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Military unable to determine how the objects were kept aloft
- blitzar 4y agoIt must be fun being a General and messing with the media when they ask stupid questions. General: "We don't know the origin of these objects." Reporter: "So they are ships sent by aliens?" General: "Well we don't know the origin of these objects, they could come from anywhere." BREAKING NEWS: MILITARY SHOOTS DOWN SUSPECTED ALIEN SHIP.
- euroderf 4y agoChinese balloons ANTHRAX DISPENSERS
- jesusofnazarath 4y ago[dead]
- bhouston 4y agoWill we see any pictures of these crafts before or after being hit by the missiles? I guess if they are previously unseen tech from China, thus a military secret, we would not likely get to see any pictures, which would be a shame...
- akmarinov 4y agoChina seems to be having issues with these objects as well - 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... Might be their own that they didn't tell their military about, might be US ones, might be aliens (it's not)!
- butler14 4y agoThat's some random bloke with an enthusiasm for keto diets writing as a contributor on Forbes, not an actual Forbes journalist, just in case anyone was wondering
- JKCalhoun 4y agoStates have shared photos publicly when there was a PR angle to do so. If the US finds it is in its interest to point a finger at another nation I suspect the photos will roll out.
- ccity88 4y agoLooks like the current news cycle is mostly pushing fanfare; everybody loves a good Alien story. It seems like the pentagon and US officials are also eager to hint that it's extra terrestrial activity - In reality it's most likely US-China relations going sour and each country shooting down the others super-secret not-so-secret-now spy drones. In a couple of decades when we have the declassified info available we'll be marvelling at how the second cold war was going on right under our noses and the pentagon convinced us it was aliens.
- chasd00 4y agoOthers have mentioned this too but it would be funny in a sad clown sort of way if an alien species showed up to invade but were completely outmatched with respect to weapons. Like they never anticipated encountering life that spent all of its evolutionary budget on perfecting the means to destroy life.
- sky_rw 4y agoWait until they meet wolves.
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoOr the hippopotamuses.
- krapp 4y agoOr literally anything living in Australia.
- chasd00 4y agohah! touche
- mlqnl 4y ago"Another U.S. defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the military had seen no evidence suggesting any of the objects in question were of extraterrestrial origin." Interesting that anonymity is required for such a banal issue. But lots of funding hinges on perpetuating the scare for as long as possible, so I guess that explains it.
- mc32 4y agoNo, I think they've been conditioned to be extraordinarily careful in their wording, lest they be occasionally wrong and get rained on for being technically wrong on something minor. So instead of having a rubric of "be cautious if it could incite war" it's "be cautious everywhere because we do not trust your judgement on anything"
- MonkeyMalarky 4y agoAnd so we have "object" being the most generic and useless way to refer to something.
- mc32 4y agoI mean phenomenon was pretty generic. Though I suppose they could get childish and start calling them "things" or "stuff" like small children do. Maybe the military is about to degenerate into Munro's limit of 1000 basic words to describe everything.
- chasd00 4y agoIf you’re not authorized to speak even mentioning the lunch menu is enough to get you, your neighbors, and your neighbors friends in a lot of trouble. It gets a little ridiculous.
- dynamite-ready 4y agoThe military was happy to reveal the providence of the so called spy balloon. Not sure what the reason for the current course of action is, but if they're shooting stuff down, then perhaps it's not that banal. Even it ends up being a pair of teenagers pulling off an elaborate hoax.
- pseingatl 4y agoHaving lost contact with their second Earth probe, the Trisolaran fleet prepares for the jump to the strange planet to eliminate all hostile forces.
- nosianu 4y agoA year later: All crustaceans on earth have been killed. The invaders, living in their own "bubble", don't even look anywhere but under water and don't recognize land based life forms or land based anything, and since they themselves are crustaceans they don't think any other species could ever be a threat. Again we survived another alien attack thanks to living organisms brains limited abilities of perception. The last serious invasion killed off all silicon based life forms two billion years ago by an intelligent rock species.
- nop_slide 4y agos/crustaceans/rustaceans Now our build tools reverted to being slower than molasses.
- haswell 4y agoEither: - These objects are ours - Or the military is lying - Or our understanding of the world is about to change drastically If these are not ours, and we truly do not understand how they are able to fly, and they’re made by a state actor/adversary, that implies a shift in technological dominance. If they are not made by humans, worldviews shift for obvious reasons. I tend to believe there’s a simpler explanation for all of this, but when I do indulge my imagination, my extremely unlikely-to-be-true theory goes something like: An ancient human civilization figured out that the development of certain technologies was responsible for their downfall, and instituted measures to prevent such a downfall from recurring. And so these things have always been here, waiting for humanity to once again trigger the conditions of such a downfall, at which point they emerge. The sudden explosion of AI tech - both in the tech community and the public consciousness - seems like a trigger event as good as any. I really hope we get the real story about these soon Edit: I don't really believe we're dealing with aliens or ancient civilizations, but whether you like or dislike wacky theories about this, they're going to emerge one way or another when the military says they're stumped, and they're more fun to think about than the alternatives.
- mc32 4y agoI think you had something there in the first half but took a turn into fantasy at the end.
- haswell 4y agoTo be fair, I fully agree with you.
- wongarsu 4y agoOr there wasn't much left after being shot by 20mm Gatling rounds and falling from considerable height.
- akmarinov 4y agoThey use missiles according to the news stories. If they're balloons, they probably cost way less than the hundreds of thousands of dollars a missile costs.
- guhcampos 4y agoThey are just balloons. Please try to keep the aluminum foil hats out of Hackernews.
- akmarinov 4y agoNo
- otreblatercero 4y agoEither a Government Façade(conspiracy) or Extraterrestrials. Now the "reasonable" people are in a conundrum.
- haswell 4y agoThis is the interesting thing about the current situation. A tinfoil hat seems appropriate regardless of the direction you point your tinfoilery. I think the truth is far more likely to involve the government keeping secrets than aliens, but in both cases, something is up.
- dariusj18 4y agoWhen it concerns this kind of stuff, government secrecy is very important. Anything the military says gives intelligence to anyone listening.
- krapp 4y agoThe implication that "reasonable people" deny the existence of conspiracies altogether is incorrect. Obviously conspiracies exist, it's just a matter of belief versus proof, and probability. Reasonable people are willing to accept the likelihood that these are Chinese spy balloons or other mundane (not extraterrestrial) objects, and even that the government is pulling some kind of bullshit act with it in the media for the sake of politics or optics. It isn't the case that any conspiracy afoot is equally as likely as aliens. It isn't going to be aliens.
- Nathanael_M 4y agoThey're probably just balloons. However, this is someone directly saying that they aren't sure they're just balloons. They're obviously very different from the first balloon. Things can exist in the technologically fascinating middle ground between completely boring and aluminum foil hat alien invasion. If governments are investing into developing stealth balloons then I guarantee there is fascinating technology that we don't know about that I am excited to know more about. This is an ideal place to discuss it.
- h2odragon 4y agoI've seen the phrase "moving at wind speeds" in a few of the word salads tossed by the press. That does strongly suggest, given our current knowledge, that the objects were kept aloft by buoyancy, being lighter than the air around them. This feels like early days of COVID, when common sense evaporated like spit on a hot griddle and the Narrative became the goal of itself.
- aa-jv 4y ago>This feels like early days of COVID, when common sense evaporated like spit on a hot griddle and the Narrative became the goal of itself. What is the narrative obfuscating?
- unsupp0rted 4y agoA valid question. It could be obfuscation, ignorance, incompetence or confusion. It's possible we won't know "who knew what, when" for 1~3 decades.
- aa-jv 4y agoIts a distraction. There are far worse catastrophic events happening right now than a few stray kids' toys being blown away by multi-million dollar death machines. The Ohio catastrophe, Epsteins client list, the Pfizer revelations .. all of these things are more important than trash falling over the USA.
- iambateman 4y agoWe should start by assuming that the military is even more evasive than Bill Belichick in press conferences. If we understand that a football coach doesn’t always say exactly what he thinks, then certainly the military PR person will be at least as coy. The guy said “I’m not ready to rule anything out.” They could have asked him if he thought these drones were manufactured by John F Kennnedy and he would’ve said the same thing. Some articles don’t belong on HN.
- WhatsTheBigIdea 4y agoSeems like the next step will be to figure out a way to bring these objects down with out destroying them. My understanding is that very few winged aircraft are able to operate at 60k feet. The ones that do fly super fast and are not able to deploy a gun, missile, or other package. I suspect this is why the military is shooting them down with missiles which can be deployed by an aircraft flying at lower altitude or an aircraft on a high arc. Perhaps a missile could be modified to deploy a weighted net like this https://netgun.com/netgun-info/ultranet-hd-large-animal-target-net-gun https://netgun.com/netgun-info/ultranet-hd-large-animal-targ... to bring these balloons down to a more convenient altitude where a non-destructive forced landing can be organized? Perhaps this is a project for #Steve Jurvetson?
- bhouston 4y agoyeah, they need to be able to capture these with some type of net or harpoon. Maybe a combination of a net around the base and then some type of dart to take out the balloon. That said, the debris is just hitting, probably slowed by the remaining balloon fabric, and thus likely quite recoverable. It shouldn't be burned out or exploded I suspect if they are targeting the balloon rather than the instruments?
- unsupp0rted 4y agoEven with a net or harpoon, how do they bring these "city-bus size" things down safely and intact from 60,000 feet when they weigh so much?
- bhouston 4y agoI think the "city sized bus" includes the balloon? Or is that just the payload? If it is just the payload, I guess you need to board it and either hijack it, or attach a parachute to it? Then I guess the adversary will start to add self-destruct mechanisms to them or some other type of arms race will occur.
- unsupp0rted 4y ago
- morninglight 4y agoArt Bell lives!
- irthomasthomas 4y agoGiven that there are, like a billion cameras in the U.S.? There aren't many (any?) photos of these things.