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Suspected Chinese spy balloon found over northern U.S.
- 1970-01-01 4y ago> NORAD sent aircraft — including F-22 Raptors from Nellis Air Force Base Financially speaking, China won this sortie. It's $33k/flight hour for one F-22.
- anigbrowl 4y agoThat's pocket change compared to the strategic value. I find it odd that they're citing a threat to life when the thing is apparently in the region of Montana, one of the least populated parts of the US/Canada.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoI suspect the real reason is that shooting down a Chinese aircraft over the US would immediately make the whole situation reach crisis level and they want to avoid that if they can.
- anigbrowl 4y agoMeh if it's unmanned there isn't really an issue.
- mytailorisrich 4y agoShooting down an aircraft is shooting down an aircraft. Over the continental US, no less.
- fl0ps 4y agoHow big does a large balloon have to be to contain a nuke payload/emp/etc. that can do significant damage because it's assumed to be just taking pictures? Would we be able to respond quickly enough if something was just let go from that balloon to detonante above an interesting target? From a tactical point of view this reminds me of a movie where an infected animal is walked past guards, penetrating deep into an enemy camp. Red Cliffs maybe? I see from another post that this is "the size of three school buses" - Seems the right size to carry a necessarily heavy payload? A spy balloon doesn't need to be massive to have good fidelity with modern image capture elements and would be more effective if not easily seen from the ground. Also could be 1 of n.
- 1970-01-01 4y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Light_Teams