[HN Gopher] Military shoots down another high-altitude object, o...
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Military shoots down another high-altitude object, over Lake Huron:
officials
Author : guywithabowtie
Score : 74 points
Date : 2023-02-12 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (abcnews.go.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (abcnews.go.com)
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| On the one hand:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon
|
| >Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine
| releases, two or four times daily.
|
| On the other hand, weather balloons are not silver-gray and
| cylindrical. A Google image search shows them almost always white
| and spherical to teardrop shape and pretty much unmistakably a
| balloon.
| userbinator wrote:
| The cylindrical description fits what could be hung from a
| balloon, however.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Or a small dirigible. You can buy those for a few thousand
| though I have no idea on their flight ceiling etc.
| janoc wrote:
| And it just so happens that most meteorological payloads tend
| to be cylindrical/small boxes.
|
| So it is possible that trigger-happy NORAD is shooting down a
| lot of perfectly harmless stuff now.
| amelius wrote:
| > Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine
| releases, two or four times daily.
|
| Are the electronics in these balloons recovered eventually? Or
| is it just basically e-waste?
| duxup wrote:
| Also the weather balloons are launched on consistent schedule /
| from consistent consistent locations and they often have a
| transmitter that allows them to send back data and even be
| found right?
|
| Not to say one of these can't be a weather balloon, but I would
| expect these also are known possibilities / somewhat detectable
| / aren't trying to be sneaky ...
| colechristensen wrote:
| Yup. There are different requirements depending on payload
| size, but if you're doing it regularly even if you don't have
| to, you send appropriate information anyway notifying the
| right people locally what is flying where, expected flight
| paths, descriptions, exact times, etc.
|
| We did a balloon launch a long time ago, it had a radio
| sending back telemetry and we chased it across Colorado scrub
| land hundreds of miles.
| femto wrote:
| A "well behaved" balloon should also carry a corner
| reflector, so it clearly stands out on radar.
|
| https://www.overlookhorizon.com/how-to-launch-weather-
| balloo...
| duxup wrote:
| TIL, that's cool.
| Kon-Peki wrote:
| > Commercially available radar reflectors are frequently
| found as a sailboat supply item
|
| Wooden and fiberglass boats are fairly invisible to
| radar, even with metal masts and rigging. If you are ever
| planning to head out into the ocean and near where you
| might expect commercial shipping, these are a cheap
| safety item for making your boat visible.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Balloons could be a clever counter to what the US is doing with
| Low Earth Orbit satellites recently. SpaceX is launching tons of
| spy/missile defense satellites over China as part of the Space
| Development Agency:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency
|
| China has been complaining to the United Nations about it.
| https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm
|
| More details:
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellati...
| moose_man wrote:
| China could do the same thing if they wanted. That isn't a good
| excuse to violate national airspace. Maybe they want to
| intercept cell phone data.
| blindriver wrote:
| They have Huawei equipment is almost every cell tower
| installation to do that already.
| Arubis wrote:
| What's the service life on such equipment? Sales of new
| Huawei telecom equip have been banned outright in the US
| for a couple months.
| https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-fcc-
| bans-e...
| moose_man wrote:
| Maybe some of the poorer networks have residual 3G
| equipment, but in general, the US has been cracking down on
| Huawei for a decade. They don't have a huge presence in the
| US.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| And try to compete with Starship??
|
| Judging from Alibaba, airships are more Chinese specialty.
| moose_man wrote:
| They have their own space station dude. They also have tons
| of satellites, including LEO satellites. China is not some
| poor country.
| Ankaios wrote:
| There are Chinese launch companies that are trying to
| compete with Starship.
| sgt101 wrote:
| Alternatively (if they need a counter) they could launch LEO
| satellites themselves?
| ge96 wrote:
| Side note, the Chinese satellite (according to news) that did
| laser testing over Hawaii was visually pretty neat
| analog31 wrote:
| Something that puzzles me is how you specifically target China
| with a satellite. They can't be geostationary unless they're
| over the equator.
| enkid wrote:
| They're targeting Chinese capabilities, not Chinese
| geography.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Lots and lots of satellites that keep passing overhead and
| you compose the images to abstract away the fact they came
| from multiple physical satellites.
|
| Idk how many companies/govs have this capability but:
| https://www.palantir.com/offerings/metaconstellation/
| Redoubts wrote:
| But then it's hard to claim that such a system is targeting
| any one specific place.
| tomrod wrote:
| Planet.com. Maxar. Etc.
|
| CubeSats are cheap and effective.
| bboygravity wrote:
| There's only one company with that capability and that's
| the only organization in the world ever to achieve first
| stage (and soon all stage) reusability for LEO launches.
|
| Because to achieve that you need to put a lot of stuff in
| orbit and the only way to affordably do that is cheap
| (reusable) launches.
| sgt101 wrote:
| The technical change is that you can build very useful,
| very small sats, which are cheap. Current SpaceX launch
| costs are lower, but like 1/2 price and 2x is not a big
| premium for a national security need.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| 10x cost for Falcon 9 (actual internal cost) and 100x
| less for Starship when available..
| ethanbond wrote:
| I don't believe that's true. There are quite a few
| companies with tons of satellites in space. Walmart put
| up an array in _1987_.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Interesting that Palantir video shows SpaceX dragon as an
| example of "integrating with existing satellites".
| Plantir's Thiel and Elon go way back...
| tough wrote:
| They don't call it the Paypal Mafia just cause
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Pretty clear this guy is a key player in their mafia
| https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| First off, I don't buy the underlying premise because the US
| has been launching satellites with global coverage for 50
| years... I don't see why China would wait until now to
| respond.
|
| But for your question, with LEO satellites you don't really
| target specific countries. They cover every country within a
| given latitude range. A round LEO orbit that goes over the US
| must also go over China.
|
| However you don't need geostationary orbits to target a given
| part of the globe. Molniya orbits do the same thing more or
| less and work better if you want coverage further away from
| the equator. They were popularized by the USSR and the US and
| China use them to varying extents.
| analog31 wrote:
| I had to look it up. It must have taken some impressive
| math work to invent that orbit in the 1960s.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit
| georgeg23 wrote:
| The SDA satellites are barely skimming Earth's atmosphere
| and may eventually take a more "active" role intercepting
| missiles and even targeting the ground, at least that's
| according to the SDA program's founder,
| https://breakingdefense.com/2018/08/space-based-missile-
| defe...
| ianburrell wrote:
| SpaceX has launched 8 Starshield satellites. Nobody knows what
| they do but they are probably testbeds for platform and space
| link communications. There are SDA launches planned for March
| and June.
|
| I wouldn't expect to see spy satellites from the SDA; the NRO
| has always controlled those. I could believe small spy
| satellites if launched from NRO. There haven't been any details
| on how missile defense will work from space with small
| satellites. The descriptions I've seen have been about
| communication and detecting hypersonic weapons with infrared
| sensors. The latter is not what I would think of as spy
| satellite or missile defense.
| lost_tourist wrote:
| I highly doubt is the US government doesn't know what they
| do, it's just the public that doesn't know.
| georgeg23 wrote:
| Those links give a lot more information.
| localplume wrote:
| Surveillance satellites are very different to directly flying
| this equipment into US airspace, including the fact that this
| equipment could hold paylods other than ISR. Not to mention
| this comment implies China does not have equivalent spy
| satellites, which it does. Also the UN is an absolute joke.
| That article links has China and Russia complaining about the
| West being aggressors so honestly its kinda BS. Also forgetting
| about China's [ASAT
| test](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fengyun) which has been the
| worst in history.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>Also the UN is an absolute joke
|
| UN is literally _just_ a forum for countries to meet and
| discuss matters. Nothing more nothing less. I have no idea
| why people expect UN to take action, when UN is explicitly
| not an organisation for taking any actions.
| ziftface wrote:
| Hard to blame most countries for thinking of the west as
| aggressors to be fair.
| moose_man wrote:
| [flagged]
| BMc2020 wrote:
| The PRC reminds me of a lot of youtube videos I have seen:
| There's one or more young men who are enjoying the fuck around
| portion of the evening who then discover how fast it can turn
| into the find out portion of the evening.
| okasaki wrote:
| I was going to say something about this being a ridiculous
| reason for conflict, but then again the US does have a history
| of starting wars over fantasies and fabrications. So consider
| curbing your moronic jingoistic attitude.
| BMc2020 wrote:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| heyflyguy wrote:
| I wish there was more clarity on if these are balloons or not.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| Yeah, I don't understand the ambiguity from the government and
| military. They have to have pictures of these things. Show us
| what they look like. Tell us if they are balloons. Are they
| under power against the wind? What speed? All these details
| must be known, it's been days, why aren't they telling us?
| mach1ne wrote:
| Strongly suggests against balloons - mainly because they
| already shot one down and it was no biggie. Aliens are not
| impossible any more, but drones of some kind remain the
| vastly most probable option.
| janoc wrote:
| Drone at 40000 feet? That's higher than most airliners -
| that would need be one heck of a drone, especially given
| where they have shot it down and how far it would have had
| to fly.
|
| Much more likely sounding/meteorological balloons - a lot
| of those are sent up every day, worldwide, with payloads
| that are roughly cylindrical in shape. And some of them can
| traverse huge distances, even across oceans, so such "UFO"
| doesn't need to originate locally at all.
| mach1ne wrote:
| To my understanding the latest object traversed from
| Montana to Lake Huron in less than 24 hours. Can any such
| balloon really travel that fast?
| pixl97 wrote:
| The jet stream currently has a strong west to east north
| east component from Montana to the Great lakes. The winds
| peed varies greatly depending on altitude, but a floating
| object can easily be pushed along at speeds in excess of
| 120mph.
|
| A strong jet stream can exceed 250mph.
| runarberg wrote:
| NASA's XL-Calibur travelled over 4,000 km between Sweden
| and Nunavut in 5-7 days[1]. Montana to Huron is less then
| half the distance. 24 hours is a bit fast, but not
| impossible.
|
| https://twitter.com/markp8183/status/1546936037112393728
|
| EDIT: To give a more clear example. It took XL-Calibur a
| little more then 30 hour to travel from Hudson Bay to
| Yellowknife. That is not much shorter then some distance
| between Montana and Huron
| ianburrell wrote:
| It sounded like they are hovering at altitude which is hard
| to do. And they came from great distance. It would make
| more sense if they were triangle shaped and flying. Also,
| there was no balloon, they should be stealthed and not show
| up on radar.
|
| My suspicion is that the descriptions have been of the
| payloads. They sound like balloon payloads. Maybe the
| balloon is low visibility. But doesn't explain why
| government doesn't mention balloons.
|
| The outside possibility that isn't aliens is anti-gravity.
| I would strange that anyone who developed anti-gravity
| would keep secret and use it like this.
| hammock wrote:
| Have we shot anything down over CONUS since early on in the Cold
| War?
| intrasight wrote:
| I read not since WWII
| todd3834 wrote:
| I sure hope this isn't a distraction to get us to look up while
| something goes down under the sea.
| version_five wrote:
| Not to be conspiratorial, but if it is an intentional
| distraction, the balance of probabilities favors the
| misdirection coming from the US (whether media, politicians,
| etc). This still feels like a case of seeing more because we've
| been told to pay attention to it, vs a new phenomenon. Let's
| see
| mach1ne wrote:
| Yes, the timing with the Chinese weather balloon was no
| coincidence. Either policy changed or radars were
| recalibrated.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| The US Senator for Michigan reports that the object was
| "octagonal" and flying at 20,000ft:
| https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&...
| ianburrell wrote:
| I've stopped trusting when politician tweets describe the
| objects. They are getting the details second-hand if not more
| and seem to be relaying it immediately. Press conferences at
| least have some time to collect accounts and organize them. We
| also don't know who is providing the details; I would trust the
| F-22 pilot.
|
| Like this could mean that there was only octagonal object, the
| balloon was octagonal, or the payload was octagonal. The latter
| seems the most plausible. It is hard to tell if this is more
| balloons or something really weird.
| akmarinov wrote:
| Have aliens invaded and we just don't know about it, the
| government holding them off lowkey?
|
| Edit: Now China's shooting them down!
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says...
| oneoff786 wrote:
| People need to understand that if you're being attacked by a
| FTL capable alien invader, you are so incredibly f**ed that it
| just does not matter.
|
| People don't write popular sci fi novels about realistic alien
| invasions because they would be so utterly one sided and brief
| that it simply wouldn't make a good story.
| GalenErso wrote:
| I liked Titan A.E.'s take on that. An alien race (the Drej)
| attack and destroy the Earth and the Moon, while
| simultaneously attacking evacuation shuttles. Most of
| humanity is wiped out in mere minutes. No silver lining. No
| happy ending at this stage. What's left of humanity is slowly
| dying in drifter colonies scattered around the galaxy. It
| takes a miracle, the Titan project, for humanity to be given
| a new hope again.
| bmitc wrote:
| That's a great way to distract.
| scruple wrote:
| Maybe some von Neumann probes have wandered into our solar
| system.
| codenesium wrote:
| An undersea civilization is exploring the air world.
| iancmceachern wrote:
| It's the Dolphins. So long and thanks for all the fish!
| billiallards wrote:
| They _are_ cylindrical, grey, without apparent means of
| aerial propulsion, and prone to interfering with ultrasonic
| sensors...
|
| Most dolphins are smaller than a compact car, but I bet
| they would break apart upon impact with a frozen sea after
| dropping out of the sky. This might be the correct answer.
| madspindel wrote:
| https://youtu.be/dfPfPB601hw
| hnthrowaway0315 wrote:
| Didn't expect to dive into xcom timeline right now...do I need
| to buy some guns to defend against aliens? I mean at least you
| can hurt them by guns in the game.
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| > That balloon's journey set off a huge debate within the U.S.
| about why it wasn't shot down earlier, with Republicans arguing
| President Donald Trump never would've allowed such a thing to
| happen. Except that it did, many times, including over
| sensitive military facilities in Virginia and California.
|
| There's something hilarious about the idea that, if this was
| the start of an alien invasion, our journalists and politicians
| started off the coverage not being curious about what on Earth
| these objects were, but instead slinging political slime at
| each other
| jansan wrote:
| Reagan said in his speach in fron of the United Nations: "Or
| differences would vanish, if we were facing an alien threat
| from outside this world"
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAAHgAuti84
|
| Also, in the Watchman comic the world is made believe in an
| alien invasion to bring world peace (the ending is different in
| the move).
|
| So let's hope that if these are (real of fake) aliens, the
| result will be a more peaceful world.
| luxuryballs wrote:
| even better, it's staged!
| https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xx2ris
| gsatic wrote:
| People have forgotten 20 years ago the US intercepted Iraqi
| aluminium tubes. They are fully capable of detecting what ever
| they want to imagine. And these days American imagination is
| purely restricted to what collects Likes and upvotes.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| An unnamed congressional aide claims the object was shaped 'like
| an octagon.' Sounds like BS, but you'd like to think the Wall
| Street Journal has _some_ capacity to to identify and filter
| quality sources.
|
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| This is being widely reported, and Rep Bergman also said this
| [deleted]
| nemo44x wrote:
| So I'm guessing we recently upgraded or reconfigured some
| software and now we are seeing a lot of things that have been
| there but we didn't detect. Or something finally crossed a line
| and the enemy, which did not know we were watching was going to
| find out so it's all being cleaned up now.
| cududa wrote:
| NORAD said after the last balloon they modeled it and
| recalibrated their signal filtering to lower the thresholds
| (full transparency: I know what those words mean when string
| together, but I'm no expert and have 0 functional knowledge of
| what that means wrt NORAD).
|
| Now that they've said that, I'm actually more concerned and it
| raises more questions than it answers. Perspective of some
| retired NORAD employee would be very welcome
| irthomasthomas wrote:
| "The American people don't need classified details, just that
| they're safe. That's it."
| akimball wrote:
| That's not how democracy works. That's how sheep farming works.
| cududa wrote:
| No, that's called immature ideological purity. Like it or
| not, state secrets are a necessary function of any
| civilization.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| If you don't tell people the truth about something like
| this, they will cheerfully make something up and accept it
| as truth.
|
| That's not a "necessary function of any civilization,"
| that's dereliction of duty to the people who elected the
| leaders.
| pixl97 wrote:
| And if you do tell the truth your enemy has a nice cheap
| information gathering network at their disposal. Hell,
| they'll likely just make up their own bullshit and post
| it online anyway and say our government is lying.
| pohl wrote:
| People do that when you _do tell them the truth_.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Dana Scully said the same thing in one of
| the early seasons of X-Files.
| preisschild wrote:
| Just waiting for the "My fellow Americans, we have made contact
| with extraterrestrials" speech from Biden
| paganel wrote:
| This balloons war is getting real funny from half away around the
| globe.
|
| I think that the US Air Force had been feeling a little left
| aside when it comes to the whole war thing, what with all the
| discussion about tanks and artillery and related stuff, this is
| the perfect opportunity for them to show that they're worth all
| the money the US taxpayer is throwing at them.
| thereisnospork wrote:
| If there are this many (chinese?) balloons over the US, I'd wager
| there are a fair few over the rest of the world, e.g. Europe. Tip
| of the iceberg imo.
| kkielhofner wrote:
| Random question - anyone know how a sidewinder missile hits these
| objects (whatever they are)? My missile knowledge is non-existent
| but movies show me it has something to do with heat signature -
| which these don't seem to have.
| [deleted]
| giantrobot wrote:
| The missiles seek and track based on heat _differences_. To an
| IR sensor the sky is typically pretty "cold" and just about
| anything in the sky is relatively "hot". Once the missile is
| locked onto the relatively hot signature against the cold
| background the sensor stares at it and adjusts the missile's
| trajectory to intercept it (and blow up).
|
| Countermeasures like flares try to trick a missile's sensor
| into thinking the hot object it was staring at was the flare
| going that way and not the maneuvering aircraft going the other
| way. Modern IR tracking missiles try to stay locked on the
| object by ignoring hotter or cooler objects that might end up
| in its view.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Some modern imaging-based guidance packages for anti-aircraft
| missiles use multiple spectra to defeat countermeasures like
| flares. While a flare and a plane sometimes look similar in
| IR, they are easy to discriminate in the UV spectrum.
| azalemeth wrote:
| At FL400+, anything not the earth is basically space - if you
| point an IR camera in the sky outwards, it really does look
| very cold as the pressure is basically zero and scattered IR
| photons are few and far between. Objects that are not vacuum
| have a signature in the IR - both a black-body temperature
| (which, even at ~ -55 oC, is a hell of a lot higher than
| single-digit kelvin...) and possibly the opportunity to
| reflect any incident light.
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| Not much is known of the AIM-9X but it is probably similar to
| the AIM-9L.
|
| The AIM-9L doesn't lock on to the hottest thing, it takes an IR
| picture of the scene and follows the targeted "blob" in the
| image that's generated. Additionally it has laser proximity
| fusing so it knows when it is close to the shape it is
| tracking. By not simply picking the hottest thing in a scene
| you can't hide in front of the sun anymore, and the
| effectiveness of flares is reduced.
|
| The only thing needed to generate a "blob" good enough to
| target is sufficient DT between the scene and the targeted
| object.
|
| The objects, and they have been curiously consistent with
| calling them "objects", definitely have sufficient DT compared
| to the background sky if they are made of any solid material
| that has been exposed to sunlight for any period of time.
| nickpeterson wrote:
| Not to sound like a Redditor, but this username checks out.
| zmanian wrote:
| The AIM-9X is infrared imaging based rather than heat signature
| based. The pilot resolves that contrast between the object and
| sky before firing the missile and missile targets the object
| based on the image.
| bmitc wrote:
| > The AIM-9X is infrared imaging based rather than heat
| signature based.
|
| Isn't heat detected by infrared? What's the difference?
| Sharlin wrote:
| Cloudless sky is cold, and at 30,000 feet _extremely_ cold.
| Anything not-sky is going to contrast against the sky, even
| if it has no internal heat source (and remember: if it has
| electric things in it, it produces heat).
| hammock wrote:
| Yes warm bodies put off infrared, but so does the sun, and
| the suns IR rays are reflected by objects just as they are
| in the visible range. These reflections used for imaging
| lost_tourist wrote:
| Do you know what sets it off? Seems like it wouldn't be from
| impact as these balloon materials couldn't be comparable to
| say hitting another plane, right?
| justin66 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proximity_fuze
| r00fus wrote:
| These payloads are duds - all you need to do is to pierce
| the balloon.
| pixl97 wrote:
| A little research on the Canadian Ballon shootdown a
| number of years back show that isn't exactly the case. A
| larger balloon was shot with a (20mm I believe) cannon
| and continued to float a long distance.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| All modern missiles use a proximity fuse that selects the
| optimum position relative to the target to detonate, it
| isn't based on contact. One thing to consider is that the
| warhead is not in the nose -- that is where the sensors are
| -- but further back on the missile. These warheads often us
| an annular (ring-like) blast pattern, hence why positioning
| and orientation relative to the target at detonation time
| is important to maximize damage.
| dharmab wrote:
| The AIM-9X uses an IR proximity fuse.
| canadiantim wrote:
| From Huron in we have to demand answers
| nobaddays wrote:
| Please leave sir
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| All puns aside, we've been demanding answers since they let the
| first one drift across North America. I'm not holding my breath
| on getting those answers, though.
| Overtonwindow wrote:
| All of a sudden balloons everywhere. Were they always there, and
| people are just now noticing it, or is this something new?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Likely the former because NORAD has made some statements about
| disabling filters on their radar data processing software that
| would have previously classified these as noise, effectively
| rendering them invisible.
|
| Probably the best stealth there is: to be classed as noise.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I suspect these have always been here.
|
| In fact, the NOAA launches dozens of weather balloons daily.
|
| Seems like recent attention is causing a bit of an over
| correction.
| kranke155 wrote:
| Ok so it's either a massive foreign program or UFOs.
| cafard wrote:
| Well, they are unidentified.
| nanidin wrote:
| And they seem to be sent by aliens.
| awb wrote:
| Seems like there could be a multitude of possibilities.
| kranke155 wrote:
| The thing is the quantity is getting so high it's a question
| of who would have the capability.
| gleenn wrote:
| There has been speculation that China is testing our response.
| It seems unclear what the purpose of hovering over Montana is.
| Maybe they are actually testing something they'd like to attack
| or monitor Taiwan with and the way to test in an obfuscated
| manner is releasing them over the US to get the response
| without triggering the idea that they are preparing for
| another, real target.
| FleurBouquet wrote:
| [dead]
| nyokodo wrote:
| You overcome vast interstellar distances with a balloon and
| then sit there while primitive missiles blow you up?
| nemo44x wrote:
| Maybe they had no idea that was a thing. A super advanced
| species that either never considered it or was phased out so
| long ago the knowledge was lost. They're just up there
| watching and freaking out a bit.
| jmknoll wrote:
| As we've seen with our space probes, its difficult enough to
| land something on another planet and have it survive,
| nevermind equipping it with any offensive or defensive
| capabilities. Maybe these aliens are in the same place. They
| can get the balloon here, but just barely, and they're
| watching in dismay as their work get dismantled.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Utter nonsense. This would be a FTL alien civ. A
| civilization with many orders of magnitude more energy
| available. And manufacturing capabilities. And AI. And many
| other things. They're not gonna send a stupid balloon.
| They're not going to care about a balloon. It's
| inconceivable that a civ could get here and not also have
| the ability to manufacture such basic technology on an
| enormous scale very easily.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| To be fair, human beings have been to space as well and
| routinely get trounced by something as primitive as a
| mosquito bite.
|
| Maybe the UFOs were built to withstand alpha-gamma-laser-
| magma-pulse rays, not our primitive projectile based
| weaponry!
| cududa wrote:
| You know when you're playing with a little kid and they fake
| punch you, and you dramatically go flying across the room and
| they laugh, they're proud of themselves, and you laugh? Yeah
| the aliens playing that game with us right now.
| binarymax wrote:
| "The Asgard would never invent a weapon that propels small
| weights of iron and carbon alloys, by igniting a powder of
| potassium nitrate, charcoal and sulfur."
|
| --Thor, Stargate SG-1, "Small Victories"
| dumbaccount123 wrote:
| Its not a balloon though, and for all we could know they put
| up a fight and the US is keeping it classified.
| sslayer wrote:
| It seems inevitable that eventually someone in a different
| dimension would find a way to start crossing dimensions, and
| start a recon program to report back on "good" dimensions.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| They are UFOs. But the normal kind. Not the little green men
| X-Files kind.
| labster wrote:
| I was not expecting the 99 Luftballoons song to happen so
| literally. This is definitely the darkest timeline.
| bombcar wrote:
| 99 knights of the air
|
| Ride super high-tech jet fighters
|
| Everyone's a superhero
|
| Everyone's a Captain Kirk
|
| With orders to identify
|
| To clarify and classify
|
| Scrambling the summer sky
|
| 99 red balloons go by
|
| Only got the season wrong ...
| 0xDEF wrote:
| CSI-like shows have spread the misconception that spy satellites
| can see human face sized objects in real-time. But there are
| certain physical limits that makes that unlikely to be done from
| space several hundreds of kilometers above the surface.
|
| That is why spy satellites at much lower altitudes can be useful
| to spy on other countries. However anything below 100 km is
| considered an intrusion into the sovereign airspace of a country.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Imagine if you launch a balloon for say $10k so that your
| adversary has to spend $400k on a missile plus $70k x number of
| planes x hours in flight. And now do it multiple times per week.
| Seems like a decent strategy.
| lolc wrote:
| It's a decent strategy until you realize you're just providing
| target practice on sorties the enemy would fly anyway. Shooting
| one missile a day is not affecting that budget. And pilots need
| constant training.
| elorant wrote:
| A balloon that requires a missile to be brought down has to be
| really big, like soccer field big. In which case it won't cost
| just $10k.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| Does that 70k per plane per hour actually cost an additional
| 70k? If it becomes frequent enough I imagine they could start
| shooting down balloons in lieu of their regular training
| missions. Same for the missiles.
| oneoff786 wrote:
| Until the frequency of it escalates into a damaging economic
| conflict.
| hammock wrote:
| Have we shot anything down over CONUS since early on in the Cold
| War?
| okasaki wrote:
| Great distraction from internal problems.
| he0001 wrote:
| Which are?
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| Ohio
| gambiting wrote:
| What's happening in Ohio? As non-american I have no idea.
| avtar wrote:
| https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/feb/11/ohio-
| train-d...
| was_a_dev wrote:
| Did someone say Ohio?
| ttul wrote:
| This time, an F-16 sufficed.
| Redoubts wrote:
| Shame they can't just gun them down with a tucano. This all
| seems like a large waste of money.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| Besides the missile, these pilots need hours anyways.
| Unlikely to be adding significant expense since this can
| replace hours elsewhere.
| ttul wrote:
| I don't understand these "missiles cost too much" budget
| arguments. Defense costs hundreds of billions annually. The
| cost of the people who orchestrate the firing of that
| munition vastly outweighs the cost of the munition.
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Have you ever seen the budget for the department of defense?
| Whatever they're doing here is less than the pocket change
| they lose in the Pentagon seat cushions.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| Also, pilots generally need to fire a certain number of
| missiles every year just to stay in training. At least this
| saves the additional cost of a drone (the usual target for
| training missions, I think).
| squarefoot wrote:
| One missing information about all other objects after the 1st
| balloon is their nature and speed. Why should they keep this
| information classified? It's like the objects were a lot more
| complex than a balloon (propelled drones?), with varying attitude
| and speed and telling what they were doing when they were
| detected would reveal what they were doing while still
| undetected, that is, giving information on military capabilities
| to the Chinese. Pure speculation on my part of course, still I'm
| puzzled by all this secrecy.
| groffee wrote:
| Why would you be puzzled?
|
| Any information given to the public (you) will also seen by the
| enemy (whoever it is)
|
| It's like when America used to go on television during the
| Iraq/Afghanistan wars and announce where they were going to do
| surprise attacks and then get butthurt when they got wiped out.
| ironyman wrote:
| archive: https://archive.is/qRA3F
| erentz wrote:
| Couple of interesting twitter threads on this from Tyler (The
| Drive). He suggests this has been coming/happening for some time.
|
| https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162414986417840128...
|
| Also that we are seeing a lot more now because we have turned
| down/off the filters on the radars. Which means also we can
| expect a lot more false positives.
|
| https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162461466198661120...
| georgeg23 wrote:
| The Drive also covered the SpaceX stuff which recently turned
| into StarShield
|
| https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/23733/spacex-exec-says...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I figure we're hearing about it to quell any fear or paranoia
| about domestic airspace being entered now that it's a well-
| known thing.
| Guthur wrote:
| I'd be very surprised if this is new.
|
| The only new aspect is that you are being told about it. Which
| is unfortunately probably not a good sign. At best it will be
| only used to justify the purchase of some expensive "hi tech"
| boondoggle to counter these... balloons.
| bombcar wrote:
| > Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives.
|
| This may be true, but it's awful hard to get visual
| confirmation and then shoot down a false positive.
| throwawaycities wrote:
| > Which means also we can expect a lot more false positives.
|
| Perhaps we can, but clearly we can expect to find actual UAVs
| corresponding to these radar signals.
|
| If these UAVs that have been shot down were domestic research
| balloons or some other aircraft exempt from FAA regulation,
| then we can expect a party to come forward and publicly
| acknowledge ownership/control of the UAV.
|
| However, based on the descriptions of the object over Alaska it
| seems very likely there are indeed unmanned drones being
| operated by foreign governments and not domestic
| weather/research balloons or FAA compliant unregistered
| domestic aircraft.
| janoc wrote:
| >and not domestic weather/research balloons ...
|
| Keep in mind that not only US or Canada launches weather
| balloons. These things are well capable of flying huge
| distances, including across the oceans. There has been one
| launched by amateur radio operators a few years ago that has
| circumnavigated the globe - and that's not at all a rare
| feat.
|
| See e.g.:
|
| https://qrp-labs.com/circumnavigators.html
|
| So no need to go all conspirationalist about "unmanned drones
| operated by foreign governments" just yet. Especially given
| the distances and altitudes these things were found flying at
| - a heavier than air device would need a ton of fuel and
| energy to fly that high and that far, so a "drone" that at
| the same time doesn't look like an aircraft is rather
| unlikely.
| [deleted]
| wizeman wrote:
| We'll never know the weather again...
| tarsinge wrote:
| Do we know why they are shot down? How do we know there is no
| dangerous material in them (e.g. radioactive)?
| lazide wrote:
| It's over some of the most remote land anywhere in the world,
| and it would be coming down somewhere anyway.
|
| Even if it was full of plutonium, there probably is no better
| place for it to come down.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's over some of the most remote land anywhere in the
| world,
|
| Lake Huron is neither particularly remote (from, say,
| civilization) nor is it land.
| thaurelia wrote:
| They're following the balloons with U-2 (among other things, I
| assume) for some time before shooting down.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Do we know why they are shot down?
|
| Because they are potential hazards and threats.
|
| > How do we know there is no dangerous material in them (e.g.
| radioactive)?
|
| Any material falling from a high altitude is dangerous, which
| figures into decisions about where and when to shoot them down.
| But if someone is floating hazardous payloads without
| permission and notice over your airspace, you probably don't
| want to give them the choice of whether and when they come
| down....
| connordoner wrote:
| Good question. I'd be interested to know too.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Time to rewatch X-Files.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| Dupe of https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703
| HL33tibCe7 wrote:
| Which has been taken off the front page remarkably quickly,
| given its large number of votes in a short time.
|
| Perhaps there's some system where downvotes encourage a post to
| be taken off the front page quicker. But I suspect moderator
| involvement. Which is misguided if so: people will simply post
| dupes and continue to upvote them. Thus, the story is still on
| the front-page, but in a fragmented manner.
| dang wrote:
| It set off the flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it.
|
| Normally we'd merge the comments into the earlier post, but
| since this article has more information, I'll merge them
| hither instead.
| antihipocrat wrote:
| Until we get some more information about what these are, it
| just invites wild speculation.
|
| Even just an image of the objects would help, but at the
| moment we have nothing and there is not much opportunity to
| provide insightful comments.
| mach1ne wrote:
| But it's surprising just how much information we do have.
| What reason did the military have (both US and Canadian) to
| leak info about the shape of the objects?
| Ancalagon wrote:
| Why are there no photos of any of these except the original
| Chinese balloon?
| llacb47 wrote:
| Well, two were over remote parts of Alaska. And this one just
| happened like an hour ago, so maybe pics will come out from
| people on the ground. In any case, the best pics from the first
| one over Montana were shot with telephoto lenses, so it's not
| like anybody with a phone can snap a close up shot
| busyant wrote:
| also... may be currently difficult to find them in northern
| alska / canada. not much daylight.
| npnpnp wrote:
| They're probably being targeted before getting in range of
| media cameras, and are likely classified until declassified. I
| would doubt if we see another one over populated areas anytime
| soon. I would also bet these start getting shot down as they
| enter the ADIZ.
| bombcar wrote:
| The original ballon was large enough to be noticed and
| photographed by civilians on the ground.
| cududa wrote:
| Isn't it a little TOO convenient that no civilians were out
| on Lake Huron in the middle of winter under the objects
| flight path to take a picture?
|
| (/s, if that was necessary to clarify)
| bombcar wrote:
| I'm suspecting the same aliens what sank the Edmund
| Fitzgerald myself (/s)
| throwayyy479087 wrote:
| To explain to the rest of the class - right now Huron is a
| wind-whipped, cold, miserable place to be. It's not
| surprising Johnny Fisherman isn't out these days.
| pueblito wrote:
| Information is being selectively withheld to manipulate public
| opinion, and legacy media outlets are cooperating because
| that's what they exist to do - amplify on demand.
| pixl97 wrote:
| While the government will classify their information thinking
| the media has it but isn't posting it is really just dumb. If
| any member of the public had it, it would have spread across
| Twitter/tictok like wildfire.
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