Balloon Wars 2023!!!

[PhotonWrangler]

Was there a 6 year old boy inside?

 

[chillinn]

U.S. fighter jet shoots down unidentified, cylindrical object over Canada

U.S. Jet Shoots Down Flying Object Over Canada

 

[raggie33]

Last one turned out to be rosane barr

 

[Poppy]

Today, Sunday they shot down another object over Lake Huron.
That's three in three days, and four in eight days,

Object was flying at 20,000 feet when shot down near Lake Huron

From CNN's Natasha Bertrand, Arlette Saenz and Phil Mattingly

The object shot down Sunday by US fighter jets was flying at 20,000 feet over Michigan's Upper Peninsula and about to go over Lake Huron when it was neutralized, a senior administration official told CNN.
The object was shaped like an octagon with strings hanging off it and no discernible payload, according to the official and another source briefed on the matter. Although the United States has no indication that the object has surveillance capabilities, that has not been ruled out as yet.

 

[chillinn]

Here's a link to a story about that.

 

[PhotonWrangler]

An "octagon with strings hanging off of it?" Considering this and the much lower altitude, I can't help but wonder if this was a prank balloon.

 

[knucklegary]

Copycat balloon enthusiasts across Merica are having a ball, or maybe in this case a balloon?

 

[raggie33]

Saw a ufo as a kid with my sister we both still talk about it. Wasn't scary at all if they come back I'll go with them

 

[fredx]

I think it was Tom Cotton who said" The biden administration shoots down suspected spy baloon after it completed its mission"

 

[Chauncey Gardiner]

Last one turned out to be rosane barr

Really? I thought it was that super weight model, Tess Holliday.

 

[chillinn]

China Says It's Preparing To Shoot Down Unidentified Flying Object Near Yellow Sea


Long article from 2021 in The Drive gives deep paranoid perspective:
Adversary Drones Are Spying On The U.S. And The Pentagon Acts Like They're UFOs

Author of the article speculated in recent tweets that we'll see more of these UAPs because of filters being relaxed on radars as the DoD begins to take "UFO's" more seriously, which is going to increase false positives massively, not the least reason for which, between 900 and 1,300 locations around the globe do routine balloon releases, two or four times daily.

So China's probably shooting down someone's weather balloon, and we probably shot down three already. But drone spying is a valid threat, and the harassment of US destroyers by drones in 2019 probably had a specific intelligence gathering purpose, and I think the author of The Drive marathon article linked above reveals it and supports his speculation. Then just goes on and on and on and on.
YMMV

 

[idleprocess]

So China's probably shooting down someone's weather balloon, and we probably shot down three already.

There's an ICAO treaty covering - among other things - weather balloons. TL;DR section is Appendix 4 section 2:

1. Classification of unmanned free balloons

Unmanned free balloons shall be classified as:
a) light: an unmanned free balloon which carries a payload of one or more packages with a combined mass of less than 4 kg, unless qualifying as a heavy balloon in accordance with c) 2), 3) or 4) below; or
[...]

2. General operating rules
[....]
2.2 An unmanned free balloon, other than a light balloon used exclusively for meteorological purposes and operated in the manner prescribed by the appropriate authority, shall not be operated across the territory of another State without appropriate authorization from the other State concerned.

2.3 The authorization referred to in 2.2 shall be obtained prior to the launching of the balloon if there is reasonable expectation, when planning the operation, that the balloon may drift into airspace over the territory of another State. Such authorization may be obtained for a series of balloon flights or for a particular type of recurring flight, e.g. atmospheric research balloon flights.

All the free balloons I've seen that are deployed en masse for high-altitude meteorology without obtaining consent are 2 - perhaps 3 - meters in diameter and surely too lightly constructed to be detected by radar. I gather the balloons being observed and shot down in the last week or so have all been immensely larger and permission was never sought.

 

[chillinn]

Legit weather balloons will have a radar corner reflector to make them visible to radar, so they would be detected by design, presumably, otherwise I agree.

 

[Stress_Test]

According to Ben Rich's book about the F-117, it's the shape of the object that determines the strength of the radar return, not the size. It was counter-intuitive but they proved it through test. A small model of the F-117 concept had the same radar signature as the scaled-up version that maintained the same shape. Even (aero genius) Kelly Johnson didn't believe it!

Regarding materials I can't quite remember what materials might be "invisible" to radar, but I think the cockpit canopy material (lexan or acrylic, don't know) on the F-117 let radar pass through, because they had to apply that thin gold coating to prevent the pilot's head from causing a radar return!

Air defense radar is extremely powerful so I don't think it'd have trouble detecting small things like the balloons, but like someone mentioned, I assume it was a threshold / filter issue. They had been ignoring minor contacts because they didn't want to be picking up every bird, drone, and kid's lost helium balloon that's drifting through the airspace.

But completely ignoring it is a mistake, since stealthy aircraft will have small signatures by definition (they are not fully "invisible" to radar). I guess we were never terribly worried about it before since we had the monopoly on stealth for so long till now.

The large balloon shot down off the east coast didn't look stealthy at all though, with that basic truss-structure. And I'd assume the balloon itself would also reflect radar. It could be coated with radar absorbing material (RAM) but the shape should still give some return signal.

I'm obviously not an expert though since radar and stealth is an incredibly complex science involving more math than I'd ever want to deal with!

 

[bykfixer]

I think the gubment is sending up objects so the world will quit asking if they blew up the pipeline...

 

[idleprocess]

According to Ben Rich's book about the F-117, it's the shape of the object that determines the strength of the radar return, not the size.

When you're comparing metal aircraft to one another this is true - metal is a fantastic radar reflector however through a combination of geometry and maintaining a defined bearing relative to both known and likely transmitters the return can be reduced to a value near or below below detection threshold. Even composites - be they exotic carbon fiber or bog-standard fiberglass - will return radar well enough to be detected. However best I can tell actual weather balloon envelopes are generally made from latex which is apt to present a negligible return of itself being extremely low-density and a terrible conductor thus absorbs very little radar and reflects a negligible fraction of it back; it's the addition of a purpose-built radar reflector as @chillinn has mentioned that makes them conspicuous.

The large balloon shot down off the east coast didn't look stealthy at all though, with that basic truss-structure. And I'd assume the balloon itself would also reflect radar. It could be coated with radar absorbing material (RAM) but the shape should still give some return signal.

That thing was never going to hide from an air defense radar paying actual attention to its slice of the sky - likely just enough lifting margin to heft the mass of instruments, comms, power, and whatever sort of navigation it could manage via altitude regulation.

 

[chillinn]

These things may not be intended to be stealthy. Spying is a lot of feints within feints, to quote Frank Herbert. For all we know, for the last decade or so, PRC has been sending inconspicuous craft in, just inconspicuous enough to cause suspicion when detected, just to see what we would do, and since we didn't do anything, they kept making them bigger and more conspicuous until it finally couldn't be ignored, literally for the sole purpose of just to see what would happen, to test the detection abilities and response, and merely gather that information. They already have spy satellites that can see just as well as that balloon could, and any radio that is military is encrypted, so unless they were spying civilians, gathering radio transmissions seems pretty pointless. I really think the point was to learn about detection ability, readiness and response. That's enough. And we played right into their hand, so now now they know. Remember Sun Tzu, when you're weak, act strong, when you're strong act weak, when you're silly, act serious and when you're serious, act silly. I've never seen anything so silly. And the official PRC reaction to it being shot down was priceless, but what if strategically so?

 

[idleprocess]

I really think the point was to learn about detection ability, readiness and response.

Same. There are benefits to observing at ~10% the elevation of LEO spy satellites but the odds your adversary will carry on business as usual so you can scoop up some sweet ne plus ultra res photos and SIGINT when they can see the thing coming are small.

And we played right into their hand, so now now they know.

Eh, suspect one of the reasons the initial intercept took so long was to arrange to reveal as little as possible.

 

[turbodog]

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 😂

How does that work if it's explosive when it comes down? If there's a biological contaminant? Etc?

Then there's the other issue of trying to preserve and analyze it.

 

[turbodog]

... showed we're pantywaists when it comes to protection of our own...

We showed that when Japan bombed the, wait for it, the, the, the, Phillippines. They occupied our soil for 3 years, costing 500,000+ lives, and we did nothing.