Balloon Wars 2023!!!

[Stress_Test]

Summary of reactions to the Chinese spy balloon shoot-down:

 

[Stress_Test]

That's the 1989 Batman movie in case anyone didn't recognize it.

And I apologize for the giant over-the-top header and footer that Imgur is now adding automatically to images <facepalm>

They didn't used to do that....

 

[PhotonWrangler]

Until the wreckage is recovered and examined, we won't know for sure if it was a surveillance balloon, a meteorological device or one of Doc Brown's weather experiments.

 

[bykfixer]

The wreckage has been recovered.

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

View attachment 38943
The wreckage has been recovered.

Clue liberal outrage in 5 .. 4 .. 3 ..

 

[bykfixer]

Clue liberal outrage in 5 .. 4 .. 3 ..

They said it on facebook so it has to be true, right?

 

[chillinn]

Did they really use an F-35 to shoot it down? I would have guessed F-15. They can fly high enough to shoot down satellites.

Clue liberal outrage in 5 .. 4 .. 3 ..

The original comment with the image would not be offensive to liberals, as "liberal" is simply a synonym of "tolerant." Your reactive comment, however, is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah....

 

[Olumin]

At least it wasn't swamp gas.

 

[Stress_Test]

Did they really use an F-35 to shoot it down? I would have guessed F-15. They can fly high enough to shoot down satellites.

F22 actually. The F15 stated ceiling is 60k feet. F22 says "above 50k".

So real ceiling is going to be higher than whatever they state. That 80s(?) sat shoot-down was mainly done by a big-*** missile that the F15 carried up to its max altitude before launch. There was an Air and Space magazine article about that test that was printed a few years back.

 

[Stress_Test]

Until the wreckage is recovered and examined, we won't know for sure if it was a surveillance balloon, a meteorological device or one of Doc Brown's weather experiments.

Yes, of course.... it was a "scientific civilian weather balloon" that just happened to overfly Alaska, then turn and diagonally cross the continental US for maximum overflight distance and also pass over sensitive US military sites. Everyone totally believes that story!!!

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

Did they really use an F-35 to shoot it down? I would have guessed F-15. They can fly high enough to shoot down satellites.



The original comment with the image would not be offensive to liberals, as "liberal" is simply a synonym of "tolerant." Your reactive comment, however, is somewhat annoying because it's just purposelessly tribal. Nice to know you either have at least $700K in net worth or earn more than $350K/yr, otherwise you're voting against your personal economic interests in order to keep most of the wealth available under the control of the richest 1%. Just FYI, only economics matters, everything else is meaningless distraction, which is why 99% of conservatives vote adversely to their personal economic interests, i.e. they are distracted by such things as 2nd Amendment issues apparently not realizing what it takes to amend the Constitution, not realizing that the Bill of Rights will never, never ever, be amended. A lot of liberals are stupid and can't get it together, like their hair is on fire or something, but way, way too many conservatives remain bamboozled for most of their lives. Not the richest 1%, of course, they know what they're doing.

And there it is. As far as reactive - four minutes.

 

[chillinn]

And there it is. As far as reactive - four minutes.

Bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, tho

 

[thermal guy]

I still can't believe we let it fly basically across the entire US before we took it out. The talk is they didn't want to hurt anybody on the ground. Christ it went over rural Montana! They could of just went in grab the 5-6 people that live there and bring them back after it came down 😂

 

[Stress_Test]

I still can't believe we let it fly basically across the entire US before we took it out. The talk is they didn't want to hurt anybody on the ground. Christ it went over rural Montana! They could of just went in grab the 5-6 people that live there and bring them back after it came down 😂

Yeah; either the gov bureaucracy took too long to initiate a plan while it was still over Montana...... or else the "other government agencies" wanted to study the balloon as it sampled in order to glean more intel about it. Maybe there were things easier to study before the shootdown rather than after, when it ends up in a bunch of pieces.

We'll probably never know. Or perhaps somebody can go dig in the dumpster behind the White House and find a draft of the Classified report!

 

[chillinn]

I can't believe resources were wasted developing it. There are more than enough unsecured webcams in the US which would give a far better view at the cost of an Internet connection. It'll be interesting to hear what exactly it was doing, if they release that information.

 

[Stress_Test]

I can't believe resources were wasted developing it. There are more than enough unsecured webcams in the US which would give a far better view at the cost of an Internet connection. It'll be interesting to hear what exactly it was doing, if they release that information.

Yeah, or go in the backdoor via the TikTok software installed on the phones of the guys walking around the military bases and nuclear sites!

I'm not terribly worried about this crazy spy-balloon attempt. That's cold war era stuff, and it didn't work too well back then, and it's even less feasible now since we can track those balloons basically right after lift-off.

And only flying at apx 60 - 65 thousand feet is just begging to be shot down. I figured they would want to be up to 100k+ altitude if they were going to attempt something like this. I think there have been some gigantic research balloons that can get up that high with a modest payload. The ones I'm thinking of weren't "steerable" though.

 

[chillinn]

The ones I'm thinking of weren't "steerable" though.

Apparently, current tech balloons "steer" just by vertically ascending and descending, which requires the ability to predict wind patterns at different elevations. It's not something they couldn't have done 200ya, as going up or down is pretty low tech, but for the lack of advanced sensor tech and accurate meteorology.

 

[bykfixer]

The balloon had crossed Alaska, crossed the pacific to the west Candian coast then travelled south. They knew several days before the public did. The president gave the order to shoot it down on Wednesday. The military elected to wait until it was over water. Less debris field, less likely to have possible hazardous waste get to the public.

It was shot down by a sidewinder missile from a fighter jet. It should have been shot down long before, when it was nearing Alaska, or nearing Canada. Trouble was bureacrats got all tangled up with who is responsible for what so when it was flying over a missle silo in Montana a collective "uh oh" rang out and soon after CNN talked about it.

The CCP was likely just testing how ridiculous our system is these days and laughed as the thing made it all the way to Montana.

 

[chillinn]

Ok. But the previous baited comment was perfectly fine, I suppose.

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

The original comment with the image would not be offensive to liberals, as "liberal" is simply a synonym of "tolerant." Your reactive comment, however, is blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah....

Tolerant liberal? Next, you'll be telling us the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny actually exist.