4 flying objects have been shot down over North America: “Spy balloons and UFOs up to no good” (1 Viewer)

[squistion]

I’m reminded of how much I don’t miss the political forum.

Why this has been probably the most active thread we have had on here recently? Let's be honest, the FFA has been a snooze fest recently,

Yes, it is and I just can't imagine why that is.

 

[fatness]

I'm left staring into a void of lies.

OK, have fun there.

I think there have been at least 5 known Chinese spy balloons that have gone over the US, 2 under Biden and 3 under Trump, and that none of them have been shot down or even mentioned until one became visible and got shot down where it wouldn't endanger people or property. I think that during the coming weeks we'll learn more about what the balloon was carrying and what its capabilities were and were not.

If you can understand why national security leaders didn't disclose these balloon incursions to the public previously, why is it so hard for you to understand that those exact same officials might be less than totally candid with us right now?

National security leaders at the time didn't know about the incursions (Esper and Bolton have said so). The fact that the incursions occurred was discovered after the change in administrations. Congress was only briefed on them last Sunday. And there's apparently an offer to brief a few Trump administration officials, though I'm not sure why.

The official said that the intelligence community is prepared to offer briefings to key Trump administration officials about the Chinese surveillance program, which the Biden administration believes has been deployed in countries across five continents over the last several years.

 

[3C's]

Interesting sidestory from this. The callsigns used Saturday were frank01 and frank02, an apparent homage to Frank Luke.

Meet the 'Arizona Balloon Buster,' the ace WWI pilot famous for shooting down enemy balloons on 'suicide' missions

Balloons were heavily defended, making attacks on them 'practically suicide,' the Air Force said, but that didn't stop Frank Luke Jr.

www.businessinsider.com

 

[3C's]

More on Luke with a neat addendum. https://warbirdsnews.com/warbirds-n...callsign-frank-shot-down-chinese-balloon.html

 

[Doug B]

Solid read of the situation—free NYT link via Yahoo News:

Balloon Incident Reveals More Than Spying as Competition With China Intensifies

It may be months before U.S. intelligence agencies can compare the audacious flight of a Chinese surveillance balloon across the country to other intrusions on America’s national security systems, to determine how it ranks. After all, there is plenty of competition. Sign up for The Morning...

news.yahoo.com

 

[fatness]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...-balloon-recovered-trump-latest-b2276371.html

US defense officials told reporters on Monday that they did not believe the balloon posed a physical military threat when it crossed into the US, prompting military officials to advise against shooting it down initially.

As a US Navy recovery operation is underway, General Glen David VanHerck of the United States Northern Command told reporters on Monday that the downed balloon was likely 200-feet tall and weighed several hundred pounds.
It also potentially carried explosives “to detonate and destroy the balloon.”

The suspected Chinese espionage airship that was downed by an American F-22 fighter on Sunday was targeting “sensitive military sites” as part of a program that has been known to US officials for a number of years, the White House has said.

 

[SWC]

everytime i see complaints about the political forum being shut down and then i look who is making them i realize joe made absolutely the right decision take that to the bank bromigos

 

[The General]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

It's like a tutorial level for military hardware.

 

[STEADYMOBBIN 22]

everytime i see complaints about the political forum being shut down and then i look who is making them i realize joe made absolutely the right decision take that to the bank bromigos

Comments like this and the one I deleted don’t help. literally has nothing to do with the topic.

 

[STEADYMOBBIN 22]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

It's like a tutorial level for military hardware.

Reminds me of pilot wings for SNES!

 

[The General]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

It's like a tutorial level for military hardware.

"Well done, Ivan...now that you are ready let's move on to level 1...Two Balloons"

 

[Doug B]

For whatever any of us thinks this is worth - NORAD's commander held a press conference about the balloon today. There is no video -- transcript below:

Gen. Glen VanHerck, Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command, Holds an Off-Camera, On-The-Record Briefing on the High-Altitude Surveillance Balloon Recovery Efforts (US Dept of Defense, 2/6/2023)

 

[IvanKaramazov]

For whatever any of us thinks this is worth - NORAD's commander held a press conference about the balloon today. There is no video -- transcript below:

Gen. Glen VanHerck, Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command, Holds an Off-Camera, On-The-Record Briefing on the High-Altitude Surveillance Balloon Recovery Efforts (US Dept of Defense, 2/6/2023)

CNN is leading with this part:

GEN. VANHERCK: So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsible to -- responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don't want to go in further detail.

That's honestly pretty amazing, if true. I know our air defenses are based mainly around intercepting bombers and stuff like that, but how does a giant balloon with a bunch of electronics visible to the naked eye slip by undetected? What the hell?

 

[fatness]

"Domain awareness gap" could mean almost anything in bureaucratic-speak. I'm guessing they mean "We at Agency A thought Division B was watching for this. Division B meanwhile believed Force C was looking for this, and Force C thought we at Agency A were looking for it.

 

[Doug B]

That's honestly pretty amazing, if true. I know our air defenses are based mainly around intercepting bombers and stuff like that, but how does a giant balloon with a bunch of electronics visible to the naked eye slip by undetected? What the hell?

Spitballing:

a) I can look for cites, but my understanding is that balloons -- huge size of the sphere notwithstanding -- present a poor radar cross section and move so slowly that detection software basically throws out the reading as part of error correction. So either you spot it visually or you never catch it.

b) Naked-eye detection wasn't supposed to happen. The recent balloon was losing altitude progressively as it transited North America. Had it stayed at its original 90-100k foot altitude, it wouldn't have been eyeballed by civilians.

 

[fatness]

National Security Council strategic communications coordinator John Kirby told reporters that there are several factors – like their altitude and speed – that make detecting the spy balloons difficult, saying that the ways to track them are “not constant.”

“They fly very, very high, very, very slow and in order to track, you’ve got to run the traps along many different lines of information and technology,” Kirby said. “Their dynamics, their trajectory, their flight behavior complicates the ability to know exactly where one is at any particular moment in time depending on where it is over the Earth’s surface.”

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/06/politics/pentagon-balloon-monday/index.html

 

[STEADYMOBBIN 22]

For whatever any of us thinks this is worth - NORAD's commander held a press conference about the balloon today. There is no video -- transcript below:

Gen. Glen VanHerck, Commander, North American Aerospace Defense Command and United States Northern Command, Holds an Off-Camera, On-The-Record Briefing on the High-Altitude Surveillance Balloon Recovery Efforts (US Dept of Defense, 2/6/2023)

CNN is leading with this part:

GEN. VANHERCK: So those balloons, so every day as a NORAD commander it's my responsible to -- responsibility to detect threats to North America. I will tell you that we did not detect those threats. And that's a domain awareness gap that we have to figure out. But I don't want to go in further detail.

That's honestly pretty amazing, if true. I know our air defenses are based mainly around intercepting bombers and stuff like that, but how does a giant balloon with a bunch of electronics visible to the naked eye slip by undetected? What the hell?

That's honestly pretty amazing, if true. I know our air defenses are based mainly around intercepting bombers and stuff like that, but how does a giant balloon with a bunch of electronics visible to the naked eye slip by undetected? What the hell?

Spitballing:

a) I can look for cites, but my understanding is that balloons -- huge size of the sphere notwithstanding -- present a poor radar cross section and move so slowly that detection software basically throws out the reading as part of error correction. So either you spot it visually or you never catch it.

b) Naked-eye detection wasn't supposed to happen. The recent balloon was losing altitude progressively as it transited North America. Had it stayed at its original 90-100k foot altitude, it wouldn't have been eyeballed by civilians.

So there could be more of them!??

 

[Doug B]

So there could be more of them!??

No doubt about it. The ones spotted visually are the f-ups that lost helium and descended too much.

EDIT: See also these from this page.

 

[Andy Dufresne]

Hast du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht g'rad an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons Und dass so was von so was kommt

Who could have ever thought that tune would be so prescient?

 

[Leroy Hoard]

Hast du etwas Zeit für mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons Auf ihrem Weg zum Horizont
Denkst du vielleicht g'rad an mich
Dann singe ich ein Lied für dich
Von 99 Luftballons Und dass so was von so was kommt

Who could have ever thought that tune would be so prescient?

Way more prescient than 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.

 

[Faust]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

Alert 5 @alert5
The F-22 has a balloon kill marking.

https://twitter.com/alert5/status/1621994379148939265?s=21

 

[fatness]

It seems like China has a real PR clusterfark on their hands at home trying to explain this balloon fiasco away without being too embarrassed. They've fired their head meteorologist.

Zhuang Guotai, the head of the China Meteorological Administration, was reportedly fired from his post on Saturday in what was perceived to be an effort to mellow the tense situation before US president Joe Biden ordered the balloon to be shot down.

 

[fatness]

China goes into crisis management mode on balloon fallout

There's no one unified source knowing or reporting what's going on in China, but it seems to me they really wanted the Blinken visit to happen and that their balloon strolling across the US and getting shot down and (in progress) recovered screwed that goal up completely.

Beijing’s official response – and the timing of the incident, which resulted in the US’ postponement of the Blinken visit – suggest its leadership is now grappling with how to handle a diplomatic crisis that has inflamed the very tensions it had been hoping to mend. “By all accounts, the Chinese leadership was looking forward to having direct talks with Blinken … it would be very plausible that (Chinese leader Xi Jinping) would want to make sure everything was smooth in the lead up to the visit,” said Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore. “That this would happen is perplexing and strange,” he said.

“Xi wanted Blinken to visit and discuss issues of mutual interest. Xi is trying to patch up the economy after the disaster of the zero-Covid policy and US restrictions on semiconductors. So, he could not have wanted an incident over the balloon that would derail such a meeting,” he added. Chong in Singapore raised another possibility: Like many other big bureaucracies … the right hand may not know what the left hand is doing and there may be a simple matter of the lack of coordination,” he said.

“I think the Chinese leadership at the national level clearly felt upset and upstaged by this balloon,” said Dali Yang, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, noting the Chinese Foreign Ministry’s initial explanation was “unusually conciliatory” with its rare expression of “regret,” especially compared with its often aggressive rhetoric of recent years.

They screwed up bigtime.

 

[fatness]

As questions persist about the Chinese surveillance balloon’s journey across Alaska, a top military general provided some details Monday about why the balloon was able to enter the state. In a media briefing, Air Force Gen. Glen VanHerck, said that as the balloon approached Alaska, he assessed that it did not pose a “physical military threat” to North America.

https://www.adn.com/alaska-news/202...sent-military-threat-as-it-approached-alaska/

 

[3C's]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

Alert 5 @alert5
The F-22 has a balloon kill marking.

https://twitter.com/alert5/status/1621994379148939265?s=21

Fake pic.

Also: VanHerck said it was up to Langley’s 1st Fighter Wing to determine if the F-22 should receive a black balloon painted on the side, denoting a kill.

 

[3C's]

You'd think these guys fired the missile themselves. NSFW language.

https://twitter.com/thenewarea51/status/1622065721877446656

 

[Sand]

Orange&Blue: I'd like to see the math on the chances of it hitting a house or person in Montana. (Reasonable to question this. I think the calculation was less about hitting people or property and more about 'controlability' of the debris field. Someone on another thread made what to me was a winning point: 'You don't want some rancher deciding that debris that fell on his property belonged to him,')​

​

Replace Montana with the Aleutians. That balloon flew over Alaska and Canada. We have significant detection technology out there in Alaska. What are the odds of hitting a house in interior Alaska?

 

[Doug B]

Orange&Blue: I'd like to see the math on the chances of it hitting a house or person in Montana. (Reasonable to question this. I think the calculation was less about hitting people or property and more about 'controlability' of the debris field. Someone on another thread made what to me was a winning point: 'You don't want some rancher deciding that debris that fell on his property belonged to him,')​

​

Replace Montana with the Aleutians. That balloon flew over Alaska and Canada. We have significant detection technology out there in Alaska. What are the odds of hitting a house in interior Alaska?

Disregard the "hitting a house" thing. The idea was to bring in the balloon's payload "alive" so that it could be scrutinized. That needed to be done in a certain way in a certain locale to maximize the chance of success.

 

[BlackCrowes]

Orange&Blue: I'd like to see the math on the chances of it hitting a house or person in Montana. (Reasonable to question this. I think the calculation was less about hitting people or property and more about 'controlability' of the debris field. Someone on another thread made what to me was a winning point: 'You don't want some rancher deciding that debris that fell on his property belonged to him,')​

​

Replace Montana with the Aleutians. That balloon flew over Alaska and Canada. We have significant detection technology out there in Alaska. What are the odds of hitting a house in interior Alaska?

I was thinking the Cobra Dane radar would see it as soon as it crossed the horizon, but maybe it filters out objects that slow and small (RCS-wise)

 

[Blick]

Orange&Blue: I'd like to see the math on the chances of it hitting a house or person in Montana. (Reasonable to question this. I think the calculation was less about hitting people or property and more about 'controlability' of the debris field. Someone on another thread made what to me was a winning point: 'You don't want some rancher deciding that debris that fell on his property belonged to him,')​

​

Replace Montana with the Aleutians. That balloon flew over Alaska and Canada. We have significant detection technology out there in Alaska. What are the odds of hitting a house in interior Alaska?

I think the reason it wasn't brought down immediately was because it was determined to be of no threat. The media coverage increased the political risk to the point where something had to be done.

 

[Doug B]

I think the reason it wasn't brought down immediately was because it was determined to be of no threat. The media coverage increased the political risk to the point where something had to be done.

Agree with the bolded. My understanding is that this particular balloon was first spotted over Japan and TPTB had been following it from that point on.

The civilian spotters and media coverage certainly forced some hands ... but I still think that the U.S. wanted to recover the balloon's payload for inspection. I think U.S. intelligence would have preferred to recover one of these balloons (or rather, the payloads) in secret somehow, but that's not how it worked out.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

You'd think these guys fired the missile themselves. NSFW language.

https://twitter.com/thenewarea51/status/1622065721877446656

I knew exactly what this was going to be before I clicked on it.

I think I spent half my youth working around people exactly like the folks narrating that video.

 

[Doug B]

China Has an Extensive Satellite Network. Here’s Why It Would Use a Balloon to Spy (Time, 2/3/2023)

This article is from before the shoot-down. I'm posting it here because it gives a lot of good background information about the applicability of balloon surveillance in the modern world.

 

[The General]

You'd think these guys fired the missile themselves. NSFW language.

https://twitter.com/thenewarea51/status/1622065721877446656

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Bonus irony points for putting it on TikTok!

 

[Andy Dufresne]

Kent Mansley says "LAUNCH THE MISSILE!!!"

 

[Doug B]

So far, I haven't seen this corroborated in old-line pre-Internet media ... but I'll offer it anyway:

Biden admin offers to brief Trump officials on past Chinese spy balloon incursions (Politico, 2/5/2023)

At lower levels, officials have tracked multiple instances of balloon activity over U.S. territories in recent years. One of the Trump-era balloons hovered over Guam, according to two U.S. officials. And in 2020, the intelligence community assessed that much smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia were Chinese radar-jamming devices, according to a former senior DoD official.

Hadn't previously heard about the Atlantic Ocean balloons -- probably in international waters, though.

 

[3C's]

So far, I haven't seen this corroborated in old-line pre-Internet media ... but I'll offer it anyway:

Biden admin offers to brief Trump officials on past Chinese spy balloon incursions (Politico, 2/5/2023)

At lower levels, officials have tracked multiple instances of balloon activity over U.S. territories in recent years. One of the Trump-era balloons hovered over Guam, according to two U.S. officials. And in 2020, the intelligence community assessed that much smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia were Chinese radar-jamming devices, according to a former senior DoD official.

Hadn't previously heard about the Atlantic Ocean balloons -- probably in international waters, though.

The one in VA was within US airspace.

 

[Sand]

China Has an Extensive Satellite Network. Here’s Why It Would Use a Balloon to Spy (Time, 2/3/2023)

This article is from before the shoot-down. I'm posting it here because it gives a lot of good background information about the applicability of balloon surveillance in the modern world.

They're beta launches in case China wants to EMP the US. What the article pointedly fails to mention screams loudest.

 

[The General]

China Has an Extensive Satellite Network. Here’s Why It Would Use a Balloon to Spy (Time, 2/3/2023)

This article is from before the shoot-down. I'm posting it here because it gives a lot of good background information about the applicability of balloon surveillance in the modern world.

They're beta launches in case China wants to EMP the US. What the article pointedly fails to mention screams loudest.

I don't think China's balloon fleet is prepped to have a couple hundred ICBM's sent their way.

 

[IvanKaramazov]

China Has an Extensive Satellite Network. Here’s Why It Would Use a Balloon to Spy (Time, 2/3/2023)

This article is from before the shoot-down. I'm posting it here because it gives a lot of good background information about the applicability of balloon surveillance in the modern world.

They're beta launches in case China wants to EMP the US. What the article pointedly fails to mention screams loudest.

Couldn't you do an EMP attack with a ballistic missile?

 

[Sand]

China Has an Extensive Satellite Network. Here’s Why It Would Use a Balloon to Spy (Time, 2/3/2023)

This article is from before the shoot-down. I'm posting it here because it gives a lot of good background information about the applicability of balloon surveillance in the modern world.

They're beta launches in case China wants to EMP the US. What the article pointedly fails to mention screams loudest.

Couldn't you do an EMP attack with a ballistic missile?

Yes, but we're equipped to knock those down.

 

[fatness]

Photos of balloon being pulled out of the ocean.

 

[The General]

I am curious how nervous people are after this incident.

1-10 scale: 1 being like "balloon...what balloon?"...10 being you ordered an extra Ham radio set off the dark web.

I'll go with 2.

 

[Andy Dufresne]

I am curious how nervous people are after this incident.

1-10 scale: 1 being like "balloon...what balloon?"...10 being you ordered an extra Ham radio set off the dark web.

I'll go with 2.

Filed under "Games governments play" and am moving on with my life.

 

[Don Quixote]

I am curious how nervous people are after this incident.

1-10 scale: 1 being like "balloon...what balloon?"...10 being you ordered an extra Ham radio set off the dark web.

I'll go with 2.

I’ll go with 2 as well. Now, if it was 99 luftballoons….

 

[IvanKaramazov]

I am curious how nervous people are after this incident.

1-10 scale: 1 being like "balloon...what balloon?"...10 being you ordered an extra Ham radio set off the dark web.

I'll go with 2.

1.001

 

[New Binky the Doormat]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

at least it didn't cost us much

 

[STEADYMOBBIN 22]

2.23

I hate to say it, but it was kind of poetic on their part. We’re the greatest military in the history of the known world and they straight punked us…..



with a balloon.

 

[The General]

First known air to air kill by F-22

This was funny to me.

at least it didn't cost us much

The balloon didn't even see the plane coming!