Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/did-an-f-22-blow-up-some-illinois-hobbyists-pico-balloon.html

by Stratoscope • 3 years ago

67 63 3 years ago

nymag.com

Stratoscope2• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/VTC5W

metadat• 3 years ago

Is nymag paywalled? I've not observed any access restrictions.

Edit: Got it, thank you!

Stratoscope2• 3 years ago

I didn't hit a paywall when I first opened the article, but when I clicked a link from this article to the one about SBF and the Super Bowl, I got a paywall on that one. And then when I hit the back button to go back to the balloon article, it now had a paywall too. So I posted the archive link in case anyone else runs into this.

Ancapistani2• 3 years ago

Honestly, even if it isn't, I appreciate the archive link.

I've often found HN threads that are many years old while researching things, and the original article is long gone. An archive link at least _usually_ works.

SubiculumCode• 3 years ago

I thought it might have been some poor grad student's dissertation project.

hk1337• 3 years ago

If it did, I would presume it wasn't targeted. I'm not an expert in radar tech or whatever else is used to pick up objects but I would think something that small wouldn't get picked up easily on radar and whatnot (except for some sort of beacon identifying what it is)? Likely, it was close enough to the Chinese balloon explosion that it was affected by it?

jaywalk2• 3 years ago

Did you even read the first paragraph of the article?

dpifke• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".

vxNsr• 3 years ago

This whole affair has made the us intelligence apparatus and executive branch look supremely incompetent.

sublinear• 3 years ago

Have you considered whether that's the point of these stories?

mc32• 3 years ago

It was a strange few days. The big multi-bus-sized balloon was ignored for several days while it loitered over sensitive areas, then, suddenly, they turned up the sensitivity and may have shot down hobbyist balloons. It's as if NORAD etc., were caught unprepared and had no idea which way to go on this and were waiting for a decision higher up and then went bananas.

Still there's something incongruous, it was claimed the USAF did flybys before shooting them down to ensure the balloons were not misidentified manned balloons.

boomboomsubban• 3 years ago

The big multi-bus-sized balloon was ignored for several days while it loitered over sensitive areas,

Weren't they escorting the balloon with jets the entire time while pushing nonstop news stories about it? That's ignored?

protastus• 3 years ago

It made them look extremely bureaucratic and slow.

We've been hearing about declassified reports about UFOs for years, indicating ignorance about airspace incursions.

It took a gigantic Chinese balloon slowly traveling uncontested across the country for the government to be sufficiently embarrassed and take action.

nirvgorilla• 3 years ago

I think it's funny. It reminds me of a paragraph in Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" book in chapter six:

There are far-reaching, visionary, and even revolutionary implications to the space program. Communications satellites link up the planet, are central to the global economy, and, through television, routinely convey the essential fact that We live in a global community. Meteorological satellites predict the weather, save lives in hurricanes and tornados, and avoid many billions of dollars in crop losses every year.

Military-reconnaissance and treaty-verification satellites make nations and the global civilization more secure; in a world with tens of thousands of nuclear weapons, they calm the hotheads and paranoids on all sides; they are essential tools for survival on a troubled and unpredictable planet.

jjtheblunt• 3 years ago

I suspect what the intelligence apparatus would recommend, and what the politicians _do_ for "optics" in any random context, are very different.

justin66• 3 years ago

No comment on the executive, but the intelligence apparatus? They tracked the Chinese balloon from its launch on Hainan Island. They did their job. Identifying and tracking hobby balloons is somebody else's job.

Ankaios• 3 years ago

Gotta say, I'd personally trade the balloon for the story I'd be able to tell.

pengaru2• 3 years ago

Impressive that NORAD can detect, and an F-22 can then hit such a small target with no substantial heat signature using a missile.

amateuring• 3 years ago

only took a couple of tries

sschueller• 3 years ago

Isn't each missile $400k?

jaywalk2• 3 years ago

That was a different UFO, the one over Lake Huron. This one was over Canada.

xrayarx3• 3 years ago

No, not impressive. The club is a radio hobby club and the balloon is a radio beacon balloon, which transmits its location and height unencrypted on an open frequency, as do basically all balloons. Except for those from china, apparently.

If they really shot down that balloon, and not a Chinese one, they used a 500,000 rocket started by a 200mm plane to kill a $100 balloon. Spending so much on so little on the other hand is impressive.

mike_d• 3 years ago

which transmits its location and height unencrypted on an open frequency

Usually once every hour or every other hour for a quick second long burst, otherwise they are powered down and just floating. Pico balloons can't carry more than a few grams and depend on solar panels to charge up a battery enough to transmit.

Also air to air missiles are not magic. They don't have secret decoders for every imaginable protocol to lock on to targets (and assume they aren't lying about their location). They are either slaved from the planes radar, contain their own radar, or use heat signatures to lock on.

7952• 3 years ago

Those cost differences are striking. An adversary could launch thousands very cheaply. I wonder how militaries would react to so many potential targets.

LorenPechtel• 3 years ago

Sure there's a radio signal, but Sidewinders are heat seekers. While I can believe one went for the electronics package on the Chinese balloon these pico balloons shouldn't have anything more than a bit of solar heating.

Detecting them is probably easy--note the balloon material appears shiny. Probably aluminized mylar, it will show up on radar.

lsllc• 3 years ago

As a taxpayer, I think the AF using a $100 (or was it $12) balloon for target practice is way better than say the $570K BQM-167 remote drone that they'd normally use!

https://dronedj.com/2021/03/24/the-air-forces-training-drone...

zikduruqe• 3 years ago

And they usually have radar reflectors on them also.

Such as - https://www.overlookhorizon.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/5...

mrguyorama6• 3 years ago

Missiles are not designed to lock onto voluntary transponders, for hopefully obvious reasons, meaning the AIM-9x in this instance has demonstrated either a very sensitive IR sensor, or a very sensitive radar setup.

pengaru2• 3 years ago

I didn't say it was a good use of resources.

AnIdiotOnTheNet• 3 years ago

When you think about it, not really. The F22 went into service 15 years ago and has a radar cross section about the size of a honey bee. I would hope that our air defenses would be designed to detect aircraft like that, and I would also imagine a balloon with no thought to stealth would show up really nicely on any radar that didn't filter it out.

As for the heat signature, and I admit I'm doing more guesswork here, it works via IR contrast. As long as the balloon was sufficiently warmer than the air around it, and you were close enough, it should track just fine.

neodymiumphish• 3 years ago

For NORAD and other air defense platforms, they're a ton of filtering that must be done to ignore cruft, otherwise they'd be responding to floating plastic bags, birds, etc, constantly.

From the missile system and fighter radar perspective, that's not something they heavily (if at all) test these platforms against, because that's not a threat there's any expectation to face.

chrisbolt• 3 years ago

Yesterday’s discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717

dsr_• 3 years ago

What's even cooler than your club launching a high-altitude balloon? Losing it to a $200MM stealth air superiority fighter.

mrguyorama6• 3 years ago

Imagine being able to tell people that your hobby project had to be taken down by the single most advanced Air Superiority Fighter ever made! Talk about bragging rights.

tablespoon• 3 years ago

What's even cooler than your club launching a high-altitude balloon? Losing it to a $200MM stealth air superiority fighter.

I'm actually kinda surprised and air-to-air missile could even hit a 3 foot balloon.

fatjokes• 3 years ago

The first shot missed one of them

jzawodn• 3 years ago

I love the choice of words... "blow up" and "hobby balloon" can't be an accident, right?

steponlego3• 3 years ago

Maybe this is why they're not super keen on recovering and analyzing the wreckage...

cyanydeez2• 3 years ago

or why we tend not to worry about a bunch of f'n balloons.

steponlego3• 3 years ago

A balloon could have a nuclear bomb, viruses, sophisticated RF equipment, who knows what on board. We do have to worry about balloons. It's a non-negotiable national security issue.

jmyeet• 3 years ago

This whole "balloon gap" story is a textbook example of where media interests actually lie and manufactured consent.

First, the actual Chinese spy balloon was a complete non-story. Large nations spy on each other. The SR-71 was invented for the US to fly over the Soviet Union. Yet it got wall-to-wall media coverage. Why? The usual reasons. It evokes fear (and this part worked) and plays into the need for even more military spending (because almost $1T/year just isn't enough).

All this while an actual catastrophe is taking place, the East Palestine derailment, with a virtual media blackout. Why? Because the media as a general rule doesn't criticize corporate interests. Hell, the company responsible (Norfolk Southern) has a case on this term's Supreme Court to attempt to overturn a PA law that people can sue a company that does business there. The actual case involves someone who got cancer.

And the Biden DoJ has filed an amicus brief in support of Norfolk Southern's case [1].

I really wish more people would recognize the balloon story for the intentional distraction it is.

[1] https://www.levernews.com/bidens-doj-backing-norfolk-souther...

jayess• 3 years ago

There are quite of few of these amateur radio balloons aloft at any given time. It cracks me up that so much money was wasted taking one of them out.

You can track them real-time here: https://amateur.sondehub.org/ (zoom out and look for the balloon icons)

tlavoie• 3 years ago

Very cool, thanks. Too bad they're not able to ping ADS-B receivers, which are likely much more ubiquitous.

drewcoo• 3 years ago

So the club members . . . were they Chinese or extraterrestrials?

Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?

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