US Shoots Down a Third Unidentified Object Flying Over Canada (cnn.com) 174
CNN reports:
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Saturday that an "unidentified object" had been shot down by a U.S. fighter jet over Canadian airspace on his orders.... "Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object," Trudeau said on Twitter....
A statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the object shot down on Saturday was first noticed over Alaska on Friday evening. Two F-22 fighter jets "monitored the object" with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard, Ryder's statement said, "tracking it closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object."
"Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object. A U.S. F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory using an AIM 9X missile," his statement added....
It is not clear what the object is or whether it is related to the spy balloon shot down last week or the unidentified object shot down over Alaska on Friday.
"Saturday's incident follows the downing of another unidentified object on Friday over Alaska, and the shoot-down of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4 by a US F-22 fighter jet."
A statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said the object shot down on Saturday was first noticed over Alaska on Friday evening. Two F-22 fighter jets "monitored the object" with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard, Ryder's statement said, "tracking it closely and taking time to characterize the nature of the object."
"Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object. A U.S. F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory using an AIM 9X missile," his statement added....
It is not clear what the object is or whether it is related to the spy balloon shot down last week or the unidentified object shot down over Alaska on Friday.
"Saturday's incident follows the downing of another unidentified object on Friday over Alaska, and the shoot-down of a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4 by a US F-22 fighter jet."
Who knew... (Score:2)
That AoL Instant Messenger would have an afterlife in combat.
Re:Who knew... (Score:4, Informative)
The early 70's was also when Kissinger and Nixon sold out Taiwan. Let us not forget that.
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Was not Taiwan a fascist dictatorship then, or at least a single party authoritarian dictatorship responsible for a lot of deaths. Chiang_Kai-shek was not a nice person.
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Which is one of the reasons why there's no more USSR. I rather sell Taiwan than still have USSR around.
If you have to be a "bad" person to get rid of the USSR, then you have merely become the USSR.
Betraying your principles is never a good idea. Be true, fair, and just.
HAVRE (Score:3)
Re: HAVRE (Score:2)
Last I heard there were several noise complaints in the area about a spontaneous concert that popped up blasting an earworm.
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I fear... (Score:2, Funny)
I fear that it's only a matter of time before these balloons start shooting back! :-)
Won't someone think of the helium reserves?
Re: I fear... (Score:2)
That would make the intention quite clear. We should be so lucky. But the chances these are little green men is almost zero. No one bends physics to attain interstellar travel only to die at the end of an IR tracking missile. Thatâ(TM)s laughable
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There's a lot of modern technologies that if our ancestors heard we have, they'd think we're at God-like states of enlightenment. Since we have no idea how to make interstellar travel work, we're assuming it's not something simple like rubbing together two stones of some exotic crystalline black-hole matter to generate a space-time rift-bubble. Maybe the aliens come from a place where that stuff is abundant, so they can build faster-than-light spaceships but the rare-earth elements needed to dope silicon an
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Somehow this reminds of me Armstrong and Miller's time traveler sketch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
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That sketch is right on the mark.
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Bruce Perens posted on Twitter about it. A lot of hams are getting worried about this, because they send up quite a few balloons, along with the weather guys.
It's a bit like drones. Nobody was too worried about model airplanes back when it was just a niche hobby, but then a few incidents caused it all be to heavily regulated. They are worried that the days of sending up balloons with simple transponders and sensor packages are over. No more high altitude photography using cheap and readily available parts,
Now we've done it (Score:2)
small. size of a VW bug (Score:2)
What is interesting is that they have found all of that first 1, except supposedly the large box underneath it. IOW, the important part. OTH, the balloon was carrying 3 different antennas, with 1 above and 2 below. Hmmmm.
Gut feeling says that the balloon had an altitude bomb in it to destroy that box.
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The Pentagon did say it likely had explosives.
Actually was a Inuit Gender Reveal Balloon (Score:5, Funny)
Weather it was Pink or Blue or Rainbow has yet to be determined
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Weather it was Pink or Blue or Rainbow has yet to be determined
I had no idea the weather was so colorful in that part of the world.
The more you learn!
UFOs everywhere (Score:2)
The Pentagon has been saying they were going to start "getting serious" about UFOs. https://www.reuters.com/world/... [reuters.com]
Now we're seeing them everywhere, and shooting them down.
FINALLY, we might get to the bottom of this!
When it was blasted (Score:2)
Did the pilot hear 8-bit synth mid music amidst the terrifying screams of a 16 bit heavily pixellated alien pilot ?
US Congressional Inquiring minds demand to know!
Thats not a balloon. (Score:2)
It's China's way of saying... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Shooting down non-civilian non-domestic aircraft within sovereign airspace is no where near a hostile action. It is simple national defense. China can bitch and moan to the press all they like, the rest of the world would respond similarly if they were capable. If it is their stuff, and they want to stop seeing end up in a fiery ball of scrap, they should stop sending it.
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
China can bitch and moan to the press all they like, ...
We should bill them; those AIM 9X Sidewinders are like $400k a pop.
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Billed your family for the bullet you were shot with.
Where have I heard this before?
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Seems appropriate given the circumstances.
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Billed your family for the bullet you were shot with.
Where have I heard this before?
A former classmate from Iran said this her family was billed for the execution of her father in the 1980s
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:5, Funny)
Adding invoice to injury?
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:2)
Your car is in the fire lane and the firemen shoves it over or break the windows to access the fire hydrant... you think we don't fine you for the violation?
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We're essentially doing that by sanctioning the companies responsible for building these things.
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China can bitch and moan to the press all they like, ...
We should bill them; those AIM 9X Sidewinders are like $400k a pop.
Hey, like charging Mexico for building the wall! :D
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Don't you worry, I'm sure some defense contractor somewhere is designing a balloon-mounted cannon as we speak.
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The F22 has a perfectly good 20mm cannon. They should use it.
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The F22 has a perfectly good 20mm cannon. They should use it.
We tried that in the past but even a 1000 rounds of 20mm plus 2.75" rockets didn't do squat.
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Actually, it does: It slightly increases the leakage of lifting gas. Means it might come down a little sooner - like on THIS side of the Atlantic rather than going on across Europe.
High altitude balloons don't POP like rubber toys.
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So I asked this question the previous time https://news.slashdot.org/comm... [slashdot.org] and here is a summary of what I got:
* The balloon is above maximum flying altitude of these aircraft.
* The aircraft would have to speed directly towards the balloon, which is a dangerous manoeuvrer.
* If burst, the balloon would eventually deflate but not instantly, it would take a while and drift.
and someone said "they know better than you".
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Isn't AIM-9X a heat seeking missile?
Yes it is. It can be guided to a target without any radar emissions, the pilot could complete the attack visually with the radar off. Imho, this might have been a factor in the USAF's weapon selection. If the Chinese or other adversaries gain radar data from US aircraft, they can use it to develop electronic countermeasures. The gun system on modern aircraft use the radar to compute a firing solution, which would give any collection device valuable intelligence data before it is destroyed. I'm not in the mi
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The complaining is a standard international fare, it would be more suspicious if no one was saying anything.
After all, the PRC complained to the US when the US flew SR-71s over the PRC in the 1960s and early 1970s, and subsequently the US responded with complaints that the PRC fired missiles at its SR-71s during those flights
The US only stopped flights when Chinese missiles started gaining the capability to actually be a threat
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The SR-71 flew over China until the late-1980s.
I was in Okinawa at the time. We'd watch the SR-71s take off from Kadena and fly out over the East China Sea.
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Yes, but the SR-71 missions were always considered illegal. They were a demonstration of what you could get away with, not what was allowed.
Spy satellites are different, they are generally considered legal.
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:2)
We Ignored them for years (Score:3, Insightful)
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Really?
https://thehill.com/policy/def... [thehill.com]
The Biden administration hacks CLAIM we ignored balloons in the past. Former Pentagon officials have all stated clearly that they never detected any. Either the three-letter orgs were sitting on this information or the Biden administration just got caught in another lie. Either way it's a fiasco.
Re: We Ignored them for years (Score:3, Informative)
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Except they refuse to note the specific official responsible for this claim, or any of the evidence.
Re: We Ignored them for years (Score:2)
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> The claim is that now that they know what to look for, they are finding evidence of previous flights that was missed at the time.
What seems to fit with all the statements is some US department knew about present and past balloons but they weren't deemed to be something one needs to report to NORAD. Which assumes NORAD had agreed with this, and is why today NORAD can ask for the all past balloon intelligence as they put it, and retroactively rename them as missed threats, which looks to be how they feel
Re: We Ignored them for years (Score:2)
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> You're assuming they had data semantically labeled "ballon."
Well no, I'm assuming they had the data, somewhere, with some level of analysis.
> Seems more likely they had raw data which has now been reprocessed.
Yes, I get the impression NORAD spokespersons are presenting it that way, "the intelligence was reevaluated", but they also seem to be purposely avoiding specifics, like how raw was the data, who or what had look at it, how clearly was it deemed a 'balloon', why wasn't something so easily detec
Shoot downs are not a problem. (Score:2)
The Cold War never ended and China remains an enemy. Detente was a mistake like selling out domestic industry without reason.
No reason exists no to shoot down deliberate intrusions into US sovereign airspace. China is an enemy society which genocides Uighers and has no concept of human rights. It is to be contained and opposed. Anyone empathizing with ChiComs (the Chinese Communist Party rules China so the shorthand remains applicable) is also an enemy of democracy.
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Its worse than than - most of our political leadership is an enemy of our democracy. We have both parties sending massive amounts of resources both in terms of dollars and not immediately replaceable military equipment that are badly needed to check the actions of an actual threat to our national independents, China, to fight a stupid proxy war with a has been power that poses zero threat to our self determination now or in the foreseeable future.
Russia is a bad actor and Ukraine, and if they are smart the
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Re:Shoot downs are not a problem. (Score:4, Insightful)
Its worse than than - most of our political leadership is an enemy of our democracy. We have both parties sending massive amounts of resources both in terms of dollars and not immediately replaceable military equipment
Your second sentence contradicts your first sentence. Most Americans want to send weapons to Ukraine. So you are giving an example of politicians correctly following democracy.
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Most Americans want to send weapons to Ukraine
Not really. Most Americans are for sending aid to in the form of food and medical supplies. Some American are okay with sending the Ukranian army small arms. When it comes to sending them major systems like Abrams tanks most Americans are firmly against it. Most Americans also are against sending Ukraine billions of dollars this admiration has.
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I don't have to explain shit to a fucking moron like you. I'm like so many Americans tired of being the worlds police force. Tired of sending our young men and women to die on foreign battlefields, over something that frankly has nothing to do with us.
I'm good with sending humanitarian aid, small arms ,and even defensive systems like the patriot, but I draw the line there. This is simply not our fight. If you are so gungho to free the people of Ukraine get off Slashdot and go sign up. One less
Re:Shoot downs are not a problem. (Score:4, Interesting)
Tired of sending our young men and women to die on foreign battlefields,
Oh, now you're changing the topic. You support dictators, you don't want to support people fighting for freedom, you don't have a logical position.
Sounds like you're just a political troll who hates Biden.
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Tired of sending our young men and women to die on foreign battlefields, over something that frankly has nothing to do with us.
Good thing that is not happening in Ukraine then. The Ukrainians are doing a fine job fighting for their own freedom, something America professes to value, and decent people the world over are helping however they can. You say it is not your fight, but it is absolutely in your interest to not have the USSR back again. With attitudes like yours the USSR never would have failed to begin with.
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Nobody but you is trying change the topic. You opened your mouth, said something stupid, and I shoved your foot in it. Now you are trying to claim the moral high ground and failing miserably in the process.
Now don't you have a foxhole waiting for you in eastern Europe?
Sorry you're missing my point (Score:2)
See you're focusing on the details not on how you're being manipulated by propaganda into giving up your inco
Re: We Ignored them for years (Score:2)
Re: We Ignored them for years (Score:2)
Not really. It's been a pretty subzero war. The Cold War was one of global influence and China just doesn't have the backing of its people & economy to sustain such an effort for long. Their approach isn't much different than the USSR which is already proven to fail. Plus, unlike the USSR, none of their "partners", if you can really call them that, trust them.
The USSR, for all its faults, had actual alliances and partnerships built on mutual goals. It was not a US vs USSR situation in the Cold War but
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Exactly. Unauthorised aircraft in the airspace will always be addressed, even civilian ones.
China says that the balloons were "uncontrolled" and entered the US by mistake, but they are lying. Balloons can be controlled, and these are controlled.
And even if they were right, the US is still within their rights to shoot them down.
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"If it is their stuff, and they want to stop seeing end up in a fiery ball of scrap, they should stop sending it"
Or they can bankrupt the stupid Westerners by sending 100 of these every day for the next 10 years
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If this keeps up for that long, we'll cook up some alternative anti-balloon countermeasures. It's not like this is a new threat, we should have come up with a solution for dealing with it long ago. Remember Japanese Fire Balloons? I mean, neither do I, but I know about them. One of them even worked. With modern tech you could have a balloon that rose or descended to follow winds which went where it wants to go, but no need for that while we're spending so much money on this.
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:3)
Unless they send hundreds a week, we can easily afford it. We constantly fire our ammunitions out to sea as a part of testing and stock renewal. All ammunition has a shelf life and parameters of operation & maintenance and rollover.
So we use a few for this real world use case.
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:5, Funny)
We need to unleash a huge fleet of Winnie the Pooh floats to float over China.
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:3)
And we also notify everyone where it is and where it is going and it's purpose and we take reasonable objections into account...
We also notify people when we lose control and seek permission across partners in order to bring it down in a controlled fashion. Most times we also share the collected scientific information.
China got caught... more than once. It was only when they realized it was undeniably theirs, that they said anything. And even then it seems they are lying.
Don't try to equate the two.
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> weather balloons are smaller and do not go far.
Yeah, some tend to, not sure why you bring that up.
NASA flights up to 100 days: "Alongside the New Zealand campaign, NASA’s Balloon Program is concurrently preparing for three balloon launches from Sweden, flying science missions using NASA’s workhorse zero-pressure balloons. Those missions will fly across the Atlantic Ocean to land in northern Canada. NASA has additional balloon flights planned later this year from the agency’s launch si
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Does that article mention if those weather NASA notifies air traffic control in areas the balloons will fly through, whether the balloons have transponders, etc. Using the airspace of another country is actually normally fine, it just has to be for authorized uses.
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> Does that article mention if those weather NASA notifies air traffic control in areas the balloons will fly through, whether the balloons have transponders, etc. Using the airspace of another country is actually normally fine, it just has to be for authorized uses.
I didn't read all, don't know if it had some kind of transponder.
On warning about airspace, I don't that either, or what's current policy, or if they did warn or not, but I'm assuming from the news that NORAD didn't receive a treat warning fr
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> If that were true, about flying over another country's air space, then explain why multiple NATO countries tried to help shoot down an errant Canadian weather balloon in 1998 before it drifted over Russia.
If you mean this one - https://www.bbc.com/news/world... [bbc.com] - could be these days they don't make such a big issue out of it.
NASA flights : "Alongside the New Zealand campaign, NASA’s Balloon Program is concurrently preparing for three balloon launches from Sweden, flying science missions using NAS
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It is spelled "Turdeau"
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Re: Can we not do this? (Score:2)
Why not bombard it with information about Tiananmen Square?
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Re:Can we not do this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Can we not spend another 20 trillion dollars on a pointless Cold War this time with china?
A diplomatic solution certainly is preferable, but the problem is that diplomacy requires rational actors on both sides.
It's like if you had a neighbor kid who kept flying his drone over your house at 2AM every night. You finally get fed up with it and tell his parents, but the parents respond with "Fuck you, my kid can do whatever he wants!" The next time that drone is buzzing over your house in the middle of the night, do you call the police or just ignore it because doing so might escalate tensions between you and your neighbor?
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:2)
I would blow that thing out of the sky.
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So just like the US policy of flying U2 spy planes over the USSR they shot one down, and then t
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It's not like US doesn't parade their gunboats and air force up and down China's coast.
It's not like China isn't disputing what their coast is, in ways which involve our friends and allies.
The problem with going back is deciding how far you go back.
... and has since at least 1801 (Score:3)
The US NAVY does freedom of navigation cruises in international waters. ... and has since at least 1801, when the US had taken soon to be president Thomas Jefferson's advice (along with that of Washington and Adams), got a navy together, stopped paying tribute to the governments of Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli, Morocco, (who claimed the seas of the southeastern Mediteranian and the Atlantic near the northeastern coast of Africa, and whose Barbary Pirates captured ships and their cargo and enslaved their crews a
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Just to be clear.
When Powerctrl wrote "It's like if you had a neighbor kid who kept flying his drone over your house at 2AM every night. You finally get fed up with it and tell his parents, but the parents respond with "Fuck you, my kid can do whatever he wants!" The next time that drone is buzzing over your house in the middle of the night, do you call the police or just ignore it because doing so might escalate tensions between you and your neighbor?"
First, I think it's an analogy that doesn't fit the sit
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Secondly, CHina is already in a cold war with the west.
Third, we did NOT do what the AQ wanted us to do. They were absolutely SHOCKED that we went after them.
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First off, America does not have enough nukes to destroy earth or world. Both will exist LONG after the next major extinction.
It's hightly unlikely that the U.S., or any world power in possession of nukes, would use them all. They'll mutually disable each other's capabilities before they reach the end. It's also unlikely that they would waste using any of them over the oceans. That leaves 30% of the planet, at least 10% of which is uninhabitable. The other 20% doesn't need to be completely covered. The nuclear fallout will take care of everybody on the planet.
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Back when Soviets had 30+K warheads and we had some 20K+, then that would be enough to produce a nuclear winter, but with the relatively few that we have? Nope.
Besides when Russia decides to go crazy and launch a massive attack in Ukraine, it will be with Novachuk.
China's CCP is likely going to use a virus/bacteria to attack Taiwan. They want the land and resources and really do not want the headache from the ppl
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No, CHina will almost certainly go at Taiwan with a biological, even if just to make them all too sick to fight back
However, I would not be the least bit surprised to see them go ahead and do a bug to kill them.
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:2)
Re: Can we not do this? (Score:2)
Right let them come over and do as they please. Because appeasement has such a great track record. Just ask Neville Chamberlain. In every crisis there is a traitor who wants to surrender on day one.
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WW3 wont be cold. Any interruption in trade will result in large scale starvation and deprivation.
I would consider the trade situation in 2020 very similar to the mutual defence and alliance situation of 1910. Everyone is completely reliance on everyone else. A oil worker in Russia in responsible for heating some German Grandmas apartment and a cole miner in Australia is responsible for the keyboard I am writing this on.
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Can we not spend another 20 trillion dollars on a pointless Cold War this time with china?
A cold war is several million times better than a hot war.
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China will not attack *you*, but very likely they may attack another country, like Taiwan (I bet a couple of years ago you would have said Russia is not going to attack). And even so, an attack on Taiwan would be an *indirect* attack on you too.
Re:Can we not do this? (Score:4, Interesting)
Weather balloons do this literally all the time. Actual weather balloons.
No, they don't. Weather balloons go up, and then back down. They don't cross borders.
And when scientific balloons do, they ALWAYS clear it FIRST. They don't overfly borders without notice.
The winds know no sovereign airspace. Theres even an international treaty on this. As long as the payload isn't over 4kg it can go wherever it pleases. But then, thats just international law and your the USA so ppfffft
I believe you are confusing CFR title 14, part 101-D (which is US regulations) with international law.
There is no such international law about balloons. The international law is that each nation is sovereign over their own airspace.
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There is actually an international treaty. However, that treaty calls for pre-clearing the flight with any other country it may reasonably be expected to travel over.
But the first one was clearly over 4 kilos and none have been cleared.
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Secondly, these had payloads that were massive. The last 2 were the size of VW bugs and the first was about the size of 3 busses.
I would say that it was over 4 kg.
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Missile cost is a trifle and you know this. (Score:2)
Concern for the cost delta isn't good stewardship, it's mentally defective bikeshedding.
Re: Russian pen-testing (Score:2)