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Did an F-22 Blow Up an Illinois Club’s Hobby Balloon?
- SubiculumCode 4y agoI thought it might have been some poor grad student's dissertation project.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hk1337 4y agoIf it did, I would presume it wasn't targeted. I'm not an expert in radar tech or whatever else is used to pick up objects but I would think something that small wouldn't get picked up easily on radar and whatnot (except for some sort of beacon identifying what it is)? Likely, it was close enough to the Chinese balloon explosion that it was affected by it?
- jaywalk 4y agoDid you even read the first paragraph of the article?
- dpifke 4y agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Please don't comment on whether someone read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that".
- vxNsr 4y agoThis whole affair has made the us intelligence apparatus and executive branch look supremely incompetent.
- sublinear 4y agoHave you considered whether that's the point of these stories?
- cld8483 4y ago[dead]
- mc32 4y agoIt was a strange few days. The big multi-bus-sized balloon was ignored for several days while it loitered over sensitive areas, then, suddenly, they turned up the sensitivity and may have shot down hobbyist balloons. It's as if NORAD etc., were caught unprepared and had no idea which way to go on this and were waiting for a decision higher up and then went bananas. Still there's something incongruous, it was claimed the USAF did flybys before shooting them down to ensure the balloons were not misidentified manned balloons.
- boomboomsubban 4y ago>The big multi-bus-sized balloon was ignored for several days while it loitered over sensitive areas, Weren't they escorting the balloon with jets the entire time while pushing nonstop news stories about it? That's ignored?
- xrayarx 4y agoThey didn't escort the balloons. Maybe they made a flyby. A balloon goes with the speed of the wind, the f22 can't go that slow or it falls out of the sky. Especially at the heights we are talking about.
- protastus 4y agoIt made them look extremely bureaucratic and slow. We've been hearing about declassified reports about UFOs for years, indicating ignorance about airspace incursions. It took a gigantic Chinese balloon slowly traveling uncontested across the country for the government to be sufficiently embarrassed and take action.
- Ankaios 4y agoGotta say, I'd personally trade the balloon for the story I'd be able to tell.
- pengaru 4y agoImpressive that NORAD can detect, and an F-22 can then hit such a small target with no substantial heat signature using a missile.
- amateuring 4y agoonly took a couple of tries
- sschueller 4y agoIsn't each missile $400k?
- orangepurple 4y agoEach missile purchased puts food on the table for a defense contractor living in Chantilly, VA. (The military industrial complex welfare state is very lucrative as long as you keep your mouth shut, your head down, and obey)
- cosmodisk 4y agoNo wonder they blamed F-35 programme as the main reason why American roads aren't fixed.
- cld8483 4y agoWho did? The worst roads in America are all (meant to be) maintained with local/state money. The road surface of the federal highways are all in a reasonable state, although many bridges are sketchy. The F-35 isn't the reason an average country road in America looks like the surface of the Moon.
- mrguyorama 4y agoWhich is always a stupid take. America is absurdly wealthy. We could burn half a trillion dollars a year in a big bonfire and still easily afford all the niceties of a modern nation like good infrastructure and healthcare. We might have to actually tax a proportional amount from ultrarich and megacorps, but I'm perfectly fine with the people receiving 70% of all increase in wealth since the 50s paying a significant amount of tax.
- chrisbolt 4y agoYesterday’s discussions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34824653 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34814717
- dsr_ 4y agoWhat's even cooler than your club launching a high-altitude balloon? Losing it to a $200MM stealth air superiority fighter.
- mrguyorama 4y agoImagine being able to tell people that your hobby project had to be taken down by the single most advanced Air Superiority Fighter ever made! Talk about bragging rights.
- tablespoon 4y ago> What's even cooler than your club launching a high-altitude balloon? Losing it to a $200MM stealth air superiority fighter. I'm actually kinda surprised and air-to-air missile could even hit a 3 foot balloon.
- fatjokes 4y agoThe first shot missed one of them
- jzawodn 4y agoI love the choice of words... "blow up" and "hobby balloon" can't be an accident, right?
- steponlego 4y agoMaybe this is why they're not super keen on recovering and analyzing the wreckage...
- cyanydeez 4y agoor why we tend not to worry about a bunch of f'n balloons.
- steponlego 4y agoA balloon could have a nuclear bomb, viruses, sophisticated RF equipment, who knows what on board. We do have to worry about balloons. It's a non-negotiable national security issue.
- cyanydeez 4y agoIn imagination land, sure.
- steponlego 4y agoIn WWIII the Japanese firebombed the US with balloons. Are you Chinese?
- jmyeet 4y agoThis whole "balloon gap" story is a textbook example of where media interests actually lie and manufactured consent. First, the actual Chinese spy balloon was a complete non-story. Large nations spy on each other. The SR-71 was invented for the US to fly over the Soviet Union. Yet it got wall-to-wall media coverage. Why? The usual reasons. It evokes fear (and this part worked) and plays into the need for even more military spending (because almost $1T/year just isn't enough). All this while an actual catastrophe is taking place, the East Palestine derailment, with a virtual media blackout. Why? Because the media as a general rule doesn't criticize corporate interests. Hell, the company responsible (Norfolk Southern) has a case on this term's Supreme Court to attempt to overturn a PA law that people can sue a company that does business there. The actual case involves someone who got cancer. And the Biden DoJ has filed an amicus brief in support of Norfolk Southern's case [1]. I really wish more people would recognize the balloon story for the intentional distraction it is. [1]: https://www.levernews.com/bidens-doj-backing-norfolk-southern-case-to-block-lawsuits/ https://www.levernews.com/bidens-doj-backing-norfolk-souther...
- jayess 4y agoThere are quite of few of these amateur radio balloons aloft at any given time. It cracks me up that so much money was wasted taking one of them out. You can track them real-time here: https://amateur.sondehub.org/ https://amateur.sondehub.org/ (zoom out and look for the balloon icons)
- tlavoie 4y agoVery cool, thanks. Too bad they're not able to ping ADS-B receivers, which are likely much more ubiquitous.
- drewcoo 4y agoSo the club members . . . were they Chinese or extraterrestrials?
- Stratoscope 4y agohttps://archive.is/VTC5W https://archive.is/VTC5W
- metadat 4y agoIs nymag paywalled? I've not observed any access restrictions. Edit: Got it, thank you!
- Ancapistani 4y agoHonestly, even if it isn't, I appreciate the archive link. I've often found HN threads that are many years old while researching things, and the original article is long gone. An archive link at least _usually_ works.
- Stratoscope 4y agoI didn't hit a paywall when I first opened the article, but when I clicked a link from this article to the one about SBF and the Super Bowl, I got a paywall on that one. And then when I hit the back button to go back to the balloon article, it now had a paywall too. So I posted the archive link in case anyone else runs into this.
- gardenfelder 4y agojust open in a private window to hide cookies