NOTAMs on launch, radar reflectors, and eventually the balloon is just considered an aircraft.

peeters2• 3 years ago

It should be noted (since "over Canada" could give the impression of an invasive action, and the article makes no further clarification) that it was Canadian PM Trudeau who gave the order for this object to be shot down, and explicitly authorized US planes to do so if they reached it first.

Jtsummers2• 3 years ago

I have no desire to vouch for the sibling comment (currently dead), but not being Canadian I was curious about their claim (I don't generally track budget details of other countries, sorry).

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.CD?end=2021... - Military spending in current USD

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS?end=2... - Military spending as percent of GDP

Trudeau has been the Canadian PM since 2015 (end of year) and other, than 2016 and 2019, military spending has gone up every year. Over his time as PM there has been a net increase in military spending. The biggest jump was $4.5 billion in 2017, from $17.74 billion to $22.27 billion.

It's interesting to see claims targeting a particular politician show up that are so easily shown to be false. What's the point?

mardifoufs• 3 years ago

I think the point is that the Canadian military has been due for tons and tons of upgrades and needs a lot of new equipment. That goes for the navy, but especially for the airforce. Just maintaining a constant spend (relative to GDP) is not enough when you have tons of 40-50 year old equipment (ships, airplanes, vehicules) all reaching their end of life at the same time. He also slashed some procurement programs (a new F-35 fleet, some ships) very early on that would've turned out to be very, very useful in retrospect.

(I personally don't think we should spend anything but the bare minimum in defense here in Canada, since we obviously depend on our neighbors anyways. But that's the argument for saying that Trudeau neglected the armed forces, as far as I understand it).

GalenErso• 3 years ago

One would need more information about the exact chain of events. Did NORAD call (not necessarily an actual telephone call) Trudeau and say "Mr. Prime Minister, we have an unidentified object in this location and we recommend to take it down. What is your decision?", "Here's the object and the following options: shoot, follow, let go. What is your decision?", or "Here's the object. What's your decision?" Yes, Trudeau gave the order, but his judgment was undoubtedly influenced by the substance and the manner of the information provided to him and his advisors. It gets more complicated if Trudeau debated the matter with members of his cabinet, as he almost certainly did.

cactusplant73742• 3 years ago

How do you sleep at night knowing your hobby could malfunction and interfere with an aircraft’s flight path?

Is it just that unlikely?

jcrawfordor2• 3 years ago

These balloons are compliant with regulations that were developed to minimize the hazard of collision. It is the nature of aviation that other objects exist in the sky and can cause a hazard.

myself2487• 3 years ago

Hate to break this to you, but NOAA and other weather agencies launch hundreds of weather balloons, significantly larger and heavier, every 12 hours.

You can track them at sondehub.org. Recovering them is a fun hobby, I have several sitting on my workbench. You can harvest STM32's off the boards.

runnerup4• 3 years ago

Recovering them is a fun hobby

This sounds amazing. How could I get into this?

Is the balloon structure occasionally left intact enough to refill and reuse?

cactusplant73742• 3 years ago

Why do you hate do it? It was a question. I'm not opposed to an answer. (Yes, I know it's an expression... but what is it expressing? I guess the downvoters are frustrated with my question for some reason).

dylan6046• 3 years ago

I turn out the lights, put my head on a pillow, then close my eyes. How do you go to sleep at night?

idlewords• 3 years ago

On top of a pile of money, with many beautiful ladies.

krisoft• 3 years ago

Is it just that unlikely?

It is not that it is unlikely but that the consequences would be very low. There are limits on the density and the mass of the balloon. If an aircraft hits it the same happens as if your car hits a butterfly.

The butterfly dies and your car won’t even notice it.

The relevant exceptions are in cfr 14 part 101.1.4:

(4) Except as provided for in § 101.7 , any unmanned free balloon that- (i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface; (ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds; (iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or (iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon.

https://casetext.com/regulation/code-of-federal-regulations/...

dexterdog• 3 years ago

How do those pilots sleep at night knowing that their oversized flying bus could interfere with my hobby?

ck2• 3 years ago

Wait until North Korea realizes it can exhaust other countries by just releasing thousands of cheap balloons with fake sensor arrays.

When you give cops pepper-spray, suddenly half the interactions end up in pepper spray.

When you give them tasers, suddenly tasers constantly used.

When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop.

They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage.

Ukraine just shot down Russian balloons.

cpgxiii2• 3 years ago

You're reaching too far. Munitions are expensive, stockpiles are finite, and the US government does not like to (and cannot quickly) increase the rate of production from the low peacetime rate. If using munitions translated immediately into increasing production, the US wouldn't be drawing down emergency stockpiles from around the world to supply Ukraine with 155mm artillery ammunition.

When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop.

No, they are using the cheapest weapon most likely to work, given the public/political demand that "something" be done. It is not an ideal weapon to deal with balloons, but it (clearly) mostly works.

They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage.

It's not surprising. The sidewinder is designed to track aircraft, and ignore decoys (e.g. flares). Balloons don't look like aircraft, they don't move like aircraft, they don't have a significant thermal signature (some contrast, when approached from ahead/below with clear (cold) sky behind them), and they definitely don't have the kind of IR/UV signature that dual-band seekers (like the Stinger or SA-18 have) are looking for. The reason to use the sidewinder is that the other missile carried by US interceptors, the AMRAAM, is both way more expensive, and requires some sort of radar signature (and likely some sort of "plane-like" flight characteristics, to avoid decoys like chaff) that a balloon without a radar reflector is not going to have.

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

First, the US isn’t going to shoot down small balloons like this one after possibly shooting 3 civilian ones. They will only react to larger ones.

Second, what kind of useful sensors will they put on small balloon? I guess might be able to fit camera, even long lens, in the 12lb payload of small balloon but doubt get much useful info.

Third, we may see a movement to put transponders in larger balloons. Requiring ADS-B would be reasonable.

giantg2• 3 years ago

Do the mylar balloons noticeably expand? I thought they hold their size pretty well.

Also, I wonder how the heat seeking missile can track such a small and low thermal object. Must be one hell of a sensor.

colechristensen2• 3 years ago

If you've ever played with an IR camera, there's plenty to be seen. It would be quite hard to have a balloon without significant contrast with the background of the sky. Especially if it had running electronics. Consumer sensors can detect a fraction of a degree difference.

myself2487• 3 years ago

The pico balloon's electronics run so little and so infrequently, they're not likely to be generating noticeable heat. The solar panel itself, a big black-ish object just hanging in the sun, would be nice and warm just like an equivalent rectangle of black paper would, though.

I think the envelope is gonna be the much more visible target. At high altitude silhouetted against the blackness of space, the balloon itself will be considerably warmer, even in what we consider "cold" air. Or if you're looking down on it from above, silhouetted against the warm ground, it will be quite cold.

Also the mylar, which I presume is aluminized, is a heck of a radar reflector.

tbrownaw• 3 years ago

Also, I wonder how the heat seeking missile can track such a small and low thermal object. Must be one hell of a sensor.

A discussion thread somewhere a couple days ago said they're not really "heat seeking" but object-tracking from a video feed, and the video camera just happens (well, deliberately because it works better) to use IR bands instead of visible bands.

nradov2• 3 years ago

Some people may be confused because originally the AIM-9 literally was a heat seeker and could only lock onto hot targets. The later models introduced after about 1977 use a completely different seeker and are far more capable.

Lukas_Skywalker• 3 years ago

„Since the AIM-9L model, which made its debut in the late 1970s, Sidewinders have been “all-aspect" missiles, which means they can pick out the heat of the skin of target against an ambient background instead of just hot exhaust parts of the engine“ [1]

Apparently, against the cold background of the sky, a slightly warmed balloon is visible enough.

[1] https://www.quora.com/The-Chinese-spy-balloon-was-shot-with-...

ianburrell3• 3 years ago

The big development was the imaging sensor in AIM-9X from 2003.

infradig2• 3 years ago

The article tells me they expand from 1 meter to the size of a car (American presumably). They can carry a radar reflector.

myself2487• 3 years ago

Latex balloons stretch. Mylar balloons do not, unless they're underinflated at launch, and that's not really stretching, it's just filling out.

I think the article has it wrong.

ackbar03• 3 years ago

It's obviously a spy balloon guys. It's spying on the weather condition around Canada

Barrin92• 3 years ago

One of my first thoughts when the Chinese balloon thing happened was that there's going to be hysteria and some high school kids science experiment is going to be taken down.

I don't understand how people always reach for aliens or cloak & dagger stuff when in reality the most likely explanation is that you have some Doctor Strangelove characters running around in the bureaucracy.

hotpotamus• 3 years ago

I can't say that I saw the over-reaction coming, but it was pretty clear by the third balloon that it was happening. I will say that I already had the thought listening to some of the more hawkish types that I could very easily imagine them screaming, "we must not have a balloon gap!" to some authority or other.

user39393822• 3 years ago

You have the Nord Stream pipeline story which IMHO is credible and if true, has the US sabotaging its European allies with illegal unauthorized military operations; you have the story in Ohio — and the media ignores both to talk about balloons and aliens.

mrguyorama9• 3 years ago

Once again this take is horseshit. Front page of r/news has 3 Ohio train stories, another story about a different train derailment, and ZERO balloon stories. Yesterday it was 7 ohio train stories and 2 balloon stories.

If you aren't seeing "the media" talk about this, it's because you choose to consume garbage media sources.

user39393822• 3 years ago

Maybe your take is "horseshit" because you consider r/news an actual news source?

class4behavior• 3 years ago

It's misleading to put this on US Airforce only. If it's over Canadian airspace, they ordered it through NORAD or approved it.

It was also to be expected not all of these discovered objects were from foreign state or malicious actors. There's a reason the radar filtered out so much before.

xp844• 3 years ago

It is so hilarious how all of a sudden we're supposed to be afraid of "spy balloons," despite the fact that this is a free country and if anyone actually wanted to spy on any given place in North America, they could literally just send an actual spy, he could fly in on a commercial jet, rent a car and just drive over to the interesting place, and look around. Add in a $500 drone and your spy could get a heck of a lot closer look at most things from the comfort of a nearby parked car. This balloon stuff seems incredibly unlikely to be anything.

oneoff786• 3 years ago

The places you can casually drive around are no the places you would want to target with a spy balloon.

Eji1700• 3 years ago

You can mount a lot more equipment a lot higher up on a balloon, and it can float places you can't legally drive.

The, in theory, purpose of such a balloon is going to be something like satellite surveillance but low and in the are long enough to use certain types of sensors that would not work that high up, or that can now penetrate much further into the ground.

Not that I really think there's much to be worried about, as even if this is the case its more "nations who's only war will be miserable nuclear fire pretending there's a chance it could be others", but there is absolutely a plausible reason for these.

woodruffw• 3 years ago

There’s an element of overreaction here (when isn’t there?), but this also isn’t true: you can’t exactly drive onto missile bases in Montana and take pictures without causing significant problems.

selcuka• 3 years ago

The song "99 Luftballons" is becoming a reality after 40 years.

partiallypro6• 3 years ago

You can't be serious. Spy balloons are definitely happening, just because not every balloon is one doesn't mean it's not so. You can't send a spy and have them fly over nuclear silos or collect transmission date from above them, then beam said data back to your home base near instantly, etc. You can't send a spy to the middle of the ocean above US assets in international waters either. Pretty silly comment. Spying is multi-facet. It's like saying spy satellites aren't real because you could just hire a crop duster and hook up equipment to their plane and have them fly over a city. Comically wrong.

I am growing tired and weary of some people thinking everything is fake or some distraction from other things, as if humans are completely incapable of focusing on more than one thing at a time.

hindsightbias2• 3 years ago

Comically wrong. You can drive by or fly over nuclear silos any time. They’re right off the highways and county roads. None of them are in restricted or prohibited airspace. You can rent an apartment in Great Falls and capture 1000X more sigint than a silly troll balloon. They have internet there too.

somenameforme3• 3 years ago

Most of these balloons were large to massive. The one we're still sticking to the "spy balloon" story on was about 90 feet in size, and was estimated to have capabilities similar to a spy satellite. [1] So you can send some giant object which will inevitably be detected, and cause a conflict, or you can keep using your already present surveillance satellites to do the exact same thing, 'invisibly.' What, exactly, is supposed to be the logic here?

I also find our own reaction somewhat telling. It seems difficult to imagine that $800 billion a year isn't enough to find some way to recover a balloon. Yet we chose to destroy it, and send the debris for a swim on top of it. Whatever's left of the device is almost certainly completely wasted. Would you want to do this if you believe there might be evidence of surreptitious behavior, potentially to try to compromise high security locations, on that balloon? Or would you deploy signal jamming technology and work to recover the balloon intact?

Our reaction just feels like a meme. I can't help but hear this song [2] playing in the background as I envision an F-22 making its flyby locking on $400k missiles to bring down a balloon.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/03/us/politics/chinese-spy-b...

[2] https://youtu.be/5uPoDNEn3I0?t=8

leftbit• 3 years ago

Just wondering - balloons aren't exactly a novel technology. And they are comparatively cheap to produce.

So if spy balloons were considered a real threat - why isn't there a more cost efficient way to take them down?

hulitu• 3 years ago

You can't be serious. Spy balloons are definitely happening,

Yes. It is funny how, after US, everybody started seeing one.

Be alert...

dang6• 3 years ago

Can you please make your substantive points without snark and swipes, and please not post in the flamewar style?

The HN guidelines ask you not to do those things, because they degrade discussion and we're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

Consultant324522• 3 years ago

FYI, here's a 2022 article talking about the US military's budget to build and spy with balloons. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/05/u-s-militarys-newes...

carabiner• 3 years ago

You can't drive into Area 51. Spy balloons can loiter and be hard to detect due to a low radar cross section, unlike satellites which fly over on set schedules. Consumer drones cannot fly high, are easy to detect, and have very limited endurance.

jykim256• 3 years ago

Spy balloons like the one we shot down have incredibly large radar cross sections; they just get deleted by radar algorithms because they move so slowly.

xp844• 3 years ago

Genuine question: Were any of these balloons floating over something restricted like that?

The point I should have said was "Were any of these flying over a restricted area that couldn't have been easily checked out by a drone? If not this seems like an unlikely spy mission, or at best a poorly-planned one."

NoPicklez2• 3 years ago

I dare say if spy balloons became a real thing (speculating), there would be plenty of people saying "Wow they can't even detect a balloon, how can we be confident they find drones or stop people driving near military bases".

There's an argument on both sides.

UncleOxidant2• 3 years ago

60,000 feet is about 11 miles. You could get closer to a lot of interesting sites by driving around in an RV full of listening equipment + launch small (difficult to detect) drones to get even closer.

philistine2• 3 years ago

Can you do your plan without any human on foreign soil? We're dealing with a repressive communist regime who fears its own citizens. If there's a technological solution that doesn't involve a human element.

psyfi• 3 years ago

Next: cracking down on mail pigeon carrying microfilms

dang6• 3 years ago

Can you please make your substantive points without snark and swipes? The site guidelines ask you not to do those things, because they degrade discussion and we're trying for something else here.

If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.

xp844• 3 years ago

Criticism taken. I apologize and will make more constructive contributions. Thanks for linking the guidelines.

rootusrootus• 3 years ago

Sort of a clickbait headline. The USAF merely acted on orders from the Prime Minister of Canada.

notch898a2• 3 years ago

Is this because the chief of command of the Canadian armed forces is actually the British monarch?

Only half joking.

infradig2• 3 years ago

Since 1947 all such powers are vested in the Governor General. Or so Wikipedia tells me.

letmevoteplease• 3 years ago

The opening says that the three objects have "now confirmed to have been 'commercial or benign'", but that isn't true. It seems to be based on this quote from the White House: "The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose."[1] I was surprised that a seemingly thorough article would make such a mistake, but MSNBC also headlined their own reporting of this statement as "White House says 3 downed objects were commercial or benign."[2] Not great.

[1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-lak... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jcm7qklWU

ascotan• 3 years ago

My guess is that the first balloon put people on high alert and anything that's unidentified now has a bullseye on it.

slim• 3 years ago

you are not good at interpreting white house convoluted speech, journalist are

peyton3• 3 years ago

As a citizen, I’d love to hear from President Joe Biden on this issue. Would be great if he’d answer a few questions as well.

WalterBright• 3 years ago

A cockpit view of the balloon just before firing the missile:

https://www.startrek.com/database_article/tomorrow-is-yester...

8bitsrule• 3 years ago

Wild wild west "shoot first, ask questions later", helluvan attitude for the US military.

krapp• 3 years ago

Yes, but what do you expect them to have done, ask the balloons for their license and registration?

jaclaz• 3 years ago

As a side note, if the theory of the pico balloon is correct, then the US airforce is capable of radar-identify a 32" diameter mylar balloon and shoot it with a missile from a fighter jet, which seems to me like being exceptionally accurate.

dogma1138• 3 years ago

The radar PID isn’t even the most impressive part, the target discrimination of the AIM9X must be mental.

peeters2• 3 years ago

Radar capability is interesting, but I'm curious if small balloons are really that hard of a target to shoot down once you've found it. They are slow-moving, non evasive, and virtually any impact from shrapnel will be a guaranteed kill. So it seems like you wouldn't even have to be that accurate, if the missile was designed to explode at its closest point.

That said, they did miss on the first attempt with the Lake Huron balloon, so I guess it's harder then I'd have thought.

mrguyorama9• 3 years ago

The problem is in targeting. No missile works on computer vision. There are older guided bombs that use "TV guidance" but I don't think that's even close to the same.

It either needs a hot part for an IR seeker to lock on to, or be radar reflective enough that a high power radar beam can reflect off and be picked up by the missile's antenna and pass a certain threshold of reflected power. There's not much heat in the payloads, and balloons probably aren't the best radar reflectors.

Even gun lead calculations require a good radar return.

I've always predicted we would eventually end up with missiles that guide on visible light, but that's terrifying if it isn't nearly perfect.

mrguyorama9• 3 years ago

The F22's publicly claimed radar cross section is "the size of a bumble bee". It would make sense we build missiles that can attempt to approach targeting that.

The US Air Force may have shot down an amateur radio pico balloon over Canada

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