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The US Air Force may have shot down an amateur radio pico balloon over Canada

165 points by upofadown 4y ago

spacephysics 4y ago
Things like these make me question how the US Air Force gets this wrong. Meanwhile we have a chemical disaster in Ohio that’s killed untold amount of animals, fish, wildlife in a 10 mile + radius…
- dylan604 4y ago
  >how the US Air Force gets this wrong. You are aware that the Air Force is staffed by human beings that are prone to making all sorts of mistakes, yeah?
  - pokepim 4y ago
    [dead]
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- pigbearpig 4y ago
  Seems like the US Air Force got it pretty right to me. They were instructed to shoot down the unidentified flying object and they did.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    Yeah, they did a spectacular job of distracting the media so the Navy could grab the important bits of the actual spy balloon without being hounded. Making a bunch of hoo-rah never-been-in-the-military-but-I'm-really-tough Congressfolk look bad is just icing on the cake.
- jacquesm 4y ago
  They got it perfectly right. You can only tell what kind of balloon it is by the time it is on the ground. And there is no reason why the USA can't be both worried about spy balloons and about the chemical disaster in Ohio.
  - ianburrell 4y ago
    I think they made a mistake by not considering the size of the balloons. There is huge difference between the large spy balloon and this small balloon. The payload of the former was bigger than envelop of latter. They should have been able to tell from the radar but definitely from the fighter. Most concerning is that nobody thought about it and the response seems to have been panicked.
    - jacquesm 4y ago
      I think these are 'better safe than sorry' cases, and that as more data rolls in they will re-calibrate. Look at it in an adversarial way: whoever wants to spy on the US could easily try to make the gear small enough that it would be taken for something innocent, and then to use a satellite uplink to move the payload off to the mothership. The question isn't really whether or not this particular balloon was a mistake or not. The question is what the minimum size is of a balloon that is still a viable spying platform. I don't have the answer to that question, but I've seen some pretty impressive miniaturized gear that I think you could easily take up with a small balloon, enough to be worried about it from a counter espionage point of view.
    - jhugo 4y ago
      What evidence do you have that nobody thought about the size of the balloons? That's a comically unlikely take.
    - mrguyorama 4y ago
      The fighter can only slow down to like 180 knots, while the balloon might be blowing around at 10-90 knots depending on where exactly it is. How close do you have to be with the Mark 1 eyeball to actually disambiguate this kind of target, how long would you actually be at that range in a fly-by, and how many fly-bys are you willing to do before "whatever, we will just apologize to the NOAA or a college somewhere" and shoot it down. Maybe the targeting pod could give you a zoomed up view, but it's not really designed for nearly stationary, high altitude objects.
- somenameforme 4y ago
  This [1] article has some bemusing details on the third engagement of the Great Balloon War of 2023. The relatively immobile balloon was the size of a small car, and it took two $400k missiles to pop it, after the first one missed. So I think the answer of how it works is, "not easily"! [1] - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/air-force-missile-missed-first-29210009 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/air-force-missile-miss...
  - Phlarp 4y ago
    How does a $400,000 missile "miss" it's target? Surely the bulk of that $400,000 is related to targeting and guidance? If it takes a million dollars of ordnance to pop a balloon how are we not completely fucked in any real conflict?
    - Consultant32452 4y ago
      It only took a couple box cutters to take down the World Trade Center.
    - labster 4y ago
      Using expensive missiles is a form of power projection. It tells the adversary we are willing to outspend them 1000 to 1. Sometimes there is a logical answer to why we are spending too much money. Also bullets work just fine, they just cause slow leaks that could take hours to ground the craft, which might not be what you want.
      - Phlarp 4y ago
        Arguments around force projection are certainly going to be popular inside the beltway. At a certain point the deficit does become a national security concern, and announcing to our adversaries that they can exacerbate that timeline with incredibly inexpensive balloons is no longer "projecting" anything that resembles "power" Jingoism isn't power.
        labster 4y ago
- partiallypro 4y ago
  > Meanwhile we have a chemical disaster in Ohio that’s killed untold amount of animals, fish, wildlife in a 10 mile + radius… This has absolutely nothing to do with anything on this topic, and I think the Federal Government which spends trillions a year can do more than 1 thing at a time. Statements like this are like saying Apple can't focus on the new iPhone or Apple Music at the same time. It's a ridiculous political trope.
runnerup 4y ago
How do these balloons avoid causing an hazard for an accidental collision with airplanes?
- myself248 4y ago
  There are strict rules about their mass and density. Basically the payload has to be smaller and softer than a bird, and the string can't be too strong either.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    While I'm not disagreeing that these rules exist, but I have not seen them. I say this as someone that did quite a bit of research before actually doing an amateur weather balloon launch myself. I would like see what your definition of a bird is that the payload must be smaller than, because birds come in all sizes. My payload was the size of a small tackle box. Slightly smaller than the footprint of the 15" MBP that I'm typing currently typing this message. It was about 4.5"-5" tall as well. It was made out of whatever type of plastic. Now, I've never been hit by a bird or a plastic tackle box, but I'm thinking the tackle box would not qualify as softer than a bird either. So, if you have a link to these strict rules that are defined as you've stated, I'd love to read them just to know exactly how bad I broke the laws (shut up Beavis).
    - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
      "any unmanned free balloon that - (i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface; (ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds; (iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or (iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon." Translation: To be exempt from the rules of high altitude balloons your balloon must have no more then two payloads at 6lb per payload, cord no stronger than 50lb (fairly weak / most fishing line is too strong), and not be too dense. Your payload sounds probably fine unless it contains a chunk of tungsten for some reason. There's also a maximum balloon size and some other rules worth reviewing. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F/part-101 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F...
peeters 4y ago
It should be noted (since "over Canada" could give the impression of an invasive action, and the article makes no further clarification) that it was Canadian PM Trudeau who gave the order for this object to be shot down, and explicitly authorized US planes to do so if they reached it first.
- caiob 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - jakear 4y ago
    You're shadowbanned btw. Vouched because this seems to comply with guidelines. Edit: gone again. I tried. But yeah your past 2 years of comments are all [dead]. Not sure if you knew that.
    - eli 4y ago
      The comment is off topic hyperbole about politics.
      - jakear 4y ago
        The question of why US forces are being called upon to shoot objects in Canadian airspace is hardly off topic on a post about US forces shooting down objects in Canadian airspace.
        jakear 4y ago
        That said, the claim that Trudeau has slashed funding doesn't seem to be backed by this source https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/military-spending-defense-budget https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/military-sp... The question of why the US was called to shoot this is still open.
        rpeden 4y ago
        Due to NORAD, Canada and the continental U.S. are a shared air defense zone. In this case, USAF had been tracking/following the balloon since before it crossed from Alaska into the Yukon, so they although F-18s from Cold Lake had been dispatched, the U.S. F-22s already on-scene took the shot.
cactusplant7374 4y ago
How do you sleep at night knowing your hobby could malfunction and interfere with an aircraft’s flight path? Is it just that unlikely?
- jcrawfordor 4y ago
  These balloons are compliant with regulations that were developed to minimize the hazard of collision. It is the nature of aviation that other objects exist in the sky and can cause a hazard.
- myself248 4y ago
  Hate to break this to you, but NOAA and other weather agencies launch hundreds of weather balloons, significantly larger and heavier, every 12 hours. You can track them at sondehub.org. Recovering them is a fun hobby, I have several sitting on my workbench. You can harvest STM32's off the boards.
  - runnerup 4y ago
    > Recovering them is a fun hobby This sounds amazing. How could I get into this? Is the balloon structure occasionally left intact enough to refill and reuse?
    - myself248 4y ago
      The balloon itself pops, it's not reusable. It's nice to pick up the litter if you can get it out of the tree or whatever, but it's latex so it'll degrade. The payloads are usually in great shape unless they come down in a road and get run over. My local launch site flies RS41's and you can find photos all over the internet. There's two lithium AA's inside, a couple of STM32s, and a Ublox GPS receiver. Getting into it, just pop onto sondehub a bit past noon or midnight UTC and see what's in the air. If there's one predicted to land near you, keep an eye on it and head out. If a sondehub feeder station is nearby, you'll hear it down pretty close to the ground, and the landing prediction will usually be spot-on. If the nearest station is still a long ways off, then you'll lose it at the station's horizon which may be several hundred meters up, and what happens in the terminal phase of descent is anyone's guess. To improve this, become your own station. There's a list of receivers on the right sidebar if you click the help button. I threw rdzTTGOsonde on a random Heltec lora board I had sitting around; the board was wired for 915MHz and the sondes use 404MHz which comes in the 433MHz Rx chain. The supported_boards page says: > The 868/915 MHz version contains the SX1276 receiver chip. The chip supports both 433 MHZ and 868/915 MHz, but using different input pins. The board connects the antenna to the 868/915 MHZ input pin, the 433 MHz pin is unconnected. Theoretically the 868/915 MHZ version can be modified to work as 403 MHz receiver by directly connecting the antenna to the right pin of the chip, but this requires somewhat advanced SMD soldering skills... So a few minutes later... https://i.imgur.com/aBmvnwh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/aBmvnwh.jpg And this sonde was polite enough to come down in a parking lot where I could literally drive up to it. I didn't even get out of the car to grab it: https://i.imgur.com/qMTVhR3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qMTVhR3.jpg (I did get out a few seconds later to pick up the balloon and throw it away.)
ck2 4y ago
Wait until North Korea realizes it can exhaust other countries by just releasing thousands of cheap balloons with fake sensor arrays. When you give cops pepper-spray, suddenly half the interactions end up in pepper spray. When you give them tasers, suddenly tasers constantly used. When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop. They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage. Ukraine just shot down Russian balloons.
- cpgxiii 4y ago
  You're reaching too far. Munitions are expensive, stockpiles are finite, and the US government does not like to (and cannot quickly) increase the rate of production from the low peacetime rate. If using munitions translated immediately into increasing production, the US wouldn't be drawing down emergency stockpiles from around the world to supply Ukraine with 155mm artillery ammunition. > When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop. No, they are using the cheapest weapon most likely to work, given the public/political demand that "something" be done. It is not an ideal weapon to deal with balloons, but it (clearly) mostly works. > They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage. It's not surprising. The sidewinder is designed to track aircraft, and ignore decoys (e.g. flares). Balloons don't look like aircraft, they don't move like aircraft, they don't have a significant thermal signature (some contrast, when approached from ahead/below with clear (cold) sky behind them), and they definitely don't have the kind of IR/UV signature that dual-band seekers (like the Stinger or SA-18 have) are looking for. The reason to use the sidewinder is that the other missile carried by US interceptors, the AMRAAM, is both way more expensive, and requires some sort of radar signature (and likely some sort of "plane-like" flight characteristics, to avoid decoys like chaff) that a balloon without a radar reflector is not going to have.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  First, the US isn’t going to shoot down small balloons like this one after possibly shooting 3 civilian ones. They will only react to larger ones. Second, what kind of useful sensors will they put on small balloon? I guess might be able to fit camera, even long lens, in the 12lb payload of small balloon but doubt get much useful info. Third, we may see a movement to put transponders in larger balloons. Requiring ADS-B would be reasonable.
giantg2 4y ago
Do the mylar balloons noticeably expand? I thought they hold their size pretty well. Also, I wonder how the heat seeking missile can track such a small and low thermal object. Must be one hell of a sensor.
- colechristensen 4y ago
  If you've ever played with an IR camera, there's plenty to be seen. It would be quite hard to have a balloon without significant contrast with the background of the sky. Especially if it had running electronics. Consumer sensors can detect a fraction of a degree difference.
  - myself248 4y ago
    The pico balloon's electronics run so little and so infrequently, they're not likely to be generating noticeable heat. The solar panel itself, a big black-ish object just hanging in the sun, would be nice and warm just like an equivalent rectangle of black paper would, though. I think the envelope is gonna be the much more visible target. At high altitude silhouetted against the blackness of space, the balloon itself will be considerably warmer, even in what we consider "cold" air. Or if you're looking down on it from above, silhouetted against the warm ground, it will be quite cold. Also the mylar, which I presume is aluminized, is a heck of a radar reflector.
    - colechristensen 4y ago
      Air at 30,000 ft is -50 F. You need, even for a very small box, heating measured in watts to keep your electronics at a temperature where they'll function. Even if you didn't, even tiny amounts of heating are going to be visible. The electronics box will look like a lighthouse beacon in IR. Source: have launched small electronics to 100,000 ft on a weather balloon.
      - myself248 4y ago
        This balloon did not have a heater. From TFA: > These floater balloons often use only solar panels, no batteries. Batteries were dropped from the projects early on because they have limited charging cycles before they stop accepting a charge, especially in the harsh temps at altitude, -40F/-40C or worse. When the battery stops accepting a charge, it ends telemetry from the mission. So they only report telemetry during daylight, when the sun is at a high enough angle to illuminate the tiny solar panels. In the Arctic winter, the days are short and the sun might not get high enough to wake up the electronics.
ackbar03 4y ago
It's obviously a spy balloon guys. It's spying on the weather condition around Canada
Barrin92 4y ago
One of my first thoughts when the Chinese balloon thing happened was that there's going to be hysteria and some high school kids science experiment is going to be taken down. I don't understand how people always reach for aliens or cloak & dagger stuff when in reality the most likely explanation is that you have some Doctor Strangelove characters running around in the bureaucracy.
- hotpotamus 4y ago
  I can't say that I saw the over-reaction coming, but it was pretty clear by the third balloon that it was happening. I will say that I already had the thought listening to some of the more hawkish types that I could very easily imagine them screaming, "we must not have a balloon gap!" to some authority or other.
user3939382 4y ago
You have the Nord Stream pipeline story which IMHO is credible and if true, has the US sabotaging its European allies with illegal unauthorized military operations; you have the story in Ohio — and the media ignores both to talk about balloons and aliens.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  Once again this take is horseshit. Front page of r/news has 3 Ohio train stories, another story about a different train derailment, and ZERO balloon stories. Yesterday it was 7 ohio train stories and 2 balloon stories. If you aren't seeing "the media" talk about this, it's because you choose to consume garbage media sources.
  - user3939382 4y ago
    Maybe your take is "horseshit" because you consider r/news an actual news source?
class4behavior 4y ago
It's misleading to put this on US Airforce only. If it's over Canadian airspace, they ordered it through NORAD or approved it. It was also to be expected not all of these discovered objects were from foreign state or malicious actors. There's a reason the radar filtered out so much before.
xp84 4y ago
It is so hilarious how all of a sudden we're supposed to be afraid of "spy balloons," despite the fact that this is a free country and if anyone actually wanted to spy on any given place in North America, they could literally just send an actual spy, he could fly in on a commercial jet, rent a car and just drive over to the interesting place, and look around. Add in a $500 drone and your spy could get a heck of a lot closer look at most things from the comfort of a nearby parked car. This balloon stuff seems incredibly unlikely to be anything.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  The places you can casually drive around are no the places you would want to target with a spy balloon.
- Eji1700 4y ago
  You can mount a lot more equipment a lot higher up on a balloon, and it can float places you can't legally drive. The, in theory, purpose of such a balloon is going to be something like satellite surveillance but low and in the are long enough to use certain types of sensors that would not work that high up, or that can now penetrate much further into the ground. Not that I really think there's much to be worried about, as even if this is the case its more "nations who's only war will be miserable nuclear fire pretending there's a chance it could be others", but there is absolutely a plausible reason for these.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  There’s an element of overreaction here (when isn’t there?), but this also isn’t true: you can’t exactly drive onto missile bases in Montana and take pictures without causing significant problems.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- selcuka 4y ago
  The song "99 Luftballons" is becoming a reality after 40 years.
- 4y ago
rootusrootus 4y ago
Sort of a clickbait headline. The USAF merely acted on orders from the Prime Minister of Canada.
- notch898a 4y ago
  Is this because the chief of command of the Canadian armed forces is actually the British monarch? Only half joking.
  - infradig 4y ago
    Since 1947 all such powers are vested in the Governor General. Or so Wikipedia tells me.
    - defrost 4y ago
      and those powers (as in Australia) are literally figurehead "Head of State" ceremonial | constitutional powers. No actual authority to order military or police action, or even to lay out a new law, etc. https://learn.parl.ca/understanding-comprendre/en/canada-system-of-government/canadas-constitutional-monarchy/ https://learn.parl.ca/understanding-comprendre/en/canada-sys... Although (from above link) dissolving Parliament and calling an election is a potential problem - we yanked that in Australia after the events known as "The Dismissal" in which a broadly popular Prime Minister was removed by the GG because ( .. long twisty stories of political issues | contraversy | conspiracy | possible CIA dabbling | etc ... ).
      - jackvalentine 4y ago
        > we yanked that in Australia after the events known as "The Dismissal" I don’t believe we did. The governor general still has the power to dissolve the house of representatives in the constitution which is remarkably hard to change. > The Governor-General may appoint such times for holding the sessions of the Parliament as he thinks fit, and may also from time to time, by Proclamation or otherwise, prorogue the Parliament, and may in like manner dissolve the House of Representatives. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter1/Part_1_-_General#chapter-01_part-01_02 https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practi...
letmevoteplease 4y ago
The opening says that the three objects have "now confirmed to have been 'commercial or benign'", but that isn't true. It seems to be based on this quote from the White House: "The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose."[1] I was surprised that a seemingly thorough article would make such a mistake, but MSNBC also headlined their own reporting of this statement as "White House says 3 downed objects were commercial or benign."[2] Not great. [1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-lake-huron-aerial-object-20230214-5cgahyjlrjfktmjpdikmihln4e-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-lak... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jcm7qklWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jcm7qklWU
- slim 4y ago
  you are not good at interpreting white house convoluted speech, journalist are
  - junofan 4y ago
    As a citizen, I’d love to hear from President Joe Biden on this issue. Would be great if he’d answer a few questions as well.
    - jdlshore 4y ago
      https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/ Scroll down to the press briefing. It’s not literally Joe Biden, but it’s his mouthpiece making statements and answering more than a few questions (and being surprisingly playful) on many issues, including this one.
      - panarky 4y ago
        The only thing they know for certain is that they're not aliens, though it's curious how they can be so certain of that when they don't know anything else about the objects.
WalterBright 4y ago
A cockpit view of the balloon just before firing the missile: https://www.startrek.com/database_article/tomorrow-is-yesterday https://www.startrek.com/database_article/tomorrow-is-yester...
8bitsrule 4y ago
Wild wild west "shoot first, ask questions later", helluvan attitude for the US military.
- krapp 4y ago
  Yes, but what do you expect them to have done, ask the balloons for their license and registration?
jaclaz 4y ago
As a side note, if the theory of the pico balloon is correct, then the US airforce is capable of radar-identify a 32" diameter mylar balloon and shoot it with a missile from a fighter jet, which seems to me like being exceptionally accurate.
- dogma1138 4y ago
  The radar PID isn’t even the most impressive part, the target discrimination of the AIM9X must be mental.
- peeters 4y ago
  Radar capability is interesting, but I'm curious if small balloons are really that hard of a target to shoot down once you've found it. They are slow-moving, non evasive, and virtually any impact from shrapnel will be a guaranteed kill. So it seems like you wouldn't even have to be that accurate, if the missile was designed to explode at its closest point. That said, they did miss on the first attempt with the Lake Huron balloon, so I guess it's harder then I'd have thought.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    The problem is in targeting. No missile works on computer vision. There are older guided bombs that use "TV guidance" but I don't think that's even close to the same. It either needs a hot part for an IR seeker to lock on to, or be radar reflective enough that a high power radar beam can reflect off and be picked up by the missile's antenna and pass a certain threshold of reflected power. There's not much heat in the payloads, and balloons probably aren't the best radar reflectors. Even gun lead calculations require a good radar return. I've always predicted we would eventually end up with missiles that guide on visible light, but that's terrifying if it isn't nearly perfect.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  The F22's publicly claimed radar cross section is "the size of a bumble bee". It would make sense we build missiles that can attempt to approach targeting that.

165 points by upofadown 4y ago

Things like these make me question how the US Air Force gets this wrong. Meanwhile we have a chemical disaster in Ohio that’s killed untold amount of animals, fish, wildlife in a 10 mile + radius…

dylan604 4y ago
>how the US Air Force gets this wrong. You are aware that the Air Force is staffed by human beings that are prone to making all sorts of mistakes, yeah?
- pokepim 4y ago
  [dead]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
pigbearpig 4y ago
Seems like the US Air Force got it pretty right to me. They were instructed to shoot down the unidentified flying object and they did.
- Kon-Peki 4y ago
  Yeah, they did a spectacular job of distracting the media so the Navy could grab the important bits of the actual spy balloon without being hounded. Making a bunch of hoo-rah never-been-in-the-military-but-I'm-really-tough Congressfolk look bad is just icing on the cake.
jacquesm 4y ago
They got it perfectly right. You can only tell what kind of balloon it is by the time it is on the ground. And there is no reason why the USA can't be both worried about spy balloons and about the chemical disaster in Ohio.
- ianburrell 4y ago
  I think they made a mistake by not considering the size of the balloons. There is huge difference between the large spy balloon and this small balloon. The payload of the former was bigger than envelop of latter. They should have been able to tell from the radar but definitely from the fighter. Most concerning is that nobody thought about it and the response seems to have been panicked.
  - jacquesm 4y ago
    I think these are 'better safe than sorry' cases, and that as more data rolls in they will re-calibrate. Look at it in an adversarial way: whoever wants to spy on the US could easily try to make the gear small enough that it would be taken for something innocent, and then to use a satellite uplink to move the payload off to the mothership. The question isn't really whether or not this particular balloon was a mistake or not. The question is what the minimum size is of a balloon that is still a viable spying platform. I don't have the answer to that question, but I've seen some pretty impressive miniaturized gear that I think you could easily take up with a small balloon, enough to be worried about it from a counter espionage point of view.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    What evidence do you have that nobody thought about the size of the balloons? That's a comically unlikely take.
  - mrguyorama 4y ago
    The fighter can only slow down to like 180 knots, while the balloon might be blowing around at 10-90 knots depending on where exactly it is. How close do you have to be with the Mark 1 eyeball to actually disambiguate this kind of target, how long would you actually be at that range in a fly-by, and how many fly-bys are you willing to do before "whatever, we will just apologize to the NOAA or a college somewhere" and shoot it down. Maybe the targeting pod could give you a zoomed up view, but it's not really designed for nearly stationary, high altitude objects.
somenameforme 4y ago
This [1] article has some bemusing details on the third engagement of the Great Balloon War of 2023. The relatively immobile balloon was the size of a small car, and it took two $400k missiles to pop it, after the first one missed. So I think the answer of how it works is, "not easily"! [1] - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/air-force-missile-missed-first-29210009 https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/us-news/air-force-missile-miss...
- Phlarp 4y ago
  How does a $400,000 missile "miss" it's target? Surely the bulk of that $400,000 is related to targeting and guidance? If it takes a million dollars of ordnance to pop a balloon how are we not completely fucked in any real conflict?
  - Consultant32452 4y ago
    It only took a couple box cutters to take down the World Trade Center.
  - labster 4y ago
    Using expensive missiles is a form of power projection. It tells the adversary we are willing to outspend them 1000 to 1. Sometimes there is a logical answer to why we are spending too much money. Also bullets work just fine, they just cause slow leaks that could take hours to ground the craft, which might not be what you want.
    - Phlarp 4y ago
      Arguments around force projection are certainly going to be popular inside the beltway. At a certain point the deficit does become a national security concern, and announcing to our adversaries that they can exacerbate that timeline with incredibly inexpensive balloons is no longer "projecting" anything that resembles "power" Jingoism isn't power.
      - labster 4y ago
partiallypro 4y ago
> Meanwhile we have a chemical disaster in Ohio that’s killed untold amount of animals, fish, wildlife in a 10 mile + radius… This has absolutely nothing to do with anything on this topic, and I think the Federal Government which spends trillions a year can do more than 1 thing at a time. Statements like this are like saying Apple can't focus on the new iPhone or Apple Music at the same time. It's a ridiculous political trope.

runnerup 4y ago

How do these balloons avoid causing an hazard for an accidental collision with airplanes?

myself248 4y ago
There are strict rules about their mass and density. Basically the payload has to be smaller and softer than a bird, and the string can't be too strong either.
- dylan604 4y ago
  While I'm not disagreeing that these rules exist, but I have not seen them. I say this as someone that did quite a bit of research before actually doing an amateur weather balloon launch myself. I would like see what your definition of a bird is that the payload must be smaller than, because birds come in all sizes. My payload was the size of a small tackle box. Slightly smaller than the footprint of the 15" MBP that I'm typing currently typing this message. It was about 4.5"-5" tall as well. It was made out of whatever type of plastic. Now, I've never been hit by a bird or a plastic tackle box, but I'm thinking the tackle box would not qualify as softer than a bird either. So, if you have a link to these strict rules that are defined as you've stated, I'd love to read them just to know exactly how bad I broke the laws (shut up Beavis).
  - MacsHeadroom 4y ago
    "any unmanned free balloon that - (i) Carries a payload package that weighs more than four pounds and has a weight/size ratio of more than three ounces per square inch on any surface of the package, determined by dividing the total weight in ounces of the payload package by the area in square inches of its smallest surface; (ii) Carries a payload package that weighs more than six pounds; (iii) Carries a payload, of two or more packages, that weighs more than 12 pounds; or (iv) Uses a rope or other device for suspension of the payload that requires an impact force of more than 50 pounds to separate the suspended payload from the balloon." Translation: To be exempt from the rules of high altitude balloons your balloon must have no more then two payloads at 6lb per payload, cord no stronger than 50lb (fairly weak / most fishing line is too strong), and not be too dense. Your payload sounds probably fine unless it contains a chunk of tungsten for some reason. There's also a maximum balloon size and some other rules worth reviewing. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F/part-101 https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/chapter-I/subchapter-F...

peeters 4y ago

It should be noted (since "over Canada" could give the impression of an invasive action, and the article makes no further clarification) that it was Canadian PM Trudeau who gave the order for this object to be shot down, and explicitly authorized US planes to do so if they reached it first.

caiob 4y ago
[flagged]
- jakear 4y ago
  You're shadowbanned btw. Vouched because this seems to comply with guidelines. Edit: gone again. I tried. But yeah your past 2 years of comments are all [dead]. Not sure if you knew that.
  - eli 4y ago
    The comment is off topic hyperbole about politics.
    - jakear 4y ago
      The question of why US forces are being called upon to shoot objects in Canadian airspace is hardly off topic on a post about US forces shooting down objects in Canadian airspace.
      - jakear 4y ago
        That said, the claim that Trudeau has slashed funding doesn't seem to be backed by this source https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/military-spending-defense-budget https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/CAN/canada/military-sp... The question of why the US was called to shoot this is still open.
      - rpeden 4y ago
        Due to NORAD, Canada and the continental U.S. are a shared air defense zone. In this case, USAF had been tracking/following the balloon since before it crossed from Alaska into the Yukon, so they although F-18s from Cold Lake had been dispatched, the U.S. F-22s already on-scene took the shot.

cactusplant7374 4y ago

How do you sleep at night knowing your hobby could malfunction and interfere with an aircraft’s flight path? Is it just that unlikely?

jcrawfordor 4y ago
These balloons are compliant with regulations that were developed to minimize the hazard of collision. It is the nature of aviation that other objects exist in the sky and can cause a hazard.
myself248 4y ago
Hate to break this to you, but NOAA and other weather agencies launch hundreds of weather balloons, significantly larger and heavier, every 12 hours. You can track them at sondehub.org. Recovering them is a fun hobby, I have several sitting on my workbench. You can harvest STM32's off the boards.
- runnerup 4y ago
  > Recovering them is a fun hobby This sounds amazing. How could I get into this? Is the balloon structure occasionally left intact enough to refill and reuse?
  - myself248 4y ago
    The balloon itself pops, it's not reusable. It's nice to pick up the litter if you can get it out of the tree or whatever, but it's latex so it'll degrade. The payloads are usually in great shape unless they come down in a road and get run over. My local launch site flies RS41's and you can find photos all over the internet. There's two lithium AA's inside, a couple of STM32s, and a Ublox GPS receiver. Getting into it, just pop onto sondehub a bit past noon or midnight UTC and see what's in the air. If there's one predicted to land near you, keep an eye on it and head out. If a sondehub feeder station is nearby, you'll hear it down pretty close to the ground, and the landing prediction will usually be spot-on. If the nearest station is still a long ways off, then you'll lose it at the station's horizon which may be several hundred meters up, and what happens in the terminal phase of descent is anyone's guess. To improve this, become your own station. There's a list of receivers on the right sidebar if you click the help button. I threw rdzTTGOsonde on a random Heltec lora board I had sitting around; the board was wired for 915MHz and the sondes use 404MHz which comes in the 433MHz Rx chain. The supported_boards page says: > The 868/915 MHz version contains the SX1276 receiver chip. The chip supports both 433 MHZ and 868/915 MHz, but using different input pins. The board connects the antenna to the 868/915 MHZ input pin, the 433 MHz pin is unconnected. Theoretically the 868/915 MHZ version can be modified to work as 403 MHz receiver by directly connecting the antenna to the right pin of the chip, but this requires somewhat advanced SMD soldering skills... So a few minutes later... https://i.imgur.com/aBmvnwh.jpg https://i.imgur.com/aBmvnwh.jpg And this sonde was polite enough to come down in a parking lot where I could literally drive up to it. I didn't even get out of the car to grab it: https://i.imgur.com/qMTVhR3.jpg https://i.imgur.com/qMTVhR3.jpg (I did get out a few seconds later to pick up the balloon and throw it away.)

ck2 4y ago

Wait until North Korea realizes it can exhaust other countries by just releasing thousands of cheap balloons with fake sensor arrays. When you give cops pepper-spray, suddenly half the interactions end up in pepper spray. When you give them tasers, suddenly tasers constantly used. When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop. They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage. Ukraine just shot down Russian balloons.

cpgxiii 4y ago
You're reaching too far. Munitions are expensive, stockpiles are finite, and the US government does not like to (and cannot quickly) increase the rate of production from the low peacetime rate. If using munitions translated immediately into increasing production, the US wouldn't be drawing down emergency stockpiles from around the world to supply Ukraine with 155mm artillery ammunition. > When you give the military free reign to use sidewinders domestically, suddenly they are burning them up at half a million dollars a pop. No, they are using the cheapest weapon most likely to work, given the public/political demand that "something" be done. It is not an ideal weapon to deal with balloons, but it (clearly) mostly works. > They even somehow "missed" one of the shots too, that didn't get too much coverage. It's not surprising. The sidewinder is designed to track aircraft, and ignore decoys (e.g. flares). Balloons don't look like aircraft, they don't move like aircraft, they don't have a significant thermal signature (some contrast, when approached from ahead/below with clear (cold) sky behind them), and they definitely don't have the kind of IR/UV signature that dual-band seekers (like the Stinger or SA-18 have) are looking for. The reason to use the sidewinder is that the other missile carried by US interceptors, the AMRAAM, is both way more expensive, and requires some sort of radar signature (and likely some sort of "plane-like" flight characteristics, to avoid decoys like chaff) that a balloon without a radar reflector is not going to have.
ianburrell 4y ago
First, the US isn’t going to shoot down small balloons like this one after possibly shooting 3 civilian ones. They will only react to larger ones. Second, what kind of useful sensors will they put on small balloon? I guess might be able to fit camera, even long lens, in the 12lb payload of small balloon but doubt get much useful info. Third, we may see a movement to put transponders in larger balloons. Requiring ADS-B would be reasonable.

giantg2 4y ago

Do the mylar balloons noticeably expand? I thought they hold their size pretty well. Also, I wonder how the heat seeking missile can track such a small and low thermal object. Must be one hell of a sensor.

colechristensen 4y ago
If you've ever played with an IR camera, there's plenty to be seen. It would be quite hard to have a balloon without significant contrast with the background of the sky. Especially if it had running electronics. Consumer sensors can detect a fraction of a degree difference.
- myself248 4y ago
  The pico balloon's electronics run so little and so infrequently, they're not likely to be generating noticeable heat. The solar panel itself, a big black-ish object just hanging in the sun, would be nice and warm just like an equivalent rectangle of black paper would, though. I think the envelope is gonna be the much more visible target. At high altitude silhouetted against the blackness of space, the balloon itself will be considerably warmer, even in what we consider "cold" air. Or if you're looking down on it from above, silhouetted against the warm ground, it will be quite cold. Also the mylar, which I presume is aluminized, is a heck of a radar reflector.
  - colechristensen 4y ago
    Air at 30,000 ft is -50 F. You need, even for a very small box, heating measured in watts to keep your electronics at a temperature where they'll function. Even if you didn't, even tiny amounts of heating are going to be visible. The electronics box will look like a lighthouse beacon in IR. Source: have launched small electronics to 100,000 ft on a weather balloon.
    - myself248 4y ago
      This balloon did not have a heater. From TFA: > These floater balloons often use only solar panels, no batteries. Batteries were dropped from the projects early on because they have limited charging cycles before they stop accepting a charge, especially in the harsh temps at altitude, -40F/-40C or worse. When the battery stops accepting a charge, it ends telemetry from the mission. So they only report telemetry during daylight, when the sun is at a high enough angle to illuminate the tiny solar panels. In the Arctic winter, the days are short and the sun might not get high enough to wake up the electronics.

ackbar03 4y ago

It's obviously a spy balloon guys. It's spying on the weather condition around Canada

Barrin92 4y ago

One of my first thoughts when the Chinese balloon thing happened was that there's going to be hysteria and some high school kids science experiment is going to be taken down. I don't understand how people always reach for aliens or cloak & dagger stuff when in reality the most likely explanation is that you have some Doctor Strangelove characters running around in the bureaucracy.

hotpotamus 4y ago
I can't say that I saw the over-reaction coming, but it was pretty clear by the third balloon that it was happening. I will say that I already had the thought listening to some of the more hawkish types that I could very easily imagine them screaming, "we must not have a balloon gap!" to some authority or other.

user3939382 4y ago

You have the Nord Stream pipeline story which IMHO is credible and if true, has the US sabotaging its European allies with illegal unauthorized military operations; you have the story in Ohio — and the media ignores both to talk about balloons and aliens.

mrguyorama 4y ago
Once again this take is horseshit. Front page of r/news has 3 Ohio train stories, another story about a different train derailment, and ZERO balloon stories. Yesterday it was 7 ohio train stories and 2 balloon stories. If you aren't seeing "the media" talk about this, it's because you choose to consume garbage media sources.
- user3939382 4y ago
  Maybe your take is "horseshit" because you consider r/news an actual news source?

class4behavior 4y ago

It's misleading to put this on US Airforce only. If it's over Canadian airspace, they ordered it through NORAD or approved it. It was also to be expected not all of these discovered objects were from foreign state or malicious actors. There's a reason the radar filtered out so much before.

xp84 4y ago

It is so hilarious how all of a sudden we're supposed to be afraid of "spy balloons," despite the fact that this is a free country and if anyone actually wanted to spy on any given place in North America, they could literally just send an actual spy, he could fly in on a commercial jet, rent a car and just drive over to the interesting place, and look around. Add in a $500 drone and your spy could get a heck of a lot closer look at most things from the comfort of a nearby parked car. This balloon stuff seems incredibly unlikely to be anything.

oneoff786 4y ago
The places you can casually drive around are no the places you would want to target with a spy balloon.
Eji1700 4y ago
You can mount a lot more equipment a lot higher up on a balloon, and it can float places you can't legally drive. The, in theory, purpose of such a balloon is going to be something like satellite surveillance but low and in the are long enough to use certain types of sensors that would not work that high up, or that can now penetrate much further into the ground. Not that I really think there's much to be worried about, as even if this is the case its more "nations who's only war will be miserable nuclear fire pretending there's a chance it could be others", but there is absolutely a plausible reason for these.
woodruffw 4y ago
There’s an element of overreaction here (when isn’t there?), but this also isn’t true: you can’t exactly drive onto missile bases in Montana and take pictures without causing significant problems.
deleted 4y ago
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selcuka 4y ago
The song "99 Luftballons" is becoming a reality after 40 years.
4y ago

rootusrootus 4y ago

Sort of a clickbait headline. The USAF merely acted on orders from the Prime Minister of Canada.

notch898a 4y ago
Is this because the chief of command of the Canadian armed forces is actually the British monarch? Only half joking.
- infradig 4y ago
  Since 1947 all such powers are vested in the Governor General. Or so Wikipedia tells me.
  - defrost 4y ago
    and those powers (as in Australia) are literally figurehead "Head of State" ceremonial | constitutional powers. No actual authority to order military or police action, or even to lay out a new law, etc. https://learn.parl.ca/understanding-comprendre/en/canada-system-of-government/canadas-constitutional-monarchy/ https://learn.parl.ca/understanding-comprendre/en/canada-sys... Although (from above link) dissolving Parliament and calling an election is a potential problem - we yanked that in Australia after the events known as "The Dismissal" in which a broadly popular Prime Minister was removed by the GG because ( .. long twisty stories of political issues | contraversy | conspiracy | possible CIA dabbling | etc ... ).
    - jackvalentine 4y ago
      > we yanked that in Australia after the events known as "The Dismissal" I don’t believe we did. The governor general still has the power to dissolve the house of representatives in the constitution which is remarkably hard to change. > The Governor-General may appoint such times for holding the sessions of the Parliament as he thinks fit, and may also from time to time, by Proclamation or otherwise, prorogue the Parliament, and may in like manner dissolve the House of Representatives. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/Constitution/chapter1/Part_1_-_General#chapter-01_part-01_02 https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practi...

letmevoteplease 4y ago

The opening says that the three objects have "now confirmed to have been 'commercial or benign'", but that isn't true. It seems to be based on this quote from the White House: "The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose."[1] I was surprised that a seemingly thorough article would make such a mistake, but MSNBC also headlined their own reporting of this statement as "White House says 3 downed objects were commercial or benign."[2] Not great. [1] https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-lake-huron-aerial-object-20230214-5cgahyjlrjfktmjpdikmihln4e-story.html https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation-world/ct-aud-nw-lak... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jcm7qklWU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2jcm7qklWU

slim 4y ago
you are not good at interpreting white house convoluted speech, journalist are
- junofan 4y ago
  As a citizen, I’d love to hear from President Joe Biden on this issue. Would be great if he’d answer a few questions as well.
  - jdlshore 4y ago
    https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/ https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/ Scroll down to the press briefing. It’s not literally Joe Biden, but it’s his mouthpiece making statements and answering more than a few questions (and being surprisingly playful) on many issues, including this one.
    - panarky 4y ago
      The only thing they know for certain is that they're not aliens, though it's curious how they can be so certain of that when they don't know anything else about the objects.

WalterBright 4y ago

A cockpit view of the balloon just before firing the missile: https://www.startrek.com/database_article/tomorrow-is-yesterday https://www.startrek.com/database_article/tomorrow-is-yester...

8bitsrule 4y ago

Wild wild west "shoot first, ask questions later", helluvan attitude for the US military.

krapp 4y ago
Yes, but what do you expect them to have done, ask the balloons for their license and registration?

jaclaz 4y ago

As a side note, if the theory of the pico balloon is correct, then the US airforce is capable of radar-identify a 32" diameter mylar balloon and shoot it with a missile from a fighter jet, which seems to me like being exceptionally accurate.

dogma1138 4y ago
The radar PID isn’t even the most impressive part, the target discrimination of the AIM9X must be mental.
peeters 4y ago
Radar capability is interesting, but I'm curious if small balloons are really that hard of a target to shoot down once you've found it. They are slow-moving, non evasive, and virtually any impact from shrapnel will be a guaranteed kill. So it seems like you wouldn't even have to be that accurate, if the missile was designed to explode at its closest point. That said, they did miss on the first attempt with the Lake Huron balloon, so I guess it's harder then I'd have thought.
- mrguyorama 4y ago
  The problem is in targeting. No missile works on computer vision. There are older guided bombs that use "TV guidance" but I don't think that's even close to the same. It either needs a hot part for an IR seeker to lock on to, or be radar reflective enough that a high power radar beam can reflect off and be picked up by the missile's antenna and pass a certain threshold of reflected power. There's not much heat in the payloads, and balloons probably aren't the best radar reflectors. Even gun lead calculations require a good radar return. I've always predicted we would eventually end up with missiles that guide on visible light, but that's terrifying if it isn't nearly perfect.
mrguyorama 4y ago
The F22's publicly claimed radar cross section is "the size of a bumble bee". It would make sense we build missiles that can attempt to approach targeting that.