31 ms·

Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron: officials

344 points by guywithabowtie 4y ago

kranke155 4y ago
Ok so it’s either a massive foreign program or UFOs.
- cafard 4y ago
  Well, they are unidentified.
  - nanidin 4y ago
    And they seem to be sent by aliens.
    - nanidin 4y ago
      (in the most literal sense).
- awb 4y ago
  Seems like there could be a multitude of possibilities.
  - kranke155 4y ago
    The thing is the quantity is getting so high it’s a question of who would have the capability.
- nyokodo 4y ago
  You overcome vast interstellar distances with a balloon and then sit there while primitive missiles blow you up?
  - cududa 4y ago
    You know when you’re playing with a little kid and they fake punch you, and you dramatically go flying across the room and they laugh, they’re proud of themselves, and you laugh? Yeah the aliens playing that game with us right now.
  - sslayer 4y ago
    It seems inevitable that eventually someone in a different dimension would find a way to start crossing dimensions, and start a recon program to report back on "good" dimensions.
  - nemo44x 4y ago
    Maybe they had no idea that was a thing. A super advanced species that either never considered it or was phased out so long ago the knowledge was lost. They’re just up there watching and freaking out a bit.
  - jmknoll 4y ago
    As we've seen with our space probes, its difficult enough to land something on another planet and have it survive, nevermind equipping it with any offensive or defensive capabilities. Maybe these aliens are in the same place. They can get the balloon here, but just barely, and they're watching in dismay as their work get dismantled.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Utter nonsense. This would be a FTL alien civ. A civilization with many orders of magnitude more energy available. And manufacturing capabilities. And AI. And many other things. They’re not gonna send a stupid balloon. They’re not going to care about a balloon. It’s inconceivable that a civ could get here and not also have the ability to manufacture such basic technology on an enormous scale very easily.
      - jjcon 4y ago
        > this would be a FTL alien civ. Why FTL? or any of the things you list. We are already looking to fly tiny probes past alien exoplanets with Breakthrough Starshot.
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  They are UFOs. But the normal kind. Not the little green men X-Files kind.
- gleenn 4y ago
  There has been speculation that China is testing our response. It seems unclear what the purpose of hovering over Montana is. Maybe they are actually testing something they'd like to attack or monitor Taiwan with and the way to test in an obfuscated manner is releasing them over the US to get the response without triggering the idea that they are preparing for another, real target.
  - FleurBouquet 4y ago
    [dead]
- ianburrell 4y ago
  It is possible that it is both. The first one was Chinese spy balloon. Part of long line but this one was bigger, noticed from the ground, and government had to do something about it. The air defense folks increased the sensitivity of radars and started finding the UFOs. Maybe the UFOs were keeping away from population areas and radars but now were being picked up. It is strange that the objects aren't stealthed. Which makes sense for balloon payload. But stealth, hovering, car-sized objects should be hard to detect. Maybe aliens don't know about stealth. The other weird thing is that they just hover. For advanced or alien technology, I would expect them to move away or dodge.
erentz 4y ago
Couple of interesting twitter threads on this from Tyler (The Drive). He suggests this has been coming/happening for some time. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/1624149864178401282 https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162414986417840128... Also that we are seeing a lot more now because we have turned down/off the filters on the radars. Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/1624614661986611201 https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162461466198661120...
- georgeg23 4y ago
  The Drive also covered the SpaceX stuff which recently turned into StarShield https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says-company-would-launch-a-weapon-into-space-in-defense-of-this-country https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says...
- throwawaycities 4y ago
  > Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. Perhaps we can, but clearly we can expect to find actual UAVs corresponding to these radar signals. If these UAVs that have been shot down were domestic research balloons or some other aircraft exempt from FAA regulation, then we can expect a party to come forward and publicly acknowledge ownership/control of the UAV. However, based on the descriptions of the object over Alaska it seems very likely there are indeed unmanned drones being operated by foreign governments and not domestic weather/research balloons or FAA compliant unregistered domestic aircraft.
  - janoc 4y ago
    >and not domestic weather/research balloons ... Keep in mind that not only US or Canada launches weather balloons. These things are well capable of flying huge distances, including across the oceans. There has been one launched by amateur radio operators a few years ago that has circumnavigated the globe - and that's not at all a rare feat. See e.g.: https://qrp-labs.com/circumnavigators.html https://qrp-labs.com/circumnavigators.html So no need to go all conspirationalist about "unmanned drones operated by foreign governments" just yet. Especially given the distances and altitudes these things were found flying at - a heavier than air device would need a ton of fuel and energy to fly that high and that far, so a "drone" that at the same time doesn't look like an aircraft is rather unlikely.
Ancalagon 4y ago
Why are there no photos of any of these except the original Chinese balloon?
- llacb47 4y ago
  Well, two were over remote parts of Alaska. And this one just happened like an hour ago, so maybe pics will come out from people on the ground. In any case, the best pics from the first one over Montana were shot with telephoto lenses, so it’s not like anybody with a phone can snap a close up shot
  - busyant 4y ago
    also... may be currently difficult to find them in northern alska / canada. not much daylight.
  - phpisthebest 4y ago
    The military has released radar, IR and other sensor data from other UFO's before. Why not release them for these things?
    - bhhaskin 4y ago
      Because operational security. Why give adversaries info about your capabilities.
      - phpisthebest 4y ago
        Pretty sure everyone knows they can take IR photos from the Plane... That is not really a secret. Plus I reject the idea of secrecy from the citizens, government can not be "for the people by the people" if they keep secrets from the people
        sangnoir 4y ago
        The resolution is secret - and that matters a lot. Why do citizens need to know detailed specs of IR optics systems installed on fighter jets? I can come up with reasons why this information should be kept out of adversaries hands: and handing this info out to citizens makes the latter impossible
DebtDeflation 4y ago
On the one hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a balloon.
- userbinator 4y ago
  The cylindrical description fits what could be hung from a balloon, however.
  - janoc 4y ago
    And it just so happens that most meteorological payloads tend to be cylindrical/small boxes. So it is possible that trigger-happy NORAD is shooting down a lot of perfectly harmless stuff now.
    - ianburrell 4y ago
      Most weather balloons are small. The balloon is 3ft across at the ground. The payload is phone-sized or computer-sized. The payload wouldn't be visible to fighter. There are large scientific balloons. I couldn't find any standards of large balloons using transponders. They have communications and tracking so location is known. I wonder if NORAD is in contact with all the organizations about their balloons. I suspect there will be move to put ADS-B on larger balloons.
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    Or a small dirigible. You can buy those for a few thousand though I have no idea on their flight ceiling etc.
- duxup 4y ago
  Also the weather balloons are launched on consistent schedule / from consistent consistent locations and they often have a transmitter that allows them to send back data and even be found right? Not to say one of these can't be a weather balloon, but I would expect these also are known possibilities / somewhat detectable / aren't trying to be sneaky ...
georgeg23 4y ago
Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space Development Agency: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm More details: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellation) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellati...
- analog31 4y ago
  Something that puzzles me is how you specifically target China with a satellite. They can't be geostationary unless they're over the equator.
  - ethanbond 4y ago
    Lots and lots of satellites that keep passing overhead and you compose the images to abstract away the fact they came from multiple physical satellites. Idk how many companies/govs have this capability but: https://www.palantir.com/offerings/metaconstellation/ https://www.palantir.com/offerings/metaconstellation/
    - tomrod 4y ago
      Planet.com. Maxar. Etc. CubeSats are cheap and effective.
    - bboygravity 4y ago
      There's only one company with that capability and that's the only organization in the world ever to achieve first stage (and soon all stage) reusability for LEO launches. Because to achieve that you need to put a lot of stuff in orbit and the only way to affordably do that is cheap (reusable) launches.
      - ethanbond 4y ago
heyflyguy 4y ago
I wish there was more clarity on if these are balloons or not.
- ALittleLight 4y ago
  Yeah, I don't understand the ambiguity from the government and military. They have to have pictures of these things. Show us what they look like. Tell us if they are balloons. Are they under power against the wind? What speed? All these details must be known, it's been days, why aren't they telling us?
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    Strongly suggests against balloons - mainly because they already shot one down and it was no biggie. Aliens are not impossible any more, but drones of some kind remain the vastly most probable option.
    - janoc 4y ago
      Drone at 40000 feet? That's higher than most airliners - that would need be one heck of a drone, especially given where they have shot it down and how far it would have had to fly. Much more likely sounding/meteorological balloons - a lot of those are sent up every day, worldwide, with payloads that are roughly cylindrical in shape. And some of them can traverse huge distances, even across oceans, so such "UFO" doesn't need to originate locally at all.
      - mach1ne 4y ago
        To my understanding the latest object traversed from Montana to Lake Huron in less than 24 hours. Can any such balloon really travel that fast?
        pixl97 4y ago
        The jet stream currently has a strong west to east north east component from Montana to the Great lakes. The winds peed varies greatly depending on altitude, but a floating object can easily be pushed along at speeds in excess of 120mph. A strong jet stream can exceed 250mph.
akmarinov 4y ago
Have aliens invaded and we just don’t know about it, the government holding them off lowkey? Edit: Now China’s shooting them down! https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says-its-preparing-to-shoot-down-unidentified-flying-object-near-yellow-sea/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says...
- codenesium 4y ago
  An undersea civilization is exploring the air world.
  - madspindel 4y ago
    https://youtu.be/dfPfPB601hw https://youtu.be/dfPfPB601hw
    - triyambakam 4y ago
      Wow, excellent. I hadn't known about Graham Hancock.
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    It's the Dolphins. So long and thanks for all the fish!
    - billiallards 4y ago
      They are cylindrical, grey, without apparent means of aerial propulsion, and prone to interfering with ultrasonic sensors... Most dolphins are smaller than a compact car, but I bet they would break apart upon impact with a frozen sea after dropping out of the sky. This might be the correct answer.
      - thrill 4y ago
        Yeah, but they travel in pods of 42.
- 4y ago
irthomasthomas 4y ago
"The American people don't need classified details, just that they're safe. That's it."
- akimball 4y ago
  That's not how democracy works. That's how sheep farming works.
  - cududa 4y ago
    No, that’s called immature ideological purity. Like it or not, state secrets are a necessary function of any civilization.
    - CamperBob2 4y ago
      If you don't tell people the truth about something like this, they will cheerfully make something up and accept it as truth. That's not a "necessary function of any civilization," that's dereliction of duty to the people who elected the leaders.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        And if you do tell the truth your enemy has a nice cheap information gathering network at their disposal. Hell, they'll likely just make up their own bullshit and post it online anyway and say our government is lying.
      - pohl 4y ago
        People do that when you do tell them the truth.
        CamperBob2 4y ago
        Be that as it may, I don't see how I can be expected to make good decisions as a voter in a democracy without good information.
labster 4y ago
I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.
- bombcar 4y ago
  99 knights of the air Ride super high-tech jet fighters Everyone's a superhero Everyone's a Captain Kirk With orders to identify To clarify and classify Scrambling the summer sky 99 red balloons go by Only got the season wrong …
  - Waterluvian 4y ago
    95 to go. Maybe it’ll be finished by late summer.
- e12e 4y ago
  Thank you for pointing that out - I never paid much attention to the lyrics (my German isn't great). Fitting prelude and postlude to Alphaville - Forever Young...
  - somenameforme 4y ago
    Wow! I was just about to say they did the song in English as well, when your post sent me on a web crawl. I never realized that the English version is "censored"! The English version is relatively playful and only really references the worst in metaphor. Whereas the German version overtly describes the reality of war, and what motivates it. This makes the Goldfinger cover (which is awesome) make all the more sense. At one point he starts singing in German and I always just assumed it was for style. In reality - he's singing the "real" song, and one of the most critical parts "censored" for the English version. This is what he's singing in German: ---- "Ninety-nine ministers of war Matches and petrol cans (gasoline cans) They regarded themselves as clever people Already on the scent of fat quarry They shouted "War" and wanted power Man, who would have thought That someday it would come as far as this Because of ninety-nine balloons" ---- It's a shame he stops there since the German ending is also dramatically better, "Ninety-nine years of war. Left no place for victors. There are no longer any ministers of war. And also no jet fighters. Today I'm making my rounds. I see the world lying in ruins. I have found a balloon. I think of you and let it fly." The English version ending speaks in metaphor and can even be interpreted to mean it might have just been a dream. ---- Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc Goldfinger Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQFplXS0DIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQFplXS0DIM English Lyrics ("censored") - https://genius.com/Nena-99-red-balloons-lyrics https://genius.com/Nena-99-red-balloons-lyrics English Lyrics (translated from German) - https://lyricstranslate.com/en/99-Luftballons-99-Luftballons.html https://lyricstranslate.com/en/99-Luftballons-99-Luftballons...
0xDEF 4y ago
CSI-like shows have spread the misconception that spy satellites can see human face sized objects in real-time. But there are certain physical limits that makes that unlikely to be done from space several hundreds of kilometers above the surface. That is why spy satellites at much lower altitudes can be useful to spy on other countries. However anything below 100 km is considered an intrusion into the sovereign airspace of a country.
ttul 4y ago
This time, an F-16 sufficed.
- Redoubts 4y ago
  Shame they can’t just gun them down with a tucano. This all seems like a large waste of money.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    Have you ever seen the budget for the department of defense? Whatever they're doing here is less than the pocket change they lose in the Pentagon seat cushions.
    - Turing_Machine 4y ago
      Also, pilots generally need to fire a certain number of missiles every year just to stay in training. At least this saves the additional cost of a drone (the usual target for training missions, I think).
      - thrill 4y ago
        No, they don't. Most peacetime pilots would likely fire one missile during their entire careers if they were lucky.
        Turing_Machine 4y ago
        Yes, they do. The USAF has purchased more than 10,000 of the AIM-9X model alone (not counting the other operators, domestic and foreign, and not counting all the other variants of the Sidewinder, the basic model of which has been in service since the 1950s). That's a helluva lot more than "one per career". https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Air-Air-Missiles-Takes-Delivery-10000th-AIM-9X/Tue-06292021-0652 https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Air-Air-Missiles-Takes-Deli... 1
nemo44x 4y ago
So I’m guessing we recently upgraded or reconfigured some software and now we are seeing a lot of things that have been there but we didn’t detect. Or something finally crossed a line and the enemy, which did not know we were watching was going to find out so it’s all being cleaned up now.
- cududa 4y ago
  NORAD said after the last balloon they modeled it and recalibrated their signal filtering to lower the thresholds (full transparency: I know what those words mean when string together, but I’m no expert and have 0 functional knowledge of what that means wrt NORAD). Now that they’ve said that, I’m actually more concerned and it raises more questions than it answers. Perspective of some retired NORAD employee would be very welcome
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    I saw comment that said they removed the speed gate filter. I think that means filter was removing slowly moving contacts. By removing the filter, they saw balloons and the hovering maybe-balloon objects.
kkielhofner 4y ago
Random question - anyone know how a sidewinder missile hits these objects (whatever they are)? My missile knowledge is non-existent but movies show me it has something to do with heat signature - which these don’t seem to have.
- zmanian 4y ago
  The AIM-9X is infrared imaging based rather than heat signature based. The pilot resolves that contrast between the object and sky before firing the missile and missile targets the object based on the image.
  - lost_tourist 4y ago
    Do you know what sets it off? Seems like it wouldn't be from impact as these balloon materials couldn't be comparable to say hitting another plane, right?
    - justin66 4y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
    - r00fus 4y ago
      These payloads are duds - all you need to do is to pierce the balloon.
      - pixl97 4y ago
        A little research on the Canadian Ballon shootdown a number of years back show that isn't exactly the case. A larger balloon was shot with a (20mm I believe) cannon and continued to float a long distance.
      - implements 4y ago
        ‘Duds’ is an odd way of putting it. Sidewinders usually have an ‘exploding ring of metal rod’ warhead, I believe - and that was replaced by something else better suited to destroying the balloon while leaving the payload intact enough for technical analysis.
canadiantim 4y ago
From Huron in we have to demand answers
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  All puns aside, we've been demanding answers since they let the first one drift across North America. I'm not holding my breath on getting those answers, though.
  - nobody9999 4y ago
    > All puns aside, we've been demanding answers since they let the first one drift across North America. I'm not holding my breath on getting those answers, though. Then you haven't been paying attention. Because we're starting to get those answers. There has been (and that was just last week), an open Senate committee hearing[0] with DoD officials about the balloon, a classified briefing about same and a press briefing[1] by Senators after the classified hearing. I watched the Senate hearing and got lots of good information, with even more info gleaned from stuff alluded to and teased to the Senators for the classified hearing. With much more to come once the House comes back into session I'm sure. [0] https://www.c-span.org/video/?525930-1/defense-department-officials-lawmakers-chinese-spy-balloon https://www.c-span.org/video/?525930-1/defense-department-of... [1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?525949-1/senators-speak-closed-door-briefing-chinese-spy-balloon-program https://www.c-span.org/video/?525949-1/senators-speak-closed...
- nobaddays 4y ago
  [flagged]
- danans 4y ago
  Well if you ask me, this whole thing is Erie. Hopefully the object's aren't from a Superior civilization.
ironyman 4y ago
archive: https://archive.is/qRA3F https://archive.is/qRA3F
hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  Which has been taken off the front page remarkably quickly, given its large number of votes in a short time. Perhaps there’s some system where downvotes encourage a post to be taken off the front page quicker. But I suspect moderator involvement. Which is misguided if so: people will simply post dupes and continue to upvote them. Thus, the story is still on the front-page, but in a fragmented manner.
  - antihipocrat 4y ago
    Until we get some more information about what these are, it just invites wild speculation. Even just an image of the objects would help, but at the moment we have nothing and there is not much opportunity to provide insightful comments.
    - mach1ne 4y ago
      But it’s surprising just how much information we do have. What reason did the military have (both US and Canadian) to leak info about the shape of the objects?
      - antihipocrat 4y ago
        True, I find this part very interesting too. Letting the first one fly across the country and generate so much coverage just prior to these latest events seems more than a coincidence as well.
  - dang 4y ago
    It set off the flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it. Normally we'd merge the comments into the earlier post, but since this article has more information, I'll merge them hither instead.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
Overtonwindow 4y ago
All of a sudden balloons everywhere. Were they always there, and people are just now noticing it, or is this something new?
- jacquesm 4y ago
  Likely the former because NORAD has made some statements about disabling filters on their radar data processing software that would have previously classified these as noise, effectively rendering them invisible. Probably the best stealth there is: to be classed as noise.
- SkyPuncher 4y ago
  I suspect these have always been here. In fact, the NOAA launches dozens of weather balloons daily. Seems like recent attention is causing a bit of an over correction.
hammock 4y ago
Have we shot anything down over CONUS since early on in the Cold War?
okasaki 4y ago
Great distraction from internal problems.
- was_a_dev 4y ago
  Did someone say Ohio?
- he0001 4y ago
  Which are?
  - throwayyy479087 4y ago
    Ohio
    - gambiting 4y ago
      What's happening in Ohio? As non-american I have no idea.
      - avtar 4y ago
        https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-derailment-wake-up-call https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-d...
      - deleted 4y ago
        [deleted]
      - Rebelgecko 4y ago
        Train derailed with ecological consequences
        aftbit 4y ago
        As per usual, these things are flashy and attention grabbing, but not really relevant in the grand scheme of things. It's microplastics, fertilizer runoff, and CO2 that's killing the world, not train crashes that happen once or twice a decade.
wizeman 4y ago
We'll never know the weather again...
pyuser583 4y ago
Time to rewatch X-Files.
BMc2020 4y ago
The PRC reminds me of a lot of youtube videos I have seen: There's one or more young men who are enjoying the fuck around portion of the evening who then discover how fast it can turn into the find out portion of the evening.
- okasaki 4y ago
  I was going to say something about this being a ridiculous reason for conflict, but then again the US does have a history of starting wars over fantasies and fabrications. So consider curbing your moronic jingoistic attitude.
  - BMc2020 4y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - anigbrowl 4y ago
    I think you are missing the humorous tone of the comment you are replying to. There is also some speculation that Xi might have approved this project in principle a while back, but due to the size of the Chinese bureaucracy it has since gone into autonomous operation, and the people nominally in charge of it are going to be carpeted to account for the headache they've created for the boss.
hammock 4y ago
Have we shot anything down over CONUS since early on in the Cold War?
- intrasight 4y ago
  I read not since WWII
todd3834 4y ago
I sure hope this isn’t a distraction to get us to look up while something goes down under the sea.
- version_five 4y ago
  Not to be conspiratorial, but if it is an intentional distraction, the balance of probabilities favors the misdirection coming from the US (whether media, politicians, etc). This still feels like a case of seeing more because we've been told to pay attention to it, vs a new phenomenon. Let's see
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    Yes, the timing with the Chinese weather balloon was no coincidence. Either policy changed or radars were recalibrated.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > I sure hope this isn’t a distraction to get us to look up while something goes down under the sea. The resources (including “human resources”) we use to check the sky are not the same resources used to track undersea threats. If anything, an elevated general state of alert from probing in the one domain makes it more, not less, likely than any intrusion in the other would be detected.
- 00deadbeef 4y ago
  Yep those planes are sure distracted from their underwater duties
- ksniwmidjd 4y ago
  [dead]
HL33tibCe7 4y ago
The US Senator for Michigan reports that the object was “octagonal” and flying at 20,000ft: https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&t=qny-chiFAA74RdTUEbhXKg https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&...
- ianburrell 4y ago
  I've stopped trusting when politician tweets describe the objects. They are getting the details second-hand if not more and seem to be relaying it immediately. Press conferences at least have some time to collect accounts and organize them. We also don't know who is providing the details; I would trust the F-22 pilot. Like this could mean that there was only octagonal object, the balloon was octagonal, or the payload was octagonal. The latter seems the most plausible. It is hard to tell if this is more balloons or something really weird.
  - hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
    CNN is reporting: >The object was shaped like an octagon with strings hanging off it and no discernible payload, according to [a senior administration official] and another source briefed on the matter. https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/object-shot-down-lake-huron-21223/index.html https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/object-shot-down-lake...
    - nonethewiser 4y ago
      Sounds like it dropped its payload
anigbrowl 4y ago
An unnamed congressional aide claims the object was shaped 'like an octagon.' Sounds like BS, but you'd like to think the Wall Street Journal has some capacity to to identify and filter quality sources. https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down-over-north-america-were-balloons-schumer-says-7c2c63ec https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...
- HL33tibCe7 4y ago
  This is being widely reported, and Rep Bergman also said this
- Havoc 4y ago
  I guess if you're going to suspend a solar panel / sensor array below a balloon you can do worse than an octagon...
- RajT88 4y ago
  Schumer came out and said each of these objects was a balloon of some sort. https://nypost.com/2023/02/12/latest-2-objects-shot-down-by-us-were-balloons-schumer-says/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/12/latest-2-objects-shot-down-by-...
  - jtdev 4y ago
    [dead]
  - gfodor 4y ago
    This was denied as being known by the military presser, and the general involved also made the ridiculous claim that they shot it down entirely to prevent an accident to civilian air traffic.
    - albrewer 4y ago
      At 20k feet, that's solidly in the middle of everyday commercial air traffic.
paganel 4y ago
This balloons war is getting real funny from half away around the globe. I think that the US Air Force had been feeling a little left aside when it comes to the whole war thing, what with all the discussion about tanks and artillery and related stuff, this is the perfect opportunity for them to show that they're worth all the money the US taxpayer is throwing at them.
thereisnospork 4y ago
If there are this many (chinese?) balloons over the US, I'd wager there are a fair few over the rest of the world, e.g. Europe. Tip of the iceberg imo.
giantg2 4y ago
Imagine if you launch a balloon for say $10k so that your adversary has to spend $400k on a missile plus $70k x number of planes x hours in flight. And now do it multiple times per week. Seems like a decent strategy.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Until the frequency of it escalates into a damaging economic conflict.
  - nradov 4y ago
    The damaging economic conflict already started in 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2023/02/08/here-are-all-the-us-sanctions-against-china/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2023/02/08/here-a...
- lolc 4y ago
  It's a decent strategy until you realize you're just providing target practice on sorties the enemy would fly anyway. Shooting one missile a day is not affecting that budget. And pilots need constant training.
  - themitigating 4y ago
    That depends on the cost difference between training and the missiles. May they have to use more fuel maybe the person on duty didn't need training. I'm being picky but still
    - XorNot 4y ago
      Flight hours are flight hours is my understanding: all the pilots involved are in the air a certain minimum number of hours per month just to keep their qualifications up.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    PLA use USN activities in SCS and recon off her shores for training as well but US activities persist because there's mutual intelligence gathering going on, usually favouring the gatherer since the trade is info on one ISR platform vs said ISR platform gathering from host of sources. PLA probably knows alot about US P8s but those P8s learn about PLA navy, air bases, coastal defenses, radars etc. PRC can't simply shut down their hardware to deny info if collection occurs frequently. The benefit and burden is disproportionate. Hence it's favourable strategy to prod at US capabilites currently limited to CONUS that could be deployed in IndoPac. Imagine PRC sending ballons with iterative hardware to break through US EW, or counter measures to test against US missiles. These are activities US limits elsewhere but pressured to "reveal" because CONUS politics demand shoot downs. US alleged they jammed 1st balloon but likely only PRC on recieving end knows how successful. Learning more about US EW capabilities alone makes such missions useful and in return US... gets to shoot down balloons and get hand on carrying hardware PRC wants to reveal. Which might be huge, or nothing like PRC doing their 1000th P8 interdiction. Economics favouring the balloon is likely secondary consideration.
squarefoot 4y ago
One missing information about all other objects after the 1st balloon is their nature and speed. Why should they keep this information classified? It's like the objects were a lot more complex than a balloon (propelled drones?), with varying attitude and speed and telling what they were doing when they were detected would reveal what they were doing while still undetected, that is, giving information on military capabilities to the Chinese. Pure speculation on my part of course, still I'm puzzled by all this secrecy.
- groffee 4y ago
  Why would you be puzzled? Any information given to the public (you) will also seen by the enemy (whoever it is) It's like when America used to go on television during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and announce where they were going to do surprise attacks and then get butthurt when they got wiped out.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Letting the enemy keep guessing about how much you know, and how much you recovered, forces them to waste time and resources trying to figure it out. It's likely to promote additional missions which in turn will give you an indication of how valuable they consider whatever it was, and if you have intelligence on who's contacting who, it also tells you who the operation might have been under and thus the overall disposition of their government. There's endless good reasons in the intelligence business to keep things secret.
tarsinge 4y ago
Do we know why they are shot down? How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)?
- connordoner 4y ago
  Good question. I’d be interested to know too.
- lazide 4y ago
  It’s over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world, and it would be coming down somewhere anyway. Even if it was full of plutonium, there probably is no better place for it to come down.
  - dragonwriter 4y ago
    > It’s over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world, Lake Huron is neither particularly remote (from, say, civilization) nor is it land.
    - lazide 4y ago
      Hah, wrong thread! The other one was!
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- thaurelia 4y ago
  They're following the balloons with U-2 (among other things, I assume) for some time before shooting down.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > Do we know why they are shot down? Because they are potential hazards and threats. > How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)? Any material falling from a high altitude is dangerous, which figures into decisions about where and when to shoot them down. But if someone is floating hazardous payloads without permission and notice over your airspace, you probably don’t want to give them the choice of whether and when they come down....
ImHereToVote 4y ago
What do you mean the eastern part of the US has just had a Phosphene release causing potentially millions of cancer deaths in the years to come? Look aliens!!!!!!!
- Arch485 4y ago
  Source?
  - weard_beard 4y ago
    https://apnews.com/article/rail-accidents-evacuations-ohio-health-climate-and-environment-3f84663f0b97837cc74a8ce9a50ef6c7 https://apnews.com/article/rail-accidents-evacuations-ohio-h...
- aftbit 4y ago
  I think you might mean phosgene?
  - ImHereToVote 4y ago
    I did at that. Thank you.
nickysielicki 4y ago
Looking for anyone with links to people doing informed speculation on the payload on the original balloon given the photos that were taken. Are they doing bulk-collection of IMEIs? Photography?
graphe 4y ago
Why are we shooting down weather balloons? Why can't we just hook them to a tether on the ground and get some free air balloons?
prawn 4y ago
If an agitator puts up a balloon and payload, one of which contains a potentially dangerous substance, and a nation in question shoots it down, thus releasing and activating that substance, who is responsible? And who does the public deem responsible? (I don't think this is realistic, just musing about other schemes that could be going on.)
- encoderer 4y ago
  Without a doubt, the person who flies the dangerous thing over the other people is the aggressor. Is this debatable to you?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    In Seattle, when a car drives into a building, it's the building's fault. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how-often-do-cars-crash-into-buildings-in-seattle-way-more-than-you-think/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how...
  - megous 4y ago
    So when MH17 was shot down, would Malaysia Airlines be responsible for harm done to people of Грабове, had it fell on this village directly? Any airliner is a flying object full of dangerous chemicals, flammable and toxic.
    - ncallaway 4y ago
      This seems like a bad faith twisting of the original question and response. The original question was about a balloon filled with a dangerous substance, not civilian air traffic. Civilian air traffic is regulated by the Chicago convention, and shooting it down would be undoubtedly be the responsibility of the nation shooting it down. The difference is largely one of consent. Nations have the right to control what happens in their air space. But if they consent to civilian air traffic, then shoot down an aircraft that nation is responsible. If they consent to a balloon filled with dangerous substances in their air space and then shoot it down, then the nation is responsible. If they *do not* consent to the balloon filled with dangerous substances and shoot it down, then the originating party is responsible.
ioman 4y ago
I'm assuming that the cost of building and launching these balloons is lower that launching fighter aircraft to shoot them down with missiles. I wonder if we're about to see thousands.
- npnpnp 4y ago
  But remember - these planes are often up in the air anyway for training. The US Air Force has some of the highest flight hours per pilot of any air forces. Yes it will cost more, but it's hard to say by how much. Fighter jets don't just sit in hangars all day. They're no good without trained pilots.
- lm28469 4y ago
  They most likely always have been there, there are hundreds of balloons released all around the globe every day. This is some kind of mass hysteria we see every now and then. "china bad" + "spy balloon" + "UFO", I can't come up with a better keyword selection to trigger that
holyknight 4y ago
wtf is going on really?
- fromseashore 4y ago
  War propaganda.
yalogin 4y ago
Do we have international agreement about what constitutes sovereign space in the sky and what doesn’t? I mean at what height does it make it not okay to shoot down an object another country sent up? Is it at the height of the low orbit satellites? Should it be out of the earth’s gravitational pull? Or can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace?
- georgeg23 4y ago
  There is no agreed altitude. > can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace? These balloons beg that question.... The first one was even made to look like a satellite.
  - aflag 4y ago
    I think it'd be hard to argue that something that's no even in orbit is not in a country's airspace.
    - georgeg23 4y ago
      Low Earth satellites also need continuous active thrust/lift to maintain orbit because of the air drag. At dispense Starlink satellites come back in 1-2 days without thrusters.
      - aflag 4y ago
        So are you arguing that being in orbit is not sufficient? Perhaps, but I'd say it's at least a necessary condition.
        georgeg23 4y ago
        Yes, or from the Chinese perspective, balloons are a legitimate response to the US violation of their space with LEO, especially kinetic attack satellites: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/space-based-missile-defense-is-doable-dod-rd-chief-griffin/ https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/space-based-missile-defe...
King-Aaron 4y ago
So my thoughts: 1. Are we just seeing more of these things now, due to the US broadening the scope of their radar filtering, and there were always this number of things floating around and now they're just more aware of them? 2. Has something changed in the upper atmosphere/jet stream that's catching balloons that would have previously blown elsewhere, and are now going over the US by accident? 3. Is some really big budget scifi coming out soon, and some marketing team thought that after the chinese balloon thing, launching a ton of cheap weather balloons painted silver would be a cool guerrilla marketing campaign for it?
- fit2rule 4y ago
  [dead]
- cleandreams 4y ago
  I read recently that the fact the US military didn't want to stoke public interest with 'UFO's' meant that lots of things that were unidentified went unreported and ignored. This actually became a security risk that other countries could take advantage of. That may have happened here.
- frankfrankfrank 4y ago
  You overlooked an obvious pink elephant; that the “security” state is yanking our chains as a distraction once again, as they so often do so effectively. It could be for a couple different reasons and/or a combination of them, but included in those are probably things like distraction from the lies, failure, and collapse in Ukraine or even the “OMG, it’s UFOs” now is to prevent that huge toxic chemical catastrophe in Ohio taking peoples attention. But maybe it’s even just priming people for the minutes of hate to initiate Oceana’s war with Eurasia that we have always been in. The social engineers in the government constantly misdirect and redirect attention by using their patsies in the media companies, so it’s not like it doesn’t happen. And now we have AI generated propaganda to look forward to an even more efficient psychosis inducing stream of lies. What I’m more curious about is how otherwise smart people are so easily redirected and played tricks on as if they’re babies, too they point they don’t even realize the magic smoke and mirrors show happening as the ball disappears and reappears in the other hand and the young attractive lady survived being sawed in half. Boop! The government’s got your nose! What will you do without your nose. Boop! Ok, it put it back. Phew! That was close!
DarmokJalad1701 4y ago
Press briefing happening right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59-6yOWotc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59-6yOWotc
- gfodor 4y ago
  That presser kind of blew my mind. I was sure these were obviously ID'ed as balloons by now. And the general seems to have said that we've never shot anything down over the US before, we don't know what these are or where they came from, and that this is the first time we've shot anything down in history, while also saying they NORAD's job is to "defend the homeland" and have a policy of shooting down kinetic threats, but shot this one down anyway, which wasn't deemed to be a kinetic threat, but a threat to air traffic, except it's extremely hard to even see never mind run into by pilots to the point where they couldn't even shoot it.
hndamien 4y ago
Could this be like a penetration test to see how small an object needs to be to go undetected?
AxEy 4y ago
Perhaps these are all probes dropped off during ʻOumuamua's fly-by? (mostly kidding...)
kiddz 4y ago
It seems like the reporting is that two out of three objects are said not to be balloons. I don’t know of any terrestrial technology that can be that large (size of car) aloft for multiple hours/days that hovers. Am I correctly groking the news here?
- theteapot 4y ago
  Car sized balloons. Gliders. "Hover" is conjecture.
  - kiddz 4y ago
    I say hover because the pentagon is saying the same object was seen twice in two days. . . The day before it was in Montana then 24 plus hours later in Michigan. “A unidentified object has been shot down by U.S. forces over Lake Huron, according to the Department of Defense. The object appears to be the same object that had been detected over Montana a day earlier, said officials.“ https://www.npr.org/2023/02/12/1156428862/us-shoot-down-ufo-unidentified-object-lake-huron https://www.npr.org/2023/02/12/1156428862/us-shoot-down-ufo-...
    - idlewords 4y ago
      "Hover" implies more directional control than a balloon would have, the ability to stay in one spot. So far all the descriptions are consistent with just regular floating.
- alecfreudenberg 4y ago
  this is what I'm seeing as well. pilot selection of aim9 over guns due to difficulty/risk of engagement is concerning. would really like recoverable intel, or at least some more detailed assessment prior to engagement. I'm assuming this information is just not being released, but it begs for obvious scrutiny. we want a picture
- idlewords 4y ago
  No, you're not. The descriptions are consistent with these objects being balloons or dirugibles. The terrestrial technology that can keep a cylinder the size of a car afloat for days is called "hydrogen".
kerpotgh 4y ago
[dead]
alecfreudenberg 4y ago
looks like an aerial refueler has been circling phoenix for a few hours now [0] anyone have any info on if this could be a similar ufo? [0] ADVCE20 from Phoenix https://fr24.com/ADVCE20/2f2d34d7 https://fr24.com/ADVCE20/2f2d34d7 edit: superbowl
- sofaygo 4y ago
  Might be related to the Super Bowl, which is happening there right now.
  - alecfreudenberg 4y ago
    I just came to edit my post looks like this is standard for superbowl flyovers
ck2 4y ago
So far that's two million dollars in sidewinder missiles (that we know of) How much food and housing, medical care and education could that have provided? They need to find a way to deal with this for $100 a pop or it's going to get stupid.
- alxmng 4y ago
  US military budget is 700 billion annually.
  - ck2 4y ago
    It's several times more than that when you add up all the related divisions that are purposely separated. ie. Homeland Security is military. Not part of the Pentagon budget. But 2000 balloons would be a billion dollars if they keep using sidewinders because "they can so why not".
andrewstuart 4y ago
Government should offer a $ cash bounty for first person to spot and report Chinese spy balloons.
reso 4y ago
First time I heard about these objects I thought about this presentation for Google Loon, and all the research around high-altitude gliders that has taken place in recent decades. https://www.slideshare.net/Funk98/highaltitude-solar-glider-for-internet-access https://www.slideshare.net/Funk98/highaltitude-solar-glider-... A high altitude glider being repurposed for surveillance seems like a plausible explanation for all this.
dx034 4y ago
I always wondered how countries control their airspace to detect foreign objects. Wouldn't these balloons show up similar to birds? Or do they have methods to distinguish birds from other objects of a similar size/radar profile? And if so, couldn't foreign military build "fake birds" that look similar?
- lm28469 4y ago
  The smallest balloon will be much bigger than any flying bird: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a13aac_691b42bc63104000a452029f19592c11~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_932,h_308,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Balloon%20Specs%20-METEOROLOGICAL.png https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a13aac_691b42bc63104000a4...
shultays 4y ago
Wouldn't it make more sense to capture such objects? Or shot down in a less destructive way instead of rockets and then investigate what they are about, which countries they are from. Or is US past that point already?
- vinay427 4y ago
  > then investigate what they are about, which countries they are from That is what is currently happening, and it’s a little odd that the linked article didn’t seem to mention this. Divers with special cold water gear are being sent to fetch debris from this latest object, and a similar situation is going on for the others.
  - shultays 4y ago
    Oh I was assuming the intent was to just destroy it since they are using rockets. Why wouldn't they just bullets and such and just make it land? Or better capture it somehow without any damage, I am sure they could achieve that
- allyant 4y ago
  I was thinking current laser weapon tech would be ideal for this.
fIREpOK 4y ago
spreading from the inside
pibechorro 4y ago
Meanwhile, major controversial news is being pushed down to cover this stupidity. Look over here folks! Nothing to see over there!
MichaelRazum 4y ago
It's an UFO, they are interested in ChatGPT for sure

Ok so it’s either a massive foreign program or UFOs.

cafard 4y ago
Well, they are unidentified.
- nanidin 4y ago
  And they seem to be sent by aliens.
  - nanidin 4y ago
    (in the most literal sense).
awb 4y ago
Seems like there could be a multitude of possibilities.
- kranke155 4y ago
  The thing is the quantity is getting so high it’s a question of who would have the capability.
nyokodo 4y ago
You overcome vast interstellar distances with a balloon and then sit there while primitive missiles blow you up?
- cududa 4y ago
  You know when you’re playing with a little kid and they fake punch you, and you dramatically go flying across the room and they laugh, they’re proud of themselves, and you laugh? Yeah the aliens playing that game with us right now.
- sslayer 4y ago
  It seems inevitable that eventually someone in a different dimension would find a way to start crossing dimensions, and start a recon program to report back on "good" dimensions.
- nemo44x 4y ago
  Maybe they had no idea that was a thing. A super advanced species that either never considered it or was phased out so long ago the knowledge was lost. They’re just up there watching and freaking out a bit.
- jmknoll 4y ago
  As we've seen with our space probes, its difficult enough to land something on another planet and have it survive, nevermind equipping it with any offensive or defensive capabilities. Maybe these aliens are in the same place. They can get the balloon here, but just barely, and they're watching in dismay as their work get dismantled.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Utter nonsense. This would be a FTL alien civ. A civilization with many orders of magnitude more energy available. And manufacturing capabilities. And AI. And many other things. They’re not gonna send a stupid balloon. They’re not going to care about a balloon. It’s inconceivable that a civ could get here and not also have the ability to manufacture such basic technology on an enormous scale very easily.
    - jjcon 4y ago
      > this would be a FTL alien civ. Why FTL? or any of the things you list. We are already looking to fly tiny probes past alien exoplanets with Breakthrough Starshot.
Waterluvian 4y ago
They are UFOs. But the normal kind. Not the little green men X-Files kind.
gleenn 4y ago
There has been speculation that China is testing our response. It seems unclear what the purpose of hovering over Montana is. Maybe they are actually testing something they'd like to attack or monitor Taiwan with and the way to test in an obfuscated manner is releasing them over the US to get the response without triggering the idea that they are preparing for another, real target.
- FleurBouquet 4y ago
  [dead]
ianburrell 4y ago
It is possible that it is both. The first one was Chinese spy balloon. Part of long line but this one was bigger, noticed from the ground, and government had to do something about it. The air defense folks increased the sensitivity of radars and started finding the UFOs. Maybe the UFOs were keeping away from population areas and radars but now were being picked up. It is strange that the objects aren't stealthed. Which makes sense for balloon payload. But stealth, hovering, car-sized objects should be hard to detect. Maybe aliens don't know about stealth. The other weird thing is that they just hover. For advanced or alien technology, I would expect them to move away or dodge.

Couple of interesting twitter threads on this from Tyler (The Drive). He suggests this has been coming/happening for some time. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/1624149864178401282 https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162414986417840128... Also that we are seeing a lot more now because we have turned down/off the filters on the radars. Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/1624614661986611201 https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162461466198661120...

georgeg23 4y ago
The Drive also covered the SpaceX stuff which recently turned into StarShield https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says-company-would-launch-a-weapon-into-space-in-defense-of-this-country https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says...
throwawaycities 4y ago
> Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives. Perhaps we can, but clearly we can expect to find actual UAVs corresponding to these radar signals. If these UAVs that have been shot down were domestic research balloons or some other aircraft exempt from FAA regulation, then we can expect a party to come forward and publicly acknowledge ownership/control of the UAV. However, based on the descriptions of the object over Alaska it seems very likely there are indeed unmanned drones being operated by foreign governments and not domestic weather/research balloons or FAA compliant unregistered domestic aircraft.
- janoc 4y ago
  >and not domestic weather/research balloons ... Keep in mind that not only US or Canada launches weather balloons. These things are well capable of flying huge distances, including across the oceans. There has been one launched by amateur radio operators a few years ago that has circumnavigated the globe - and that's not at all a rare feat. See e.g.: https://qrp-labs.com/circumnavigators.html https://qrp-labs.com/circumnavigators.html So no need to go all conspirationalist about "unmanned drones operated by foreign governments" just yet. Especially given the distances and altitudes these things were found flying at - a heavier than air device would need a ton of fuel and energy to fly that high and that far, so a "drone" that at the same time doesn't look like an aircraft is rather unlikely.

Ancalagon 4y ago

Why are there no photos of any of these except the original Chinese balloon?

llacb47 4y ago
Well, two were over remote parts of Alaska. And this one just happened like an hour ago, so maybe pics will come out from people on the ground. In any case, the best pics from the first one over Montana were shot with telephoto lenses, so it’s not like anybody with a phone can snap a close up shot
- busyant 4y ago
  also... may be currently difficult to find them in northern alska / canada. not much daylight.
- phpisthebest 4y ago
  The military has released radar, IR and other sensor data from other UFO's before. Why not release them for these things?
  - bhhaskin 4y ago
    Because operational security. Why give adversaries info about your capabilities.
    - phpisthebest 4y ago
      Pretty sure everyone knows they can take IR photos from the Plane... That is not really a secret. Plus I reject the idea of secrecy from the citizens, government can not be "for the people by the people" if they keep secrets from the people
      - sangnoir 4y ago
        The resolution is secret - and that matters a lot. Why do citizens need to know detailed specs of IR optics systems installed on fighter jets? I can come up with reasons why this information should be kept out of adversaries hands: and handing this info out to citizens makes the latter impossible

DebtDeflation 4y ago

On the one hand: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily. On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a balloon.

userbinator 4y ago
The cylindrical description fits what could be hung from a balloon, however.
- janoc 4y ago
  And it just so happens that most meteorological payloads tend to be cylindrical/small boxes. So it is possible that trigger-happy NORAD is shooting down a lot of perfectly harmless stuff now.
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    Most weather balloons are small. The balloon is 3ft across at the ground. The payload is phone-sized or computer-sized. The payload wouldn't be visible to fighter. There are large scientific balloons. I couldn't find any standards of large balloons using transponders. They have communications and tracking so location is known. I wonder if NORAD is in contact with all the organizations about their balloons. I suspect there will be move to put ADS-B on larger balloons.
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  Or a small dirigible. You can buy those for a few thousand though I have no idea on their flight ceiling etc.
duxup 4y ago
Also the weather balloons are launched on consistent schedule / from consistent consistent locations and they often have a transmitter that allows them to send back data and even be found right? Not to say one of these can't be a weather balloon, but I would expect these also are known possibilities / somewhat detectable / aren't trying to be sneaky ...

georgeg23 4y ago

Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space Development Agency: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm More details: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellation) https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellati...

analog31 4y ago
Something that puzzles me is how you specifically target China with a satellite. They can't be geostationary unless they're over the equator.
- ethanbond 4y ago
  Lots and lots of satellites that keep passing overhead and you compose the images to abstract away the fact they came from multiple physical satellites. Idk how many companies/govs have this capability but: https://www.palantir.com/offerings/metaconstellation/ https://www.palantir.com/offerings/metaconstellation/
  - tomrod 4y ago
    Planet.com. Maxar. Etc. CubeSats are cheap and effective.
  - bboygravity 4y ago
    There's only one company with that capability and that's the only organization in the world ever to achieve first stage (and soon all stage) reusability for LEO launches. Because to achieve that you need to put a lot of stuff in orbit and the only way to affordably do that is cheap (reusable) launches.
    - ethanbond 4y ago

heyflyguy 4y ago

I wish there was more clarity on if these are balloons or not.

ALittleLight 4y ago
Yeah, I don't understand the ambiguity from the government and military. They have to have pictures of these things. Show us what they look like. Tell us if they are balloons. Are they under power against the wind? What speed? All these details must be known, it's been days, why aren't they telling us?
- mach1ne 4y ago
  Strongly suggests against balloons - mainly because they already shot one down and it was no biggie. Aliens are not impossible any more, but drones of some kind remain the vastly most probable option.
  - janoc 4y ago
    Drone at 40000 feet? That's higher than most airliners - that would need be one heck of a drone, especially given where they have shot it down and how far it would have had to fly. Much more likely sounding/meteorological balloons - a lot of those are sent up every day, worldwide, with payloads that are roughly cylindrical in shape. And some of them can traverse huge distances, even across oceans, so such "UFO" doesn't need to originate locally at all.
    - mach1ne 4y ago
      To my understanding the latest object traversed from Montana to Lake Huron in less than 24 hours. Can any such balloon really travel that fast?
      - pixl97 4y ago
        The jet stream currently has a strong west to east north east component from Montana to the Great lakes. The winds peed varies greatly depending on altitude, but a floating object can easily be pushed along at speeds in excess of 120mph. A strong jet stream can exceed 250mph.

akmarinov 4y ago

Have aliens invaded and we just don’t know about it, the government holding them off lowkey? Edit: Now China’s shooting them down! https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says-its-preparing-to-shoot-down-unidentified-flying-object-near-yellow-sea/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says...

codenesium 4y ago
An undersea civilization is exploring the air world.
- madspindel 4y ago
  https://youtu.be/dfPfPB601hw https://youtu.be/dfPfPB601hw
  - triyambakam 4y ago
    Wow, excellent. I hadn't known about Graham Hancock.
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  It's the Dolphins. So long and thanks for all the fish!
  - billiallards 4y ago
    They are cylindrical, grey, without apparent means of aerial propulsion, and prone to interfering with ultrasonic sensors... Most dolphins are smaller than a compact car, but I bet they would break apart upon impact with a frozen sea after dropping out of the sky. This might be the correct answer.
    - thrill 4y ago
      Yeah, but they travel in pods of 42.
4y ago

irthomasthomas 4y ago

"The American people don't need classified details, just that they're safe. That's it."

akimball 4y ago
That's not how democracy works. That's how sheep farming works.
- cududa 4y ago
  No, that’s called immature ideological purity. Like it or not, state secrets are a necessary function of any civilization.
  - CamperBob2 4y ago
    If you don't tell people the truth about something like this, they will cheerfully make something up and accept it as truth. That's not a "necessary function of any civilization," that's dereliction of duty to the people who elected the leaders.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      And if you do tell the truth your enemy has a nice cheap information gathering network at their disposal. Hell, they'll likely just make up their own bullshit and post it online anyway and say our government is lying.
    - pohl 4y ago
      People do that when you do tell them the truth.
      - CamperBob2 4y ago
        Be that as it may, I don't see how I can be expected to make good decisions as a voter in a democracy without good information.

labster 4y ago

I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.

bombcar 4y ago
99 knights of the air Ride super high-tech jet fighters Everyone's a superhero Everyone's a Captain Kirk With orders to identify To clarify and classify Scrambling the summer sky 99 red balloons go by Only got the season wrong …
- Waterluvian 4y ago
  95 to go. Maybe it’ll be finished by late summer.
e12e 4y ago
Thank you for pointing that out - I never paid much attention to the lyrics (my German isn't great). Fitting prelude and postlude to Alphaville - Forever Young...
- somenameforme 4y ago
  Wow! I was just about to say they did the song in English as well, when your post sent me on a web crawl. I never realized that the English version is "censored"! The English version is relatively playful and only really references the worst in metaphor. Whereas the German version overtly describes the reality of war, and what motivates it. This makes the Goldfinger cover (which is awesome) make all the more sense. At one point he starts singing in German and I always just assumed it was for style. In reality - he's singing the "real" song, and one of the most critical parts "censored" for the English version. This is what he's singing in German: ---- "Ninety-nine ministers of war Matches and petrol cans (gasoline cans) They regarded themselves as clever people Already on the scent of fat quarry They shouted "War" and wanted power Man, who would have thought That someday it would come as far as this Because of ninety-nine balloons" ---- It's a shame he stops there since the German ending is also dramatically better, "Ninety-nine years of war. Left no place for victors. There are no longer any ministers of war. And also no jet fighters. Today I'm making my rounds. I see the world lying in ruins. I have found a balloon. I think of you and let it fly." The English version ending speaks in metaphor and can even be interpreted to mean it might have just been a dream. ---- Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiwgOWo7mDc Goldfinger Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQFplXS0DIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQFplXS0DIM English Lyrics ("censored") - https://genius.com/Nena-99-red-balloons-lyrics https://genius.com/Nena-99-red-balloons-lyrics English Lyrics (translated from German) - https://lyricstranslate.com/en/99-Luftballons-99-Luftballons.html https://lyricstranslate.com/en/99-Luftballons-99-Luftballons...

0xDEF 4y ago

CSI-like shows have spread the misconception that spy satellites can see human face sized objects in real-time. But there are certain physical limits that makes that unlikely to be done from space several hundreds of kilometers above the surface. That is why spy satellites at much lower altitudes can be useful to spy on other countries. However anything below 100 km is considered an intrusion into the sovereign airspace of a country.

ttul 4y ago

This time, an F-16 sufficed.

Redoubts 4y ago
Shame they can’t just gun them down with a tucano. This all seems like a large waste of money.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Have you ever seen the budget for the department of defense? Whatever they're doing here is less than the pocket change they lose in the Pentagon seat cushions.
  - Turing_Machine 4y ago
    Also, pilots generally need to fire a certain number of missiles every year just to stay in training. At least this saves the additional cost of a drone (the usual target for training missions, I think).
    - thrill 4y ago
      No, they don't. Most peacetime pilots would likely fire one missile during their entire careers if they were lucky.
      - Turing_Machine 4y ago
        Yes, they do. The USAF has purchased more than 10,000 of the AIM-9X model alone (not counting the other operators, domestic and foreign, and not counting all the other variants of the Sidewinder, the basic model of which has been in service since the 1950s). That's a helluva lot more than "one per career". https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Air-Air-Missiles-Takes-Delivery-10000th-AIM-9X/Tue-06292021-0652 https://www.navair.navy.mil/news/Air-Air-Missiles-Takes-Deli... 1

nemo44x 4y ago

So I’m guessing we recently upgraded or reconfigured some software and now we are seeing a lot of things that have been there but we didn’t detect. Or something finally crossed a line and the enemy, which did not know we were watching was going to find out so it’s all being cleaned up now.

cududa 4y ago
NORAD said after the last balloon they modeled it and recalibrated their signal filtering to lower the thresholds (full transparency: I know what those words mean when string together, but I’m no expert and have 0 functional knowledge of what that means wrt NORAD). Now that they’ve said that, I’m actually more concerned and it raises more questions than it answers. Perspective of some retired NORAD employee would be very welcome
- ianburrell 4y ago
  I saw comment that said they removed the speed gate filter. I think that means filter was removing slowly moving contacts. By removing the filter, they saw balloons and the hovering maybe-balloon objects.

kkielhofner 4y ago

Random question - anyone know how a sidewinder missile hits these objects (whatever they are)? My missile knowledge is non-existent but movies show me it has something to do with heat signature - which these don’t seem to have.

zmanian 4y ago
The AIM-9X is infrared imaging based rather than heat signature based. The pilot resolves that contrast between the object and sky before firing the missile and missile targets the object based on the image.
- lost_tourist 4y ago
  Do you know what sets it off? Seems like it wouldn't be from impact as these balloon materials couldn't be comparable to say hitting another plane, right?
  - justin66 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
  - r00fus 4y ago
    These payloads are duds - all you need to do is to pierce the balloon.
    - pixl97 4y ago
      A little research on the Canadian Ballon shootdown a number of years back show that isn't exactly the case. A larger balloon was shot with a (20mm I believe) cannon and continued to float a long distance.
    - implements 4y ago
      ‘Duds’ is an odd way of putting it. Sidewinders usually have an ‘exploding ring of metal rod’ warhead, I believe - and that was replaced by something else better suited to destroying the balloon while leaving the payload intact enough for technical analysis.

canadiantim 4y ago

From Huron in we have to demand answers

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
All puns aside, we've been demanding answers since they let the first one drift across North America. I'm not holding my breath on getting those answers, though.
- nobody9999 4y ago
  > All puns aside, we've been demanding answers since they let the first one drift across North America. I'm not holding my breath on getting those answers, though. Then you haven't been paying attention. Because we're starting to get those answers. There has been (and that was just last week), an open Senate committee hearing[0] with DoD officials about the balloon, a classified briefing about same and a press briefing[1] by Senators after the classified hearing. I watched the Senate hearing and got lots of good information, with even more info gleaned from stuff alluded to and teased to the Senators for the classified hearing. With much more to come once the House comes back into session I'm sure. [0] https://www.c-span.org/video/?525930-1/defense-department-officials-lawmakers-chinese-spy-balloon https://www.c-span.org/video/?525930-1/defense-department-of... [1] https://www.c-span.org/video/?525949-1/senators-speak-closed-door-briefing-chinese-spy-balloon-program https://www.c-span.org/video/?525949-1/senators-speak-closed...
nobaddays 4y ago
[flagged]
danans 4y ago
Well if you ask me, this whole thing is Erie. Hopefully the object's aren't from a Superior civilization.

ironyman 4y ago

archive: https://archive.is/qRA3F https://archive.is/qRA3F

hoppyhoppy2 4y ago

Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703

HL33tibCe7 4y ago
Which has been taken off the front page remarkably quickly, given its large number of votes in a short time. Perhaps there’s some system where downvotes encourage a post to be taken off the front page quicker. But I suspect moderator involvement. Which is misguided if so: people will simply post dupes and continue to upvote them. Thus, the story is still on the front-page, but in a fragmented manner.
- antihipocrat 4y ago
  Until we get some more information about what these are, it just invites wild speculation. Even just an image of the objects would help, but at the moment we have nothing and there is not much opportunity to provide insightful comments.
  - mach1ne 4y ago
    But it’s surprising just how much information we do have. What reason did the military have (both US and Canadian) to leak info about the shape of the objects?
    - antihipocrat 4y ago
      True, I find this part very interesting too. Letting the first one fly across the country and generate so much coverage just prior to these latest events seems more than a coincidence as well.
- dang 4y ago
  It set off the flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it. Normally we'd merge the comments into the earlier post, but since this article has more information, I'll merge them hither instead.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Overtonwindow 4y ago

All of a sudden balloons everywhere. Were they always there, and people are just now noticing it, or is this something new?

jacquesm 4y ago
Likely the former because NORAD has made some statements about disabling filters on their radar data processing software that would have previously classified these as noise, effectively rendering them invisible. Probably the best stealth there is: to be classed as noise.
SkyPuncher 4y ago
I suspect these have always been here. In fact, the NOAA launches dozens of weather balloons daily. Seems like recent attention is causing a bit of an over correction.

hammock 4y ago

Have we shot anything down over CONUS since early on in the Cold War?

okasaki 4y ago

Great distraction from internal problems.

was_a_dev 4y ago
Did someone say Ohio?
he0001 4y ago
Which are?
- throwayyy479087 4y ago
  Ohio
  - gambiting 4y ago
    What's happening in Ohio? As non-american I have no idea.
    - avtar 4y ago
      https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-derailment-wake-up-call https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-train-d...
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
    - Rebelgecko 4y ago
      Train derailed with ecological consequences
      - aftbit 4y ago
        As per usual, these things are flashy and attention grabbing, but not really relevant in the grand scheme of things. It's microplastics, fertilizer runoff, and CO2 that's killing the world, not train crashes that happen once or twice a decade.

wizeman 4y ago

We'll never know the weather again...

pyuser583 4y ago

Time to rewatch X-Files.

BMc2020 4y ago

The PRC reminds me of a lot of youtube videos I have seen: There's one or more young men who are enjoying the fuck around portion of the evening who then discover how fast it can turn into the find out portion of the evening.

okasaki 4y ago
I was going to say something about this being a ridiculous reason for conflict, but then again the US does have a history of starting wars over fantasies and fabrications. So consider curbing your moronic jingoistic attitude.
- BMc2020 4y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- anigbrowl 4y ago
  I think you are missing the humorous tone of the comment you are replying to. There is also some speculation that Xi might have approved this project in principle a while back, but due to the size of the Chinese bureaucracy it has since gone into autonomous operation, and the people nominally in charge of it are going to be carpeted to account for the headache they've created for the boss.

hammock 4y ago

Have we shot anything down over CONUS since early on in the Cold War?

intrasight 4y ago
I read not since WWII

todd3834 4y ago

I sure hope this isn’t a distraction to get us to look up while something goes down under the sea.

version_five 4y ago
Not to be conspiratorial, but if it is an intentional distraction, the balance of probabilities favors the misdirection coming from the US (whether media, politicians, etc). This still feels like a case of seeing more because we've been told to pay attention to it, vs a new phenomenon. Let's see
- mach1ne 4y ago
  Yes, the timing with the Chinese weather balloon was no coincidence. Either policy changed or radars were recalibrated.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> I sure hope this isn’t a distraction to get us to look up while something goes down under the sea. The resources (including “human resources”) we use to check the sky are not the same resources used to track undersea threats. If anything, an elevated general state of alert from probing in the one domain makes it more, not less, likely than any intrusion in the other would be detected.
00deadbeef 4y ago
Yep those planes are sure distracted from their underwater duties
ksniwmidjd 4y ago
[dead]

HL33tibCe7 4y ago

The US Senator for Michigan reports that the object was “octagonal” and flying at 20,000ft: https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&t=qny-chiFAA74RdTUEbhXKg https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&...

ianburrell 4y ago
I've stopped trusting when politician tweets describe the objects. They are getting the details second-hand if not more and seem to be relaying it immediately. Press conferences at least have some time to collect accounts and organize them. We also don't know who is providing the details; I would trust the F-22 pilot. Like this could mean that there was only octagonal object, the balloon was octagonal, or the payload was octagonal. The latter seems the most plausible. It is hard to tell if this is more balloons or something really weird.
- hoppyhoppy2 4y ago
  CNN is reporting: >The object was shaped like an octagon with strings hanging off it and no discernible payload, according to [a senior administration official] and another source briefed on the matter. https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/object-shot-down-lake-huron-21223/index.html https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/object-shot-down-lake...
  - nonethewiser 4y ago
    Sounds like it dropped its payload

anigbrowl 4y ago

An unnamed congressional aide claims the object was shaped 'like an octagon.' Sounds like BS, but you'd like to think the Wall Street Journal has some capacity to to identify and filter quality sources. https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down-over-north-america-were-balloons-schumer-says-7c2c63ec https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...

HL33tibCe7 4y ago
This is being widely reported, and Rep Bergman also said this
Havoc 4y ago
I guess if you're going to suspend a solar panel / sensor array below a balloon you can do worse than an octagon...
RajT88 4y ago
Schumer came out and said each of these objects was a balloon of some sort. https://nypost.com/2023/02/12/latest-2-objects-shot-down-by-us-were-balloons-schumer-says/ https://nypost.com/2023/02/12/latest-2-objects-shot-down-by-...
- jtdev 4y ago
  [dead]
- gfodor 4y ago
  This was denied as being known by the military presser, and the general involved also made the ridiculous claim that they shot it down entirely to prevent an accident to civilian air traffic.
  - albrewer 4y ago
    At 20k feet, that's solidly in the middle of everyday commercial air traffic.

paganel 4y ago

This balloons war is getting real funny from half away around the globe. I think that the US Air Force had been feeling a little left aside when it comes to the whole war thing, what with all the discussion about tanks and artillery and related stuff, this is the perfect opportunity for them to show that they're worth all the money the US taxpayer is throwing at them.

thereisnospork 4y ago

If there are this many (chinese?) balloons over the US, I'd wager there are a fair few over the rest of the world, e.g. Europe. Tip of the iceberg imo.

giantg2 4y ago

Imagine if you launch a balloon for say $10k so that your adversary has to spend $400k on a missile plus $70k x number of planes x hours in flight. And now do it multiple times per week. Seems like a decent strategy.

oneoff786 4y ago
Until the frequency of it escalates into a damaging economic conflict.
- nradov 4y ago
  The damaging economic conflict already started in 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2023/02/08/here-are-all-the-us-sanctions-against-china/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/anthonytellez/2023/02/08/here-a...
lolc 4y ago
It's a decent strategy until you realize you're just providing target practice on sorties the enemy would fly anyway. Shooting one missile a day is not affecting that budget. And pilots need constant training.
- themitigating 4y ago
  That depends on the cost difference between training and the missiles. May they have to use more fuel maybe the person on duty didn't need training. I'm being picky but still
  - XorNot 4y ago
    Flight hours are flight hours is my understanding: all the pilots involved are in the air a certain minimum number of hours per month just to keep their qualifications up.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  PLA use USN activities in SCS and recon off her shores for training as well but US activities persist because there's mutual intelligence gathering going on, usually favouring the gatherer since the trade is info on one ISR platform vs said ISR platform gathering from host of sources. PLA probably knows alot about US P8s but those P8s learn about PLA navy, air bases, coastal defenses, radars etc. PRC can't simply shut down their hardware to deny info if collection occurs frequently. The benefit and burden is disproportionate. Hence it's favourable strategy to prod at US capabilites currently limited to CONUS that could be deployed in IndoPac. Imagine PRC sending ballons with iterative hardware to break through US EW, or counter measures to test against US missiles. These are activities US limits elsewhere but pressured to "reveal" because CONUS politics demand shoot downs. US alleged they jammed 1st balloon but likely only PRC on recieving end knows how successful. Learning more about US EW capabilities alone makes such missions useful and in return US... gets to shoot down balloons and get hand on carrying hardware PRC wants to reveal. Which might be huge, or nothing like PRC doing their 1000th P8 interdiction. Economics favouring the balloon is likely secondary consideration.

squarefoot 4y ago

One missing information about all other objects after the 1st balloon is their nature and speed. Why should they keep this information classified? It's like the objects were a lot more complex than a balloon (propelled drones?), with varying attitude and speed and telling what they were doing when they were detected would reveal what they were doing while still undetected, that is, giving information on military capabilities to the Chinese. Pure speculation on my part of course, still I'm puzzled by all this secrecy.

groffee 4y ago
Why would you be puzzled? Any information given to the public (you) will also seen by the enemy (whoever it is) It's like when America used to go on television during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and announce where they were going to do surprise attacks and then get butthurt when they got wiped out.
XorNot 4y ago
Letting the enemy keep guessing about how much you know, and how much you recovered, forces them to waste time and resources trying to figure it out. It's likely to promote additional missions which in turn will give you an indication of how valuable they consider whatever it was, and if you have intelligence on who's contacting who, it also tells you who the operation might have been under and thus the overall disposition of their government. There's endless good reasons in the intelligence business to keep things secret.

tarsinge 4y ago

Do we know why they are shot down? How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)?

connordoner 4y ago
Good question. I’d be interested to know too.
lazide 4y ago
It’s over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world, and it would be coming down somewhere anyway. Even if it was full of plutonium, there probably is no better place for it to come down.
- dragonwriter 4y ago
  > It’s over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world, Lake Huron is neither particularly remote (from, say, civilization) nor is it land.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Hah, wrong thread! The other one was!
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
thaurelia 4y ago
They're following the balloons with U-2 (among other things, I assume) for some time before shooting down.
dragonwriter 4y ago
> Do we know why they are shot down? Because they are potential hazards and threats. > How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)? Any material falling from a high altitude is dangerous, which figures into decisions about where and when to shoot them down. But if someone is floating hazardous payloads without permission and notice over your airspace, you probably don’t want to give them the choice of whether and when they come down....

ImHereToVote 4y ago

What do you mean the eastern part of the US has just had a Phosphene release causing potentially millions of cancer deaths in the years to come? Look aliens!!!!!!!

Arch485 4y ago
Source?
- weard_beard 4y ago
  https://apnews.com/article/rail-accidents-evacuations-ohio-health-climate-and-environment-3f84663f0b97837cc74a8ce9a50ef6c7 https://apnews.com/article/rail-accidents-evacuations-ohio-h...
aftbit 4y ago
I think you might mean phosgene?
- ImHereToVote 4y ago
  I did at that. Thank you.

nickysielicki 4y ago

Looking for anyone with links to people doing informed speculation on the payload on the original balloon given the photos that were taken. Are they doing bulk-collection of IMEIs? Photography?

graphe 4y ago

Why are we shooting down weather balloons? Why can't we just hook them to a tether on the ground and get some free air balloons?

prawn 4y ago

If an agitator puts up a balloon and payload, one of which contains a potentially dangerous substance, and a nation in question shoots it down, thus releasing and activating that substance, who is responsible? And who does the public deem responsible? (I don't think this is realistic, just musing about other schemes that could be going on.)

encoderer 4y ago
Without a doubt, the person who flies the dangerous thing over the other people is the aggressor. Is this debatable to you?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  In Seattle, when a car drives into a building, it's the building's fault. https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how-often-do-cars-crash-into-buildings-in-seattle-way-more-than-you-think/ https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/how...
- megous 4y ago
  So when MH17 was shot down, would Malaysia Airlines be responsible for harm done to people of Грабове, had it fell on this village directly? Any airliner is a flying object full of dangerous chemicals, flammable and toxic.
  - ncallaway 4y ago
    This seems like a bad faith twisting of the original question and response. The original question was about a balloon filled with a dangerous substance, not civilian air traffic. Civilian air traffic is regulated by the Chicago convention, and shooting it down would be undoubtedly be the responsibility of the nation shooting it down. The difference is largely one of consent. Nations have the right to control what happens in their air space. But if they consent to civilian air traffic, then shoot down an aircraft that nation is responsible. If they consent to a balloon filled with dangerous substances in their air space and then shoot it down, then the nation is responsible. If they *do not* consent to the balloon filled with dangerous substances and shoot it down, then the originating party is responsible.

ioman 4y ago

I'm assuming that the cost of building and launching these balloons is lower that launching fighter aircraft to shoot them down with missiles. I wonder if we're about to see thousands.

npnpnp 4y ago
But remember - these planes are often up in the air anyway for training. The US Air Force has some of the highest flight hours per pilot of any air forces. Yes it will cost more, but it's hard to say by how much. Fighter jets don't just sit in hangars all day. They're no good without trained pilots.
lm28469 4y ago
They most likely always have been there, there are hundreds of balloons released all around the globe every day. This is some kind of mass hysteria we see every now and then. "china bad" + "spy balloon" + "UFO", I can't come up with a better keyword selection to trigger that

holyknight 4y ago

wtf is going on really?

fromseashore 4y ago
War propaganda.

yalogin 4y ago

Do we have international agreement about what constitutes sovereign space in the sky and what doesn’t? I mean at what height does it make it not okay to shoot down an object another country sent up? Is it at the height of the low orbit satellites? Should it be out of the earth’s gravitational pull? Or can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace?

georgeg23 4y ago
There is no agreed altitude. > can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace? These balloons beg that question.... The first one was even made to look like a satellite.
- aflag 4y ago
  I think it'd be hard to argue that something that's no even in orbit is not in a country's airspace.
  - georgeg23 4y ago
    Low Earth satellites also need continuous active thrust/lift to maintain orbit because of the air drag. At dispense Starlink satellites come back in 1-2 days without thrusters.
    - aflag 4y ago
      So are you arguing that being in orbit is not sufficient? Perhaps, but I'd say it's at least a necessary condition.
      - georgeg23 4y ago
        Yes, or from the Chinese perspective, balloons are a legitimate response to the US violation of their space with LEO, especially kinetic attack satellites: https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/space-based-missile-defense-is-doable-dod-rd-chief-griffin/ https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/space-based-missile-defe...

King-Aaron 4y ago

So my thoughts: 1. Are we just seeing more of these things now, due to the US broadening the scope of their radar filtering, and there were always this number of things floating around and now they're just more aware of them? 2. Has something changed in the upper atmosphere/jet stream that's catching balloons that would have previously blown elsewhere, and are now going over the US by accident? 3. Is some really big budget scifi coming out soon, and some marketing team thought that after the chinese balloon thing, launching a ton of cheap weather balloons painted silver would be a cool guerrilla marketing campaign for it?

fit2rule 4y ago
[dead]
cleandreams 4y ago
I read recently that the fact the US military didn't want to stoke public interest with 'UFO's' meant that lots of things that were unidentified went unreported and ignored. This actually became a security risk that other countries could take advantage of. That may have happened here.
frankfrankfrank 4y ago
You overlooked an obvious pink elephant; that the “security” state is yanking our chains as a distraction once again, as they so often do so effectively. It could be for a couple different reasons and/or a combination of them, but included in those are probably things like distraction from the lies, failure, and collapse in Ukraine or even the “OMG, it’s UFOs” now is to prevent that huge toxic chemical catastrophe in Ohio taking peoples attention. But maybe it’s even just priming people for the minutes of hate to initiate Oceana’s war with Eurasia that we have always been in. The social engineers in the government constantly misdirect and redirect attention by using their patsies in the media companies, so it’s not like it doesn’t happen. And now we have AI generated propaganda to look forward to an even more efficient psychosis inducing stream of lies. What I’m more curious about is how otherwise smart people are so easily redirected and played tricks on as if they’re babies, too they point they don’t even realize the magic smoke and mirrors show happening as the ball disappears and reappears in the other hand and the young attractive lady survived being sawed in half. Boop! The government’s got your nose! What will you do without your nose. Boop! Ok, it put it back. Phew! That was close!

DarmokJalad1701 4y ago

Press briefing happening right now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59-6yOWotc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w59-6yOWotc

gfodor 4y ago
That presser kind of blew my mind. I was sure these were obviously ID'ed as balloons by now. And the general seems to have said that we've never shot anything down over the US before, we don't know what these are or where they came from, and that this is the first time we've shot anything down in history, while also saying they NORAD's job is to "defend the homeland" and have a policy of shooting down kinetic threats, but shot this one down anyway, which wasn't deemed to be a kinetic threat, but a threat to air traffic, except it's extremely hard to even see never mind run into by pilots to the point where they couldn't even shoot it.

hndamien 4y ago

Could this be like a penetration test to see how small an object needs to be to go undetected?

AxEy 4y ago

Perhaps these are all probes dropped off during ʻOumuamua's fly-by? (mostly kidding...)

kiddz 4y ago

It seems like the reporting is that two out of three objects are said not to be balloons. I don’t know of any terrestrial technology that can be that large (size of car) aloft for multiple hours/days that hovers. Am I correctly groking the news here?

theteapot 4y ago
Car sized balloons. Gliders. "Hover" is conjecture.
- kiddz 4y ago
  I say hover because the pentagon is saying the same object was seen twice in two days. . . The day before it was in Montana then 24 plus hours later in Michigan. “A unidentified object has been shot down by U.S. forces over Lake Huron, according to the Department of Defense. The object appears to be the same object that had been detected over Montana a day earlier, said officials.“ https://www.npr.org/2023/02/12/1156428862/us-shoot-down-ufo-unidentified-object-lake-huron https://www.npr.org/2023/02/12/1156428862/us-shoot-down-ufo-...
  - idlewords 4y ago
    "Hover" implies more directional control than a balloon would have, the ability to stay in one spot. So far all the descriptions are consistent with just regular floating.
alecfreudenberg 4y ago
this is what I'm seeing as well. pilot selection of aim9 over guns due to difficulty/risk of engagement is concerning. would really like recoverable intel, or at least some more detailed assessment prior to engagement. I'm assuming this information is just not being released, but it begs for obvious scrutiny. we want a picture
idlewords 4y ago
No, you're not. The descriptions are consistent with these objects being balloons or dirugibles. The terrestrial technology that can keep a cylinder the size of a car afloat for days is called "hydrogen".

kerpotgh 4y ago

[dead]

alecfreudenberg 4y ago

looks like an aerial refueler has been circling phoenix for a few hours now [0] anyone have any info on if this could be a similar ufo? [0] ADVCE20 from Phoenix https://fr24.com/ADVCE20/2f2d34d7 https://fr24.com/ADVCE20/2f2d34d7 edit: superbowl

sofaygo 4y ago
Might be related to the Super Bowl, which is happening there right now.
- alecfreudenberg 4y ago
  I just came to edit my post looks like this is standard for superbowl flyovers

ck2 4y ago

So far that's two million dollars in sidewinder missiles (that we know of) How much food and housing, medical care and education could that have provided? They need to find a way to deal with this for $100 a pop or it's going to get stupid.

alxmng 4y ago
US military budget is 700 billion annually.
- ck2 4y ago
  It's several times more than that when you add up all the related divisions that are purposely separated. ie. Homeland Security is military. Not part of the Pentagon budget. But 2000 balloons would be a billion dollars if they keep using sidewinders because "they can so why not".

andrewstuart 4y ago

Government should offer a $ cash bounty for first person to spot and report Chinese spy balloons.

reso 4y ago

First time I heard about these objects I thought about this presentation for Google Loon, and all the research around high-altitude gliders that has taken place in recent decades. https://www.slideshare.net/Funk98/highaltitude-solar-glider-for-internet-access https://www.slideshare.net/Funk98/highaltitude-solar-glider-... A high altitude glider being repurposed for surveillance seems like a plausible explanation for all this.

dx034 4y ago

I always wondered how countries control their airspace to detect foreign objects. Wouldn't these balloons show up similar to birds? Or do they have methods to distinguish birds from other objects of a similar size/radar profile? And if so, couldn't foreign military build "fake birds" that look similar?

lm28469 4y ago
The smallest balloon will be much bigger than any flying bird: https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a13aac_691b42bc63104000a452029f19592c11~mv2.png/v1/fill/w_932,h_308,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01,enc_auto/Balloon%20Specs%20-METEOROLOGICAL.png https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a13aac_691b42bc63104000a4...

shultays 4y ago

Wouldn't it make more sense to capture such objects? Or shot down in a less destructive way instead of rockets and then investigate what they are about, which countries they are from. Or is US past that point already?

vinay427 4y ago
> then investigate what they are about, which countries they are from That is what is currently happening, and it’s a little odd that the linked article didn’t seem to mention this. Divers with special cold water gear are being sent to fetch debris from this latest object, and a similar situation is going on for the others.
- shultays 4y ago
  Oh I was assuming the intent was to just destroy it since they are using rockets. Why wouldn't they just bullets and such and just make it land? Or better capture it somehow without any damage, I am sure they could achieve that
allyant 4y ago
I was thinking current laser weapon tech would be ideal for this.

fIREpOK 4y ago

spreading from the inside

pibechorro 4y ago

Meanwhile, major controversial news is being pushed down to cover this stupidity. Look over here folks! Nothing to see over there!

MichaelRazum 4y ago

It's an UFO, they are interested in ChatGPT for sure