US jet shoots down unknown object flying off Alaska coast

We merged all the threads into this one, since it seems to have been first.<p>We changed the url from <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;10&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;unidentified-object-shot-down-alaska.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.nytimes.com&#x2F;2023&#x2F;02&#x2F;10&#x2F;us&#x2F;politics&#x2F;unidentified-...</a> to what appears to be the article with most recent updates (via <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34745940" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34745940</a> - thanks yabones!).

I feel sorry for the pool soul who decided to send up their DIY weather balloon with gopro to get that space shot. Who knows he might even have a video of a F-22 sending a missile over.

I like how the measurement unit seems to be either small cars or school busses.

I mean maybe I&#x27;m just not up to date on recent history, but when was the last time we shot down anything in our our airspace prior to last week?

&gt; Officials said the object was far smaller than the previous balloon, did not appear to be maneuverable and was traveling at a much lower altitude.<p>&quot;Not maneuverable&quot; and &quot;previous balloon&quot; so is it fair to assume that it&#x27;s a balloon as well?

Pot calling kettle black. The US has been sending armed drones into several countries without coordination with local ATC or consent of the local government. Soleimani and a number of Iraqi military officers were taken out by a US drone.

Why are they calling it an object. It seems like a huge deal what kind of &quot;object&quot; this was. Was it another balloon? Missile? Private plane? How could they not know, and if they do know, why would they not say?<p>Edit - this video isn&#x27;t loading for me, but I&#x27;ve just watched what I assume is the same briefing on Twitter. They have a pilot assessment that the object was unmanned - but they can&#x27;t tell us balloon, missile, drone? I&#x27;m not understanding how a pilot could see the thing, communicate (&quot;I&#x27;m looking at an unmanned object, should I shoot?&quot;) and somehow not convey what the object was. I appreciate the speed of this briefing, but I would prefer they wait at least until they know what they are saying. In the briefing below the guy says NORAD has been tracking it for a day - and they still don&#x27;t know what it is? I guess that rules out missile, at least.

My first thought: wow is that an X-COM operation? Make sure you have some brave souls, and don&#x27;t overload them...<p>Research med kit and laser too.

Briefing happening now: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c-span.org&#x2F;video&#x2F;?525994-1&#x2F;pentagon-briefs-downing-high-altitude-object-alaskan-airspace&amp;live=" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.c-span.org&#x2F;video&#x2F;?525994-1&#x2F;pentagon-briefs-downi...</a>

F-22 entered service 2005<p>Air to air kills since entered service:<p>2005-2022: 0<p>2023: 2

We need a cheaper way to down these spy balloons. The sidewinder missile + F-22 flight time costs are an order of magnitude greater than the total cost of launching one balloon. Send over the High Energy Laser with Integrated Optical-dazzler (HELIOS) to protect the west coast.

Given the Chinese have been complaining to the UN for the last year about American Low Earth Orbit satellites spying on them (Starshield, Space Development Agency, etc..) this balloon thing is pretty clever.

So we finally have our explanation for all the strange attempts to resurrect UFO interest in the last years.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23942463" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=23942463</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10970609" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=10970609</a><p>You could fly a flashing cow in this times and nobody would stop looking down at their phones.

My first thought was maybe it was something like an unmanned survey drone owned by an oil company or some resident&#x27;s experimental aircraft. But... The Air Force chases off manned Russian aircraft with some regularity. Maybe Russia decided to go unmanned to see how far they could push into our airspace instead of flying something like a Tupolev Tu-95 like they normally do.

I saw a joke that the CCP has trolled us into shooting down an alien space craft.

I wonder if it&#x27;s a drone from an HK cargo ship like the ones that flew onto &#x2F; around US Navy ships in the past.<p>- Drones can be the size of small cars<p>- 40K feet is not a problem for a drone<p>In such a case it&#x27;d be more about the class &#x2F; properties of the drone...

As your President, I promise to be tough on crime and UFOs, unlike my opponent over there.

Spying happens all the time, even between allies. From what I read&#x2F;understood about past spying incidents, it&#x27;s only when someone starts mentioning it to the press that they want the rest of the population to be up an arms about it. Why that might be true: there are probably tons of Chinese spy events (and American spy events on China) that never made it. Was the balloon the first? Come on.<p>If the above hypothesis is true, it means the U.S. is trying to rile up &#x2F; ready &#x2F; etc. the population to view China as a threat.<p>Kind of ironic given the intense scrutiny and fears prior to Trump getting elected that he would trigger a depression or war because of his isolationist attitude about China specifically.<p>But more importantly what does that mean now? Will it justify laws passed to further isolate China?

Is there a reason F-22s are being used to take these balloons down?<p>Is it to take advantage of a training opportunity? I would think less advanced aircraft may be more cost effective to operate.

Actual weather balloon?

Fingers crossed it&#x27;s not a Korean airliner

There&#x27;s a weird set of specifications with this one since they seem to be making a distinction between the balloon last week and whatever this is;<p>* Flying at 40k feet altitude<p>* Size of a small car<p>* Not manned<p>* Didn&#x27;t appear to be maneuverable<p>* Shot down with an AIM-9X heatseaking missile<p>What could that be? Also, seems premature to assume China again when Russia is far closer to the Alaskan coast and just as antagonistic.

I dread to think of all the state-funded technology companies with backdoor-ed firmware&#x2F;software coming out of China

It doesn&#x27;t matter what the object was, it&#x27;s that America&#x27;s adversaries know they can do it without consequences, and what makes them believe this is what matters about this story. That is the irreversible change it signifies, imo.

&quot;unknown object flying&quot; Pretty sure we have a well-known acronym for that...

Other countries are trying to spy on the US’s super advanced “UAPs”. Pet theory of mine.

So what’s the deal with these balloons? Provocation? Do they think nobody will notice?

This is a pretty cheap way for foreign adversary to test our detection capabilities.

At what altitude does something stop being geographic territory and start being a plane in the atmosphere?

If it&#x27;s a balloon why waste an AIM-9X when the F-22&#x27;s cannon will get the job done?

So the Raptor is all about shooting down balloons?

I&#x27;m trying to think of anything valuable you can learn from a balloon flyover that isn&#x27;t already public domain, and I&#x27;m coming up blank. Anyone have any examples?

Imagine if this is how first contact is made.

&gt; reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flights<p>Aren&#x27;t civilian flights more a threat for the planet? Not suggesting to shoot them, just to stop them

&gt; similar balloons passed over U.S. territory on four occasions during the Trump and Biden administrations<p>from linked article <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;politics-united-states-government-south-carolina-china-dfa08f4f47a58a638d4ef1d3a34b2a8b" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;apnews.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;politics-united-states-government...</a>

Why was it faster this time?

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;6ZYLp" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;archive.ph&#x2F;6ZYLp</a><p>My pull quotes:<p>&gt; The Pentagon downed an unidentified object over Alaska on Friday at the order of President Biden, according to U.S. officials.<p>&gt; Mr. Kirby said the object was traveling at 40,000 feet. He said officials were describing it as an object because that was the best description they had of it.<p>&gt; A recovery effort on the debris will be made, Mr. Kirby said. He said the object was “roughly the size of a small car” — much smaller than the spy balloon that had a payload the size of multiple buses.

I&#x27;ve wondered if these incursions are intentional on the part of the Chinese to provoke a precedent setting response to airborne (and beyond) surveillance.<p>&quot;They shoot down our surveillance balloons, giving us precedent to shoot down their high altitude drone planes or satellites in the future.&quot;

As reminder, Pentagon has been testing mass surveillance balloons across the US for long time. Here’s story from back in 2019, but these have been flying around much longer and would not surprise me if China got the idea from the US.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34727444" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=34727444</a>

There was a fun theory on UFOs I saw recently.<p>The general premise is this:<p>U.S. adversaries realized they couldn&#x27;t compete with the U.S. on spending. So they got creative and loaded the equivalent of Pringles cans up with a bunch of sensors, hooked them up to either a balloons or relatively cheap unmanned aircraft, and sent them through U.S. airspace to collect intelligence. They&#x27;d occasionally get caught (perhaps on purpose) and cause a base to scramble to intercept. The proposed theory on why they&#x27;d get caught on purpose was to gather up intelligence on what a response would be flying through the airspace.<p>It&#x27;s possible they&#x27;ve been doing this for more than a decade and the military has gotten caught with egg on it&#x27;s face having ignored the reports for so long.

The F-22 has gone from zero kills to two in under a week.

Hopefully this isn&#x27;t on that kind of hair-trigger that shoots down civilian airliners by mistake. It&#x27;s happened literally dozens of times [0], so it&#x27;s hard to believe any kind of blanket &quot;this can&#x27;t possibly happen because...&quot; logic.<p>Seems to be particularly likely to happen in panicky situations, or when someone has something to prove. E.g., the Soviet-American tensions surrounding an American spy plane, a RC-135, were a factor in the Soviets shooting down KAL-007 (they thought it was the RC-135) [1].<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_airliner_shootdown_incidents" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;List_of_airliner_shootdown_inc...</a><p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Korean_Air_Lines_Flight_007</a>

They didn&#x27;t let this one hang for a few days to finish its torrent seeding?

I’m releasing a high altitude balloon soon for a prize competition. Whoever guesses the closest landing zone of the balloon wins a new cybertruck. Just a silly promotion for my startup. I really hope my balloon gets shot down by a US jet, the free pr would be great for us. Unlikely my balloon will cross the pond though.

In other news - a Richard Branson type balloon enthusiast has just gone missing in Alaska...

Cheap balloon vs expensive missile, seems a good way to bankrupt us by sending continuous balloons.

latest: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.voanews.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;us-shoots-down-mysterious-high-altitude-object-over-alaska-&#x2F;6958106.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.voanews.com&#x2F;a&#x2F;us-shoots-down-mysterious-high-alt...</a><p>&gt;According to the Pentagon, the object first moved into U.S. airspace late Thursday and was tracked by U.S. Northern Command as it moved over the skies of northeastern Alaska, staying consistently at about 12,000 meters (40,000 feet).<p>&gt;Pentagon and White House officials said U.S. planes approached the object, said to be the size of a small car, and determined that no human was in it before one of two F-22 fighter jets sent on an intercept course shot it from the skies with an AIM-9x Sidewinder missile.<p>…<p>&gt;&quot;This was an object ... it wasn&#x27;t an aircraft per se,” Ryder said, briefing Pentagon reporters. “We have no further details about the object at this time, including any description of its capabilities, purpose or origin.”<p>…<p>&gt;“We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell on our territorial space but on what we believe is frozen water,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said during a separate White House briefing. “We’re hopeful that we’ll be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.&quot;

Probably not a great sign of things to come.

&quot;Not sure what the object was&quot;<p>&quot;Shot Down using an Aim9x&quot;<p>That actually narrows it down a bit. Heat seeking warhead.

We should figure out a way to harvest the helium.

Shoot first ask questions later? Why not intercept it, disable it, and then dismantle it to figure out what and why it is?

Would be hilarious if they shutdown some high school project with a Go-Pro attached to it.

My out-there pet theory:<p>Russia made some weird looking (but non-threatening) drone and mimicked some Chinese flight path. Thus, hoping to stoke a bit more drama between the US and China after the balloon affair.

&gt; An F-22 fighter jet shot down the object using an A9X missile<p>What a waste if $200k, shooting Chinese baloons. These shold be zapped using lasers.

&gt; Daytime temperatures Friday were about minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit (27 degrees Celsius).<p>Oops.. <i>minus 27 degrees Celsius</i>. Yes, you might assume the `minus` applies to both, you only have to go up 17 degrees Fahrenheit for the signs not to match (better to be specific).

Part of me thinks they wanted to shoot down the first balloon, but the president was kind of incapacitated and unable to give the order. That&#x27;s the only thing I can think of for why they didn&#x27;t shoot the first one down when it was over Alaska, but they shoot this one down when it is.

Part of me thinks they wanted to shoot down the first balloon, but the president was kind of incapacitated and unable to give the order. That&#x27;s the only thing I can think of for why they didn&#x27;t shoot the first one down when it was over Alaska, but they shoot this one down when it is

I noticed some odd things while watching the press conference. Pat Ryder had a potential Freudian slip and said that it was taken down because it &quot;posed a threat to civili...&quot; and he enunciated the &quot;li&quot; as if he were going to say &quot;civilization,&quot; but he then paused and corrected himself to say &quot;civilian.&quot; Another odd thing was when Pat Ryder answered a question about why the President&#x27;s decision to take down the object was necessary. Pat mentioned something like, &quot;Presidents usually make decisions when certain threats in our airspace pose a danger to civilians on the ground.&quot;<p>It&#x27;s extremely odd to me that they were able to identify the object by sending our own airmen to visually confirm it, but if that&#x27;s the case, wouldn&#x27;t they be able to definitively conclude that it wasn&#x27;t a balloon? Pat kept it ambiguous and kept insisting that it was some sort of object.