4 ms·

How incredibly dumb. Imagine all the delicious ELINT that balloon relayed about the APG-81 RADAR and the missile, which assuredly coat much more than the balloo

• mberning 4y ago
  Have to agree. Seems like we took a big risk using the F22 for this. I was expecting a super hornet or f15 to get the call on this one. At the same time, maybe we know that the balloon has no capabilities in this regard and decided to flex. Who knows.
• georgeg23 4y ago
  There is no evidence it had any military purpose, and given a balloon of that size has very little control and easily spotted it would be a terrible platform for spying.
  • angry_octet 4y ago
    No evidence except the logic for it's existence. It is 100% military. It doesn't need precision control, it's been at 80kft and can see a long way. It isn't easily spotted at all, and launches are much more visible, but that is irrelevant because we already have non covert observation in the form of satellites.
• kylehotchkiss 4y ago
  I presume they had the ability to detect which bands this thing was transmitting on, entirely disable it with some sort of electronic warfare thingy, and then get close enough to shoot
  • angry_octet 4y ago
    Difficult to jam what hasn't be observed before. If it used something spread spectrum you would have to have a very powerful noise jammer to saturate the satellite receiver, which would have to be precisely located. The short timeline from "we're not going to shoot this down" to "we shot it down" leads me to believe no in depth analysis occurred. But of course previous balloons may have been observed and even interdicted and we wouldn't necessarily know.