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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,

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.

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.