"'At any given moment, thousands of balloons' are above the Earth, including many used in the United States by government agencies, military forces, independent researchers and hobbyists.... [F]ederal officials have sought to enhance radars and atmospheric trackers so they can more closely scrutinize the nation’s airspace. Balloon experts say the upgrade might generate a paralyzing wave of false alarms.... Each year, around 60,000 high-flying balloons are launched just by the National Weather Service... The Weather Service’s balloons gather data that keeps passenger jets out of harm’s way and lets experts predict the likely onset of violent storms...."
From
"A Rising Awareness That Balloons Are Everywhere in Our Skies/As more unidentified objects were shot down by the U.S. Air Force in recent days, experts warned that there were an 'endless' array of potential targets" (NYT).
ADDED: Grammar error in headline. It should be “there was an ‘endless’ array.”
Posts
78 comments:
Don't our balloons have a transponder or something that identifies them as US property?
More lying from the NYT.
I do have to give the NYT points for creativity. The NYT will write anything to cover up for the ChiComs or attack Trump.
What's the point of this article other than running cover for Biden? Nobody at all is suggesting that we shoot down all balloons, just Chinese ones. Straw man much?
You don't need a missile to shoot down a balloon. A high energy beam weapon (read LASER) would do the job for a lot less $ per balloon. Of course finding out about our weapons capabilities may be exactly what the Chicoms are trying to do.
Just like we are going to need additional morons to finish Joe's term!!!
Xi is laughing his ass off.
Can't they use lasers?
Well I feel better now knowing that our notch “elites” are on it.
Order one for yourself through the Althouse Amazon portal! Here's a nice big one.
https://www.amazon.com/Nballoon-Professional-Meteorological-Investigation-Entertainment/dp/B09MK5F69W/ref=sr_1_14_sspa
We're shooting down balloons because the government took so much grief a couple weeks ago for not shooting down a balloon. It won't last. A new shiny object will garner their attention soon enough.
At $400k or more per missile.
Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon. A single burst from which would turn any balloon into confetti. There's no need to use a $200,000 Sidewinder missile.
In fact, there are so many balloons former president Trump took some with him to Mar-a-lago after leaving the White House and didn’t alert the National Ballon Archives (NBA).
Balloon whistleblowers have alerted the FBI about the stash of deflated balloons and Attorney general Garland is mulling over wether to appoint an independent counsel to look into the secret ballon matter, people with knowledge … I gotta get back to work.
"Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon. A single burst from which would turn any balloon into confetti. There's no need to use a $200,000 Sidewinder missile."
"Actually it's $400,000, and the need to use sidewinders is very great. Very very great." - Raytheon/ATK
It is interesting to reflect, that the balloon "drifting" into US territory, and crossing down over the Mississippi, could easily have been an EMP attack. Which would mean that much, say two thirds or more, of the US electrical grid would now be useless junk. Fortunately, we could replace it, in a year or two, using cheap equipment produced by the Chinese. As long as nothing happens to their economy. Or, we could turn to the Germans. Once they get that pipeline working again, so they can restart their economy.
You don't need a bunch of U-boats any more, to attack an economy. The vital organs of a modern economy are everywhere, and they are extremely vulnerable. The 21st Century may have found the solution to the problems introduced by the industrial revolution.
"Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon. A single burst from which would turn any balloon into confetti."
Balloons can go a lot higher than most fighters. Fighting balloons with fighters is like fighting hornets with a baseball bat.
By any objective standard Biden screwed up our withdrawal from Afghanistan. It was a fiasco. This not so much, or, at any rate, the data points at present are conflicting and contradictory. I'm sure that in the fullness time Biden will find way to make the situation worse but it's too early to pass judgment....If, as I suspect, these balloons are the work of Alpha Centaurians, Biden will preach to us. He'll claim that the same God who created the Cosmos created us all and that despite their slimy green skin and occasional habit of eating babies, these new immigrants are nothing but a plus for America and should be unreservedly welcomed here.
"Experts" strike again. What would the NY Times do without "Experts?"
PB: "At $400k or more per missile."
Oh, its more alright.
We're governed by morons. Take Sec'y Buttigieg, please!
DRP: "Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon. A single burst from which would turn any balloon into confetti. There's no need to use a $200,000 Sidewinder missile."
I would advise you to review Raytheon's current SEC Filings as well as their major Shareholders and their expectations before determining the correct course of action in engaging these balloons.
From a P&L perspective, the actions to take are crystal clear.
"Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon"
Name the plane with a gun that can fly at the altitudes where that first balloon was. You would have to retrofit some old U-2, I am not sure of the physics of that.
The real problem was that the balloon was so naked-eye visible that ordinary people noticed it, and pictures were taken, by civilians, showing up on social media, of that antenna array on the bottom of it. It's a problem, the more data you collect, the more issues you have with false alarms. China just demonstrated, intentionally or no, how vulnerable we are for somebody who wants to go start wars on the other side of the globe.
We're governed by morons. E.g., take Pete Buttigieg...please!
To Dave Begley’s point, legitimate balloon operations in the US do so under rules set forth by the FAA which includes communication with air traffic for avoidance. Some balloons are tethered to prevent them from drifting off, and as the tether poses a risk to air traffic, tethered balloon locations are identified on sectional navigation charts.
Uncontrolled objects transiting controlled airspace will be investigated by officials, whether it is a balloon, aircraft, or unidentifiable flying object, so long as they are noticed by air traffic control via radar or other air traffic. This happens more often than average people might know, but usually end with an errant aircraft being forced to land at the nearest airport. The US doesn’t shoot down every suspect object and ask questions later. US does attempt to locate, identify, and communicate with such objects and then if determined a hostile threat, the military might shoot it down.
If the official story of the first balloon is to be believed, it was shot down with an AIM-9X without a warhead to minimize damage and debris, especially due to the high altitude intercept and to exploit later when recovered. I think at least one other was shot down with a heat seeking missile. Hopefully, if adversaries keep launching Nina’s luftballoons into the air, we will learn to use other means to bring them down.
Metaphor Alert!
Seems like the NYT goal here is to minimize the significance of the Chinese Spy Balloon, by spreading the existence of numerous other balloons as chaff, like an electronic radar countermeasure.
(BTW it looked like the missile hit the payload, not the balloon, which would hurt the recovery of intelligence, wouldn't it. Wouldn't a small hole in the ballon allow a slow decent and better recovery?)
You can buy weather balloons on Amazon for a few bucks. Not sure what helium costs.
Good luck to DHS or NORAD in stamping out spoofers launching these things from anywhere at all.
Tom Cruise would fly over the balloons upside down and shoot it with his pistol.
They are being disingenuous in their reporting. It is not a shoot them all down or don't shoot them down. Yes, they can distinguish one type of balloon from another up to a point. As pointed out, you do not have to fire a missile to take one down.
The quality of thought and analysis that goes into these articles is underwhelming.
"99 red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
The 99 red balloons go by"
Using air to air missiles never made any sense to me. We are not getting the full story - as always - and probably for some stupid trivial reason. Who could know?
Or just dust off some 120mm AAA cannons we had in WW2 and beyond. A $300 shell is far less expensive than a $300,000 missile.
Yes, google the 120 mm Gun M1. I am sure with updated 'Copperhead' type ammo with proximity fuses they would easily get 70,000 ft effective ceiling and first round hits.
Was waiting for the "balloon experts" to weigh in. Can sleep in peace now that The Experts are on the job...
Well, this is the Biden administration. They would come up with the least effective strategy: let an obvious spy balloon traverse the entire United States including multiple highly sensitive locations, then shoot it down when it is no longer a threat, then just start shooting down everything and bragging about it, all while blaming Trump or something. It is amazing how he can be continually wrong despite taking a 180 in policy. He's pretty close to worst case: very good at getting elected and finding his way into positions of power, amazingly corrupt, morally awful, brutally dishonest, and utterly inept at anything resembling leadership. If you want to argue against democracy, the fact that men like Joe Biden actually succeed is Exhibit A.
They should have shot down the spy balloon near Alaska when no one knew it was there and that would have been the end of it.
Why have they spent the last few days refusing to use the word balloon, strongly implying that they have no idea what these things are and insisting on calling them High Altitude Objects and UAP's and UFO's, etc?
"Oh, we have no idea how they remain airborne They have no visible means of propulsion."
Now I'm hearing a radio report as I write this, the announcer just called them "unidentified objects" and said, "there is no evidence linking them to China", both statements are accurate in a sense, but they're not true.
We're tracking and reporting on and shooting down our own balloons. Who thinks it wasn't intentional that they waited until the last one was over Lake Huron before dropping it...if they even actually did shoot anything down.
Next they'll tell us a white supremacist, ultraMAGA, group of election denying extremists has allied itself with antivax Canadian truckers and is releasing balloons to terrorize the populace.
“Next they'll tell us a white supremacist, ultraMAGA, group of election denying extremists has allied itself with antivax Canadian truckers and is releasing balloons to terrorize the populace.”
OMG! You are literally describing an insurrection! Literally!
They missed with one of the sidewinder missiles. Question is. Where did that sucker come down? What's the max range of one of those things?
April Fool's Day is coming up. Be careful out there. It's a fine line between an insurrection and a practical joke these days.
Balloon War. Billy Mitchell was right. It’s the balloon power supremacy that wins wars.
I’ll believe that when Dem Congress people all buy huge shares in Balloon Compny stock.
Balloons representing all the Platonic solids would be nice.
Order one for yourself through the Althouse Amazon portal! Here's a nice big one.
Back in the day when comic books were more or less harmless before Superman frequented rest-stop washrooms and Spider-Man wasn't receiving estrogen treatments, children could learn valuable lessons in practical economics, particularly caveat emptor, from those fabulous full-page advertising spreads.
Along with eminently useful items like x-ray glasses and instant sea monkeys young Americans were offered the ultimate dream fodder -- Giant 8-Ft Balloons! illustrated with a specimen of Homo floresiensis to scale to prove their unbelievable immensity. Originally these were surplus WWII-vintage military weather balloons manufactured from natural latex with a shelf-life measured in months. In other words, expired balloons with less inflatability than a wad of Bazooka Joe.
After a few lawsuit threats, the latex balloons were replaced with more durable neoprene models with real FAA-enforced criminal liability built right in!
This is all just garbage to keep Americans distracted from the SY Hersh story that Biden and his Regime blew up the Nordstream pipeline and is trying actively to start a war with Russia.
Balloons are not hard to shoot down.
But the Federal Government screws up everything it touches.
This time they are doing it on purpose to cover up their corrupt warmongering.
"Question is. Where did that sucker come down? What's the max range of one of those things?"
Well it depends greatly on the weight of the coconut it was carrying, whether or not the sidewinder was gripping it by the husk, or if other sidewinders were helping carry it on a string between them.
The airspeed velocity of a coconut-armed sidewinder is among the greatest mysteries facing us, one surely suited to our best minds.
Seen on Twitter:
Scientist: we will predict the weather 100 years from now
Govment: shoot the balloons
Hey, look at that thing up in the air.
1 month later
ok, what were we talking about? Hmm, oh well, nevermind.
Order one for yourself through the Althouse Amazon portal! Here's a nice big one.
Or cheat Althouse with a glass Coke bottle, some powdered zinc, some 3-molar HCl, and a Trojan.
Add in a strand of smoldering magnesium wire and you too can ignite your own balloon panic along with the rubber. Young Quaestor got a few illicit jollies with a minor swarm of phallus-shaped UFOs.
Mark Rober (from the fame of Glitter Bombs vs porch pirates) used a balloon to drop an egg (and nearly made too accurate of a delivery system)
https://youtu.be/BYVZh5kqaFg
Balloons representing all the Platonic solids would be nice.
Yeah, that Lake Huron thingamajig bugged me, too. The Pentagon Spokesperson™ called it octagon-shaped. That was bad enough, but that no press maven asked how a two-dimensional something can be inflated was worse.
A floating dodecahedron would be more interesting than the other two platonic solids with an octagonal profile.
Last night on National Geographic... Secret Pentagon Program
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/shows/ufos-investigating-the-unknown
Truly "Fascinating, Jim"
Let's see, @ 6000 round per minute, you wanna be under that hail of fire?
Took the talk off of Nordstream! It Worked!
The Biden administration doesn't have to shoot down foreign country spy vehicles.
We can easily form a new government.
"DRP said...
Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon. A single burst from which would turn any balloon into confetti."
I saw an ex-fighter jock video saying that guns would be difficult to use against balloons because the targets are stationary or nearly so, and they would be on top of them too quickly (you aim the jet at the target). He also said that guns are ineffective against balloons, but didn't offer an explanation why.
NYT reporters are both ignorant and lazy. It does not take a missile to down a balloon. A few rounds from a 20mm cannon will do fine. And if you do not want to expend any munitions, do a supersonic flyby at 100 feet or so. Down will come balloon. This is just more running cover for a mentally absent President.
Major takeaway from the article: invest in companies that make missles.
Re: the octagonal object.
Go here and scroll down just a little to the picture labeled Scientific Research.
https://aerostar.com/
I saw an ex-fighter jock video saying that guns would be difficult to use against balloons because the targets are stationary or nearly so, and they would be on top of them too quickly (you aim the jet at the target).
No, you aim the jet at where the target will be when the cannon projectiles arrive. A round of skeet will teach that lesson soundly.
In WWI the British discovered how difficult shooting down German airships was using machine gun fire, and the first generation of .303 incendiary ammo hardly improved their effectiveness. I'll leave it to the reader to ponder why. (Hint: water.)
Seems the supply of armchair fighter jocks is inexhaustible.
DRP said...
Virtually every US fighter aircraft is equipped with an M61 Vulcan cannon. A single burst from which would turn any balloon into confetti. There's no need to use a $200,000 Sidewinder missile.
Why not small arms to poke a small hole and deflate it slowly? That would have protected the payload and people on the ground.
F-15 has a 65,000 ft + ceiling and has a 20mm Gatling gun. I imaging one could shoot down these weather balloons cheaper. If these balloons are the size of a small car, say a VW Bug they are standard weather balloons. FAA and USAF sent them up to vissually check wind speeds at high altitudes.
Time to pull a fighter out of moth balls that has a gun.
FAA and USAF sent them up to vissually check wind speeds at high altitudes.
I doubt the Air Force or the FAA track them visually given the problem of frequent overcast and the fact that radar does this job much more effectively than optics and eyeballs.
Unknown: "Major takeaway from the article: invest in companies that make missles."
Indeed. (see my 9:48 post)
Unknown: "Major takeaway from the article: invest in companies that make missles."
Indeed. (see my 9:48 post)
Quaestor: "Seems the supply of armchair fighter jocks is inexhaustible."
You should have been around a week or so ago when LLR Chuck went Full Baron von Richthofen and lecturing all and sundry about how things went exactly as he said they would/should.
LOL
It was almost as tedious as LLR Chuck's War and Peace-length treatise on why he didn't join the military. In that telling, the reader of Chuck's missive was treated to a tale of almost derring do and intense stomach churning inner angst over the pros and cons of what it might mean to the world for LLR Chuck to join the military or sit it out.
Spoilers ahead: In the end, LLR Chuck realized how much more the World needed a LLR Chuck as a legal beagle lawyer type from Michigan, available at a moments notice to act as a television viewing observer of PGA golf infractions which he would then dutifully call in, instead of the inevitable famed heroic Generalship in the Armed Forces of America.
As an aside, LLR Chuck did inform us that he did in fact have a relative that had previously served in the military. It was appropos of nothing, but there it was.
Cannot recover debris for some reason.
Hmmm. Seymour Hersh says distraction from NordStream, which should be the impetus for WWIII.
Let's see, @ 6000 round per minute, you wanna be under that hail of fire?
I wouldn't want to be under a low flying strafing run, but at altitude, the appropriate high explosive/incendiary 20mm rounds are designed to travel a certain distance and then detonate, both to cause more flak in the air and minimize unintended casualties on the ground. There are other 20mm rounds such as armor piercing that don't do this, but they wouldn't be appropriate for this mission anyway. You also don't hold the trigger for a minute nor do US fighters carry 6000 rounds.
I wonder why we aren't using directed energy weapon systems, but maybe they are more expensive to use, field, or can't reach 40,000ft. It would have been cool for the USS Portland to just burn a hole in that balloon off the Carolinas.
Blogger Rusty said...
"They missed with one of the sidewinder missiles. Question is. Where did that sucker come down? What's the max range of one of those things?"
From Fox (NOT Faux) News:
US military's first shot at unknown octagonal object over Lake Huron missed, officials say
"The U.S. military jet that downed an unknown object in the Michigan sky on Sunday missed on its first attempt over Lake Huron, officials told Fox News.
The Air Force F-16 jet was using Sidewinder missiles to attack the target.
"The first Sidewinder heat-seeking missile missed the target," one official said.
It wasn't clear where the missile that missed ultimately landed. The second missile took down the target. Each of the missiles costs more than $400,000."
The F-16 was based in Madison. Also, I read somewhere that the missile landed in Lake Huron. Normally if it misses its target it's supposed to explode in the air just past it, but it failed to do so.
At $400K per missile it’s easily paid by the ChiComs themselves by simply confiscating their Bribes 70 Mil paid into Biden Foundation and laundered through colleges. That’s 175 missiles right there. And if the USCongress guys had to turn in their Chinese Bribes too, we would have several thousand more missiles paid for.
Ah...here it is, according to Gen. Milley:
"1st US Missile Fired at UFO Over Lake Huron ‘Missed’: Gen. Milley
"The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs said Tuesday that the first U.S. F-16 missile that was fired at an unknown object near Lake Huron on Sunday missed its target, prompting the jet to fire a second one that successfully hit.
In a news conference, Joint Chiefs of Staffs Chairman Mark Milley confirmed anonymously sourced reports that emerged on Monday that the first missile did not make it to its intended target.
The missile “landed harmlessly” in the waters of Lake Huron, he said. But, “Yes, the first shot missed,” he stated."
I saw an ex-fighter jock video saying that guns would be difficult to use against balloons because the targets are stationary or nearly so, and they would be on top of them too quickly (you aim the jet at the target). He also said that guns are ineffective against balloons, but didn't offer an explanation why.
(Laughs in Close Air Support)
Thanks MTG.
It'll be funny as hell when some guy trolling for salmon snags it. "Fish on!" BOOM!
Does any one else see that the calculus has changed? We are at war with China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Luke
I read about Frank Luke in high school. Sausage is what they called the German Balloons in WWI.
We aren't at war with China. Russia wants to launch a big offensive in Donbass, Ukraine in a few weeks. Russia's allies deploy distractions. China sends balloons. Keep your eye on the ball and ignore the balloons. How I see it anyhow.
We aren't at war with China. Russia wants to launch a big offensive in Donbass, Ukraine in a few weeks. Russia's allies deploy distractions. China sends balloons. Keep your eye on the ball and ignore the balloons. How I see it anyhow.
We aren't at war with China. Russia wants to launch a big offensive in Donbass, Ukraine in a few weeks. Russia's allies deploy distractions. China sends balloons. Keep your eye on the ball and ignore the balloons. How I see it anyhow.
If the Air Force is shooting down balloons at 40,000 feet and under, they could use the cannons mounted on slowpoke F-15 Eagles and F-16 Fighting Falcons to do the job a whole lot cheaper than cloaked F-22 Raptors firing AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles from afar.
gadfly said...
And once the cannon shell goes through the balloon without exploding where will it land?
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