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How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they

How else would you aim to shoot it down? The published flight ceiling for most fighter jets is somewhere around 60,000 feet (I’m sure they can go higher if they want to, but exactly how high is probably valuable intelligence). Weather balloons on the other hand fly much higher. This would have been likely (I don’t know) between 60,000 and 120,000 feet. You certainly couldn’t just do a gun run at that altitude. Clipping it with a wing is a great way of killing your pilot, as you’ve basically asked them to crash directly into an unknown object.

tenpies 4y ago
I was actually surprised there wasn't some energy-based laser that could be shot at it, even if from an aircraft, but I agree with your assessment. Which brings up an interesting question: would launching thousands of balloons at the US be a good strategy to completely drain the A2A missile stockpile? It seems like a balloon would also be absurdly cheaper than the missile, not to mention having to get a plane out to intercept the balloon, therefore this is likely to be an incredibly effective war strategy.
- noodlesUK 4y ago
  There quite possibly are energy weapons that could shoot it down, perhaps some kind of spooky ship based anti missile systems (edit: I’ve looked into this and there’s definitely not anything public that can shoot that far). I suspect that if this were really a Chinese spy balloon, getting detailed data on such a weapon would be an amazing added bonus (think wavelength, energy output, etc). An AAMRAM is pretty well known tech at this point. On the other hand, it might have been a fun show of force to use something spooky. It’s hard to speculate. As far as swamping air defences with balloons, yeah that’s a thing that’s pretty concerning. If you add swarm drones into the equation, it gets very scary.
- gpm 4y ago
  Do we really want to be shooting classified energy weapons at surveillance devices!?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

tenpies 4y ago

I was actually surprised there wasn't some energy-based laser that could be shot at it, even if from an aircraft, but I agree with your assessment. Which brings up an interesting question: would launching thousands of balloons at the US be a good strategy to completely drain the A2A missile stockpile? It seems like a balloon would also be absurdly cheaper than the missile, not to mention having to get a plane out to intercept the balloon, therefore this is likely to be an incredibly effective war strategy.

noodlesUK 4y ago
There quite possibly are energy weapons that could shoot it down, perhaps some kind of spooky ship based anti missile systems (edit: I’ve looked into this and there’s definitely not anything public that can shoot that far). I suspect that if this were really a Chinese spy balloon, getting detailed data on such a weapon would be an amazing added bonus (think wavelength, energy output, etc). An AAMRAM is pretty well known tech at this point. On the other hand, it might have been a fun show of force to use something spooky. It’s hard to speculate. As far as swamping air defences with balloons, yeah that’s a thing that’s pretty concerning. If you add swarm drones into the equation, it gets very scary.
gpm 4y ago
Do we really want to be shooting classified energy weapons at surveillance devices!?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]