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Although it might not be related to the Chinese balloon, does the US have the technology to capture it intact vs shooting it down? It seems like they are going
by kqr2 4y ago
Although it might not be related to the Chinese balloon, does the US have the technology to capture it intact vs shooting it down? It seems like they are going through a lot of trouble now to recover the pieces after it was shot down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-air_retrieval https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-air_retrieval
- sjs382 4y agoI'd imagine that there's enough of a possibility of an ability to self-destruct that it may not be worth the risk.
- kqr2 4y agoI feel if the balloon was carrying an explosive payload this would definitely be an act of war. Would it be worth it for the Chinese to do that?
- zxexz 4y agoThe payload doesn’t have to be explosive to be self destructive. Spy gear and weather gear can be the same hardware, I assume the ROM on the hardware and the data collected would be the real evidence. Some well-placed magnesium strips or maybe even deleting the data as a failsafe would be effective. Wouldn’t surprise me if shooting it down was the least risky idea. It’ll probably be 40 years until we know what the real reasoning is though!
- _zzaw 4y agoIt would absolutely be bad, and there would—I hope—be consequences, but if they clearly didn't intend to bomb anything, it would probably not be considered any more of an act of war than if their balloon fell out of the sky and hurt someone.
- ttyprintk 4y agoCould you tell a lithium battery apart from an intentional self-destruct?
- sleepybrett 4y agothe first big balloon was described as 'as large as three buses' .. I'm not sure you are going to do any midair retrieval on something like that.
- kqr2 4y agoActually the Chinese balloon payload is thought to be only about 900kg or about 2000lbs: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2358955-chinese-spy-balloon-everything-we-know-after-us-recovers-wreckage/ https://www.newscientist.com/article/2358955-chinese-spy-bal... A US Military Cargo Helicopter can lift up to 36,000lbs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53K_King_Stallion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sikorsky_CH-53K_King_Stallion
- kube-system 4y agoIt has a 16,000 ft ceiling though. The balloon was at 60,000 ft.
- hungryforcodes 4y agoHelos can't get up that far, and 900kg is about the size of a small car. That's pretty heavy for some "weather sensors".
- sleepybrett 4y agoReally i think the only way they could have done to gather any intelligence on the thing would have been to get a man on it somehow. Every way I figure it would have been a crazy nightmare of failures though. Also no telling if the thing wasn't stuffed with explosives, if it was for intelligence gathering I'd imagine that it would have some kind of self destruct system for at least the portions that handle uplink.
- ummonk 4y agoWell one way to do it would be to shoot holes in the balloon so it leaks and descends slowly. Of course can’t wait for it to be over the sea to do that.
- dyno12345 4y agoNot really, except for the U2 spy plan the US has no (known) aircraft that can fly anything close to that high