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: <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Development_Agency</a><p>China has been complaining to the United Nations about it. <a href="https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm" rel="nofollow">https://press.un.org/en/2022/gadis3698.doc.htm</a><p>More details:
<a href="https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellation)" rel="nofollow">https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Starshield_(satellite_constellati...</a>
Couple of interesting twitter threads on this from Tyler (The Drive). He suggests this has been coming/happening for some time.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/1624149864178401282" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162414986417840128...</a><p>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.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/1624614661986611201" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/aviation_intel/status/162461466198661120...</a>
On the one hand:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_balloon</a><p>>Between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine releases, two or four times daily.<p>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.
So my thoughts:<p>1. Are we just seeing more of these things now, due to the US broadening the scope of their radar filtering, and there were always this number of things floating around and now they're just more aware of them?<p>2. Has something changed in the upper atmosphere/jet stream that's catching balloons that would have previously blown elsewhere, and are now going over the US by accident?<p>3. Is some really big budget scifi coming out soon, and some marketing team thought that after the chinese balloon thing, launching a ton of cheap weather balloons painted silver would be a cool guerrilla marketing campaign for it?
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 <i>some</i> capacity to to identify and filter quality sources.<p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down-over-north-america-were-balloons-schumer-says-7c2c63ec" rel="nofollow">https://www.wsj.com/articles/latest-flying-objects-shot-down...</a>
Do we have international agreement about what constitutes sovereign space in the sky and what doesn’t? I mean at what height does it make it not okay to shoot down an object another country sent up? Is it at the height of the low orbit satellites? Should it be out of the earth’s gravitational pull? Or can China shoot down one of US’ low orbit satellites saying it flew over its airspace?
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.
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.
If an agitator puts up a balloon and payload, one of which contains a potentially dangerous substance, and a nation in question shoots it down, thus releasing and activating that substance, who is responsible? And who does the public deem responsible?<p>(I don't think this is realistic, just musing about other schemes that could be going on.)
The US Senator for Michigan reports that the object was “octagonal” and flying at 20,000ft: <a href="https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&t=qny-chiFAA74RdTUEbhXKg" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/bnodesk/status/1624888630912188419?s=46&...</a>
It seems like the reporting is that two out of three objects are said not to be balloons. I don’t know of any terrestrial technology that can be that large (size of car) aloft for multiple hours/days that hovers. Am I correctly groking the news here?
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.
Have aliens invaded and we just don’t know about it, the government holding them off lowkey?<p>Edit: Now China’s shooting them down! <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says-its-preparing-to-shoot-down-unidentified-flying-object-near-yellow-sea/" rel="nofollow">https://www.forbes.com/sites/mattnovak/2023/02/12/china-says...</a>
looks like an aerial refueler has been circling phoenix for a few hours now [0]<p>anyone have any info on if this could be a similar ufo?<p>[0] ADVCE20 from Phoenix <a href="https://fr24.com/ADVCE20/2f2d34d7" rel="nofollow">https://fr24.com/ADVCE20/2f2d34d7</a><p>edit: superbowl
I'm assuming that the cost of building and launching these balloons is lower that launching fighter aircraft to shoot them down with missiles. I wonder if we're about to see thousands.
First time I heard about these objects I thought about this presentation for Google Loon, and all the research around high-altitude gliders that has taken place in recent decades. <a href="https://www.slideshare.net/Funk98/highaltitude-solar-glider-for-internet-access" rel="nofollow">https://www.slideshare.net/Funk98/highaltitude-solar-glider-...</a><p>A high altitude glider being repurposed for surveillance seems like a plausible explanation for all this.
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.
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.<p>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.
I always wondered how countries control their airspace to detect foreign objects. Wouldn't these balloons show up similar to birds? Or do they have methods to distinguish birds from other objects of a similar size/radar profile? And if so, couldn't foreign military build "fake birds" that look similar?
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.
Wouldn't it make more sense to capture such objects? Or shot down in a less destructive way instead of rockets and then investigate what they are about, which countries they are from. Or is US past that point already?
Looking for anyone with links to people doing informed speculation on the payload on the original balloon given the photos that were taken. Are they doing bulk-collection of IMEIs? Photography?
Dupe of <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34766703</a>
So far that's two million dollars in sidewinder missiles (that we know of)<p>How much food and housing, medical care and education could that have provided?<p>They need to find a way to deal with this for $100 a pop or it's going to get stupid.
What do you mean the eastern part of the US has just had a Phosphene release causing potentially millions of cancer deaths in the years to come?<p>Look aliens!!!!!!!
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.
This balloons war is getting real funny from half away around the globe.<p>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.