6 ms·

Balloon Wars (2010)

65 points by perihelions 4y ago

cs702 4y ago
> In the 1950’s the U.S. Military and the CIA enlisted balloons (some as tall as a 40-story building) as weapons systems targeting the Soviet Union. If caught, the US government might have said that those balloons were actually scientific civilian devices that had accidentally veered off-course "due to force majeure" and that it was just an unhappy coincidence that they had floated mainly over sensitive Soviet military installations. What else could they have said to save face?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  Look here[0] for what they did say during a similar incident. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident
  - theptip 4y ago
    So, claiming it was for meteorological research: > Initially, American authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose a few days later after the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases.
- capableweb 4y ago
  > If caught, the US government might have said that those balloons were actually scientific civilian devices that had accidentally veered off-course "due to force majeure" and that it was just an unhappy coincidence that they had floated mainly over sensitive Soviet military installations. Wouldn't that be very easy to disprove if you took down the balloon some way and inspect the contents? They'll surely be differently built if were indeed civilian vs military. Also, not sure how saying "we don't know how weather/aeronautics works" is saving much face. We (humans) been doing ballooning since something like the 1800s if not earlier, modern balloons surely would have equipment on it to understand where they are going, and if going in the wrong way, automatically sink to the ground to be "rescued" before drifting too far away. Edit: seems parent was referencing a real-life event that I was unaware of, I thought we were discussing a hypothetical scenario. Ignore me.
  - cs702 4y ago
    It was a reference to this: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-foreign-ministry-airship-over-us-force-majeure-accident-2023-02-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-foreign-ministry-a...
  - techdragon 4y ago
    The problem is in taking down the balloon. It’s notionally operating in such a way that it’s ambiguous as to its intent. If it quacks like a high altitude science balloon, it could either be a high altitude scientific balloon or a military surveillance platform designed to imitate a high altitude surveillance balloon… The US defence establishment and executive branch are likely currently evaluating in deep detail every facet of this, and the entire history of this going back to Cold War era stuff like the program of balloons that lead to the whole Roswell incident… military balloons looking like science balloons is firmly in the “we did it before! How much of a leg to stand on do we have?” I expect they will tolerate it, and amplify a few teams by a person or two, in order to know ahead of time where these will be and to treat them as they do existing satellites that spy from higher up. They avoid many sensitive operations when surveillance is overhead as part of routine operational security best practices… to the point where they occasionally “make mistakes” in effort to sow false flags. TLDR… it’s just a new surveillance platform and there’s existing precedent for how to deal with this kind of threat, by the military… the politicians will just do the usual shit show attention seeking nonsense they always do.
sandworm101 4y ago
Weapons systems ... no. Reconnaissance/surveillance systems, but not weapons. That "weapon system" was used on US paperwork, most likely for purposes of internal security, does not turn a balloon into an actual weapon deployed over an adversary's airspace. Definitions matter when it comes to acts of war. The word "tank" comes from a similar cover story.
perihelions 4y ago
Interesting twist of history: the photographic film from one of these balloons' cameras ended up on a Soviet space probe, and exposed humanity's first picture of the far side of the moon. - "The film, temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened, came from American Genetrix balloons which had been recovered by the Soviets.[15]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3#Lunar_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3#Lunar_photography According to one of the Soviet space program engineers (writing publicly in 1993), this was an unauthorized, renegade act, done without knowledge of the Soviet government, - "Why was the thought "crazy"? Yes, because in space, as in the "defense", at that time nothing foreign was allowed. Literally everything - materials, instruments, technologies - had to be only domestic. It was part of the flesh and blood, in the minds of the developers, becoming their ideology. If I had only hinted to someone about the possibility of using an American film, I would be mistaken for a foolish joker or even for a person who was not completely normal. Only two people knew about this venture - me and Volodya Kondratyev, who was engaged in the chemical processes of the Yenisei. We cut an American 180-millimeter film to 35 millimeters, then punched it. We wrote "technical conditions of the film type AB-1", which after having been shown to the military representatives was filed in the appropriate folder with the stamp "top secret". Of course, we both stayed silent. What would become of us if this story was revealed, I can not say. In any case, not only in cosmonautics, but in general, I think we would not have worked for a long time ... " " http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/SpyBalloon.htm http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/SpyBalloon.htm ("Article from the newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" of April 10, 1993. by Igor Borisovich Lisochkin.")
- gumby 4y ago
  My favorite irony about the space race was the difference between how the two programs operated. The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. While the Russian program was chronically underfunded and had limited politburo support. They had to produced products to barter for other things they needed. And they had a capricious “customer” with bizarre requirements (as with the local content one above) and who only cared about one thing. Basically perpetually a startup. In essence each country’s program was organized the way you would have expected the other country’s program to have been run.
snozolli 4y ago
SKYHOOK balloons, funded by the Office of Naval Research, were designed to stay at a fixed altitude (~100,000 feet) and carry a payload of thousands of pounds. It blows my mind that thousands of pounds could be held aloft at that altitude.
- dylan604 4y ago
  It's not the weight that impresses me, but the size of the balloon required to do the lifting.
dang 4y ago
A tiny bit of discussion at the time (of the article): Steve Blank: Balloon Wars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083895 - Jan 2010 (2 comments)
082349872349872 4y ago
I always kind of wondered if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC might've been dual use.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
userbinator 4y ago
The Japanese attempted to use balloons as weapons too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

Balloon Wars (2010)

65 points by perihelions 4y ago

> In the 1950’s the U.S. Military and the CIA enlisted balloons (some as tall as a 40-story building) as weapons systems targeting the Soviet Union. If caught, the US government might have said that those balloons were actually scientific civilian devices that had accidentally veered off-course "due to force majeure" and that it was just an unhappy coincidence that they had floated mainly over sensitive Soviet military installations. What else could they have said to save face?

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
actionfromafar 4y ago
Look here[0] for what they did say during a similar incident. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_U-2_incident
- theptip 4y ago
  So, claiming it was for meteorological research: > Initially, American authorities acknowledged the incident as the loss of a civilian weather research aircraft operated by NASA, but were forced to admit the mission's true purpose a few days later after the Soviet government produced the captured pilot and parts of the U-2's surveillance equipment, including photographs of Soviet military bases.
capableweb 4y ago
> If caught, the US government might have said that those balloons were actually scientific civilian devices that had accidentally veered off-course "due to force majeure" and that it was just an unhappy coincidence that they had floated mainly over sensitive Soviet military installations. Wouldn't that be very easy to disprove if you took down the balloon some way and inspect the contents? They'll surely be differently built if were indeed civilian vs military. Also, not sure how saying "we don't know how weather/aeronautics works" is saving much face. We (humans) been doing ballooning since something like the 1800s if not earlier, modern balloons surely would have equipment on it to understand where they are going, and if going in the wrong way, automatically sink to the ground to be "rescued" before drifting too far away. Edit: seems parent was referencing a real-life event that I was unaware of, I thought we were discussing a hypothetical scenario. Ignore me.
- cs702 4y ago
  It was a reference to this: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-foreign-ministry-airship-over-us-force-majeure-accident-2023-02-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-foreign-ministry-a...
- techdragon 4y ago
  The problem is in taking down the balloon. It’s notionally operating in such a way that it’s ambiguous as to its intent. If it quacks like a high altitude science balloon, it could either be a high altitude scientific balloon or a military surveillance platform designed to imitate a high altitude surveillance balloon… The US defence establishment and executive branch are likely currently evaluating in deep detail every facet of this, and the entire history of this going back to Cold War era stuff like the program of balloons that lead to the whole Roswell incident… military balloons looking like science balloons is firmly in the “we did it before! How much of a leg to stand on do we have?” I expect they will tolerate it, and amplify a few teams by a person or two, in order to know ahead of time where these will be and to treat them as they do existing satellites that spy from higher up. They avoid many sensitive operations when surveillance is overhead as part of routine operational security best practices… to the point where they occasionally “make mistakes” in effort to sow false flags. TLDR… it’s just a new surveillance platform and there’s existing precedent for how to deal with this kind of threat, by the military… the politicians will just do the usual shit show attention seeking nonsense they always do.

sandworm101 4y ago

Weapons systems ... no. Reconnaissance/surveillance systems, but not weapons. That "weapon system" was used on US paperwork, most likely for purposes of internal security, does not turn a balloon into an actual weapon deployed over an adversary's airspace. Definitions matter when it comes to acts of war. The word "tank" comes from a similar cover story.

perihelions 4y ago

Interesting twist of history: the photographic film from one of these balloons' cameras ended up on a Soviet space probe, and exposed humanity's first picture of the far side of the moon. - "The film, temperature-resistant and radiation-hardened, came from American Genetrix balloons which had been recovered by the Soviets.[15]" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3#Lunar_photography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luna_3#Lunar_photography According to one of the Soviet space program engineers (writing publicly in 1993), this was an unauthorized, renegade act, done without knowledge of the Soviet government, - "Why was the thought "crazy"? Yes, because in space, as in the "defense", at that time nothing foreign was allowed. Literally everything - materials, instruments, technologies - had to be only domestic. It was part of the flesh and blood, in the minds of the developers, becoming their ideology. If I had only hinted to someone about the possibility of using an American film, I would be mistaken for a foolish joker or even for a person who was not completely normal. Only two people knew about this venture - me and Volodya Kondratyev, who was engaged in the chemical processes of the Yenisei. We cut an American 180-millimeter film to 35 millimeters, then punched it. We wrote "technical conditions of the film type AB-1", which after having been shown to the military representatives was filed in the appropriate folder with the stamp "top secret". Of course, we both stayed silent. What would become of us if this story was revealed, I can not say. In any case, not only in cosmonautics, but in general, I think we would not have worked for a long time ... " " http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/SpyBalloon.htm http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/luna3/SpyBalloon.htm ("Article from the newspaper "St. Petersburg Vedomosti" of April 10, 1993. by Igor Borisovich Lisochkin.")

gumby 4y ago
My favorite irony about the space race was the difference between how the two programs operated. The US had a huge, centrally-planned program managed by the government. While the Russian program was chronically underfunded and had limited politburo support. They had to produced products to barter for other things they needed. And they had a capricious “customer” with bizarre requirements (as with the local content one above) and who only cared about one thing. Basically perpetually a startup. In essence each country’s program was organized the way you would have expected the other country’s program to have been run.

snozolli 4y ago

SKYHOOK balloons, funded by the Office of Naval Research, were designed to stay at a fixed altitude (~100,000 feet) and carry a payload of thousands of pounds. It blows my mind that thousands of pounds could be held aloft at that altitude.

dylan604 4y ago
It's not the weight that impresses me, but the size of the balloon required to do the lifting.

dang 4y ago

A tiny bit of discussion at the time (of the article): Steve Blank: Balloon Wars - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083895 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1083895 - Jan 2010 (2 comments)

082349872349872 4y ago

I always kind of wondered if https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC might've been dual use.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

userbinator 4y ago

The Japanese attempted to use balloons as weapons too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb