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Impressive that NORAD can detect, and an F-22 can then hit such a small target with no substantial heat signature using a missile.
by pengaru 4y ago
Impressive 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.
- jaywalk 4y agoThat was a different UFO, the one over Lake Huron. This one was over Canada.
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- xrayarx 4y agoNo, not impressive. The club is a radio hobby club and the balloon is a radio beacon balloon, which transmits its location and height unencrypted on an open frequency, as do basically all balloons. Except for those from china, apparently. If they really shot down that balloon, and not a Chinese one, they used a 500,000 rocket started by a 200mm plane to kill a $100 balloon. Spending so much on so little on the other hand is impressive.
- nirvgorilla 4y ago[flagged]
- flaviut 4y agoThere are folks from all around the world online, and many countries place their currency symbol after the amount.
- josephcsible 4y agoBut the post in question was giving an amount in US dollars, and the US isn't such a country.
- testTED 4y agoHabits die hard. Like thinking people in other countries are kids in your own country.
- newaccount74 4y agoProbably people from other countries where currency typically goes behind the number like 100€.
- AceyMan 4y agoHmm, I'm a grammar pedant and that one has never bothered me except in formal prose (real journalism, marketing copy, books). It's spoken that way ("one-hundred dollars") so it's actually kind of intuitive to write it that way, even if it's technically 'wrong.'
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
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- AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y agoWhen you think about it, not really. The F22 went into service 15 years ago and has a radar cross section about the size of a honey bee. I would hope that our air defenses would be designed to detect aircraft like that, and I would also imagine a balloon with no thought to stealth would show up really nicely on any radar that didn't filter it out. As for the heat signature, and I admit I'm doing more guesswork here, it works via IR contrast. As long as the balloon was sufficiently warmer than the air around it, and you were close enough, it should track just fine.
- neodymiumphish 4y agoFor NORAD and other air defense platforms, they're a ton of filtering that must be done to ignore cruft, otherwise they'd be responding to floating plastic bags, birds, etc, constantly. From the missile system and fighter radar perspective, that's not something they heavily (if at all) test these platforms against, because that's not a threat there's any expectation to face.
- mrguyorama 4y agoI think it's hilarious that our defense tracking infrastructure is too good at seeing stuff and that causes problems.