US Military Shoots Down Fourth Flying Object Near Michigan (cnn.com) 245
The U.S. military shot down another high-altitude object Sunday, reports CNN — this one flying near Michigan.
"The operation marks the third day in a row that an unidentified object was shot down over North American airspace." Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said Sunday that the operation to down the object over Lake Huron was carried out by pilots from the U.S. Air Force and the National Guard.... The object was flying at 20,000 feet over Michigan's Upper Peninsula and was about to go over Lake Huron when it was neutralized, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.
The object was "octagonal" with strings hanging off and no discernable payload, according to the official and another source briefed on the matter. While the U.S. has no indication that the object had surveillance capabilities, that has not been ruled out yet.
Why have so many flying objects been spotted in the last week? The Washington Post says the Chinese spy balloon and subsequently-spotted objects "have changed how analysts receive and interpret information from radars and sensors, a U.S. official said Saturday." The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that sensory equipment absorbs a lot of raw data, and filters are used so humans and machines can make sense of what is collected. But that process always runs the risk of leaving out something important, the official said.
"We basically opened the filters," the official added, much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website to broaden the parameters of what can be searched. That change does not yet fully answer what is going on, the official cautioned, and whether stepping back to look at more data is yielding more hits — or if these latest incursions are part of a more deliberate action by an unknown country or adversary....
The official said the current U.S. assessment is the objects are not military threats.
"The operation marks the third day in a row that an unidentified object was shot down over North American airspace." Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said Sunday that the operation to down the object over Lake Huron was carried out by pilots from the U.S. Air Force and the National Guard.... The object was flying at 20,000 feet over Michigan's Upper Peninsula and was about to go over Lake Huron when it was neutralized, a senior administration official told CNN on Sunday.
The object was "octagonal" with strings hanging off and no discernable payload, according to the official and another source briefed on the matter. While the U.S. has no indication that the object had surveillance capabilities, that has not been ruled out yet.
Why have so many flying objects been spotted in the last week? The Washington Post says the Chinese spy balloon and subsequently-spotted objects "have changed how analysts receive and interpret information from radars and sensors, a U.S. official said Saturday." The official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that sensory equipment absorbs a lot of raw data, and filters are used so humans and machines can make sense of what is collected. But that process always runs the risk of leaving out something important, the official said.
"We basically opened the filters," the official added, much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website to broaden the parameters of what can be searched. That change does not yet fully answer what is going on, the official cautioned, and whether stepping back to look at more data is yielding more hits — or if these latest incursions are part of a more deliberate action by an unknown country or adversary....
The official said the current U.S. assessment is the objects are not military threats.
Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:2, Informative)
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's an illegal penetration test.
Try to figure out your enemy and response times. Gather some additional data if possible.
Hope that debris kills someone so that the US military can be blamed.
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Insightful)
Or we're just shooting down some random shit. The spy balloon that started this whole thing off was flying at over 60,000 feet and had a huge (for a balloon) payload. The object shot down over Alaska was at 40,000 feet, and while the payload was not described the balloon was described as "much smaller" than the spy balloon. The object shot down over Lake Huron was flying at only 20,000 feet, and had no payload.
These *could* be enormously different models of balloon used in the Chinese balloon program for different purposes. Or it could be three different sets of balloons launched by different people for different purposes. There are even hobbyists who fly high altitude balloons. There's FAA rules that are supposed to prevent them from being a hazard to aviators, but nothing really stops anyone from underinflating a weather balloon so it doesn't burst and launching it into the stratosphere.
Even if all these balloons *are* all part of the Chinese spy program, there's bound to be random stuff up there. If we throw our filters wide open and start shooting down everything we can't identify, we may find ourselves pretty busy.
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I could see actors probing US defenses, seeing how we respond, and otherwise just being a pest.
Balloons I have to imagine are fairly cheap and outsized US response will start adding up.
I could see 10,000 balloons entering our airspace. Not significant enough to go to war over, but I do chuckle that such an basic technology is causing so much havoc here.
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Interesting)
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I would have expected "legitimate" balloon users to tell whoever that they have done so and say what their expected flight plan is. I am assuming that there is a "whoever" - there might not be such a body in which case time to create one.
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Well it's not quite that simple. The balloon operator has to take care to track the balloon and inform Air Traffic Control of both the expected area it will operate in, and if tracking suggests that it is going somewhere else.
The tracking that they use tends to just be the signal strength of the telemetry, and maybe some direction finding. The risks are minimal anyway. The sky is big and collisions are only likely along frequented routes and areas, like around airports. A balloon launched well away from kno
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:2)
Do they do weird kinky shit with the huge popped latex balloon? I heard some do. :-)
Not that there's anything wrong with that. Don't kink shame.
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It would be taken as an act of war.
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> Remember when pandemic was not even a word in the general lexicon?
Not really. Although, I've had a grade school level vocabulary since... grade school.
But it's cool that you're learnin' new words 'n' stuff lil champ.
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Interesting)
A UW atmospheric sciences professor used a NOAA model to backtrace [blogspot.com] the probable origins of these balloons. One thing I found interesting (that I don't believe he noted) - while the origins of all "balloons" do seem to be either China or Russia, the balloon shot down near Prudhoe Bay looks like it could arguably have been a Finnish balloon used for spying on the Russians!
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Response times for what? An invasion by a squadron of baloons? Ninety-nine "red" baloons, hehe.
Chinese are claiming this is a weather baloon blown off course. Now normally if CCP announced that the sky is blue I'd look out the window to check that it hasn't turned purple, but in this case I'm inclined to believe them. Simply because from their point of view sending this baloon makes no sense at all. It doesn't get them any more intel than the all their satellites as about a million people here have already
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:2)
Which cretin marked this troll? Very valid points, succinctly put. This is a very cheap way to aggressively gather operational information close to real combat conditions.
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Interesting)
Guarantee: if a US “weather balloon” drifted over any part of China, it would be shot down as soon as the planes could get off the ground. Indeed, China would probably assume we had sent a spy drone and do everything they possibly could to preserve the payload rather than just blast it. But it would be coming down one way or another, and lickety split.
Despite what has been said about imagery from satellites vs balloons (not sure I believe that satellites produce as-good-or-better imagery), satellites cannot effectively measure or intercept a lot of EM/RF signals (where loss is an R^2) effect but that balloon could. The jet stream provides free propulsion basically directly over a number of key US military installations providing for signals intelligence (radar, cell phones, radios, etc.) and hi-res photography with very long loiter time relative to satellites.
Sending an “innocuous” “weather balloon” through the NORAD airspace would be high up on the list of ways I would use to try to gather radar signals intelligence. A simple small thermite charge in certain pieces of equipment triggered at say 10kft altitude would provide mission deniability. Plus, you’d get the whole benefit of being about to complain about your “civilian weather experiments” being shot down by the warmongering US and play that card for all it’s worth.
Even a huge balloon can have a very low radar cross section, and even virtually zero depending on the material used to make it. The payload for signals intelligence can be made quite small (often coming in a roll-on/roll-off package), and inexpensive (for a nation-state) so that it can be destroyed with on-board munitions if/when needed to obfuscate the purpose of the equipment. Furthermore, by moving with the wind, NORAD radars would tend to ignore the low-speed returns as moving target indicator algorithms tend to skew toward ignoring returns that are too-slow and especially with velocities equal to wind-speed, and so this balloon would tend to not spike any radars scanning for ICBMs and the like.
As for being visible, it leverages the “hiding in plain sight” mechanism. It looks like weather balloon, so people seeing it will either report it as a UFO or as a weather balloon. In the event that it does cause some consternation in the spied-upon nation, the aforementioned munitions will provide a level of cover “The missile they used to shoot down our much-maligned scientific experiment destroyed all the equipment beyond recognition. How dare they claim it was spy equipment!”
And finally, the trajectory the balloon traveled went directly over or very close to a number of US anti-ICBM radars and important military sites. COBRA DANE is on Shemya, Aleutian Islands, Alaska. JBER, Alaska has a number of domestic and foreign threat radars and training operations. AN/FPS-120 PAVE PAWS is in Clear, Alaska. AN/FPQ-16 PARCS is in North Dakota. AN/FPS-85 is at Eglin AFB, Florida. All of these systems have had modernization programs updating them over the last 20-30 years from their cold war configurations, and getting signals-intelligence from them could be important to China.
OTOH, the damn thing could very well have been nothing more than a weather balloon that China lost and was too proud to admit the error. Perhaps they saw the opportunity to let it float just to see what Biden might do.
But Ill repeat what I said before. If the US lost a “weather balloon” that floated over China, it would be destroyed as soon as the planes could launch.
Re:Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Funny)
Damned illegal aliens! Waiting for a presidential candidate to tell us he's going to build a dome and make Alpha Centauri pay for it...
Jargon Decoding PR Speak (Score:2)
Re: Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Insightful)
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They arent just lobbing a missile from half way across the country , they are sending in fighters to get a visual on them. I'm 99% certain if a fighter pilot sees the targets just some kid on a recreational craft like a para motor he's gonna nope out of shooting it down.
Plus the paramotors fly fairly lowly , these things that are being shot down are almost in the stratosphere.
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Re:Just because it's unidentified and flying... (Score:5, Interesting)
UFOs?
No one would have believed in the early years of the twenty-first century that this country was being watched keenly and closely from above, by intelligences greater than ours and yet as mortal; that as men busied themselves about their various concerns they were scrutinised and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinise the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. With infinite complacency men went to and fro over this continent about their little affairs, serene in their assurance of their empire over matter. It is possible that the infusoria under the microscope do the same.
No one gave a thought to the old world as sources of high-altitude danger.
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...filling up an inflatable pool with helium? (Score:2)
Say... I just had an idea!
No excuse this time... (Score:5, Funny)
Another AIM-9X?! It was at 20,000 feet this time...so don't tell me that it was "too high" to use a cannon.
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Another AIM-9X?! It was at 20,000 feet this time...so don't tell me that it was "too high" to use a cannon.
It *was* too high for a Cannon, but an HP or Epson probably would have worked. :-)
Actually, someone mentioned on an earlier related thread that guns might not be as immediately effective on a balloon like this as people might think. Don't know if anyone has any cite-able info on that though.
I did note earlier that AIM 9X Sidewinders are kinda expensive for this sort of thing at about $400k a pop.
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Since when has any part of the US military worried about cost? Or even needed to?
Just saying maybe we should bill China for those missiles. :-)
Maybe their game is to get us to deplete our inventory, one balloon and missile at a time.
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I mean...the taxpayers that ultimately pay for it, have a bit of an interest in the cost.
No...we're not all enamored with the amount of money that goes to the military...or the gleeful waste.
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Since when has any part of the US military worried about cost? Or even needed to?
Massive military spending is what keeps the US economy going. I'm sure that many jobs will be created from the ongoing effort to rid US airspace of unidentified balloons and stuff. Not to mention the yachts that US industrialists will be able to afford. Your tax dollars at work! Plus the massive pile of debt that keeps getting bigger and bigger...
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Actually, someone mentioned on an earlier related thread that guns might not be as immediately effective on a balloon like this as people might think. Don't know if anyone has any cite-able info on that though.
No real need to cite, the ballons are like cling wrap and the helium within them is about the same pressure as the atmosphere, so you could shoot them up a fair bit and they can just keep ambling on.
I did note earlier that AIM 9X Sidewinders are kinda expensive for this sort of thing at about $400k a pop.
Don't forget, F22 cost per flight hours (I think about $85K), then there is the two support F15s, and the KC tanker - so yeah, pretty costly to bring down a cheap balloon.
I think this is where a laser would really work well.
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Pilots have to log a certain amount of flight and weapons time on their craft, which these flights count towards.
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Pilots have to log a certain amount of flight and weapons time on their craft, which these flights count towards.
Does that make it cost any less? Spend 2 million to shoot down a $100K balloon? Sounds like asymetric warfare to me.
The air force could always mount lasers on the fighter jets PEW PEW!!!
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The 2 million would get spent either way.
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So you are going along at hundreds of miles an hour and this tiny speck is drifting along on the wind and you figure you can get close enough hit it with a canon yet not run into the thing. I believe the Air Force has a place for you, in the cemetery next to one of their bases where they plant the ones too stupid to fly.
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Another AIM-9X?! It was at 20,000 feet this time...so don't tell me that it was "too high" to use a cannon.
Can you even shoot guns at stationary targets? Seems like there would be a very small window of time where bullets would be in range and you were not dangerously close to the thing you were shooting at.
Thanks EditorDavid! (Score:5, Funny)
"We basically opened the filters," the official added, much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website to broaden the parameters of what can be searched.
A car analogy, now I understand.
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American cars, or metric? How many libraries of congress would that be?
This is what they should have done all along (Score:2, Funny)
It's pretty amusing to me, that he first object they let drift across the entire US, I posted the exact same sentiment in my subject - no way should any object at size and significant altitude be allowed to drift across the whole US, weather balloon or not.
Not only was that downmodded into oblivion but I received quite a few responses stating various reasons why of course it was the right thing to do to just let it drift wherever for any of a thousand stupid reasons.
Well it looks like the U.S. agreed with m
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Well it looks like the U.S. agreed with me because every single object after that has been shot down, over land or inland lake, upon entering U.S. airspace.
Nope difference at all, except (at least) that the first balloon was at 60k feet, and not a danger to any air traffic, while the next two were at 40k and 20k feet respectively and would easily be more so if they descended.
[Be sure to look straight into the mirror when telling those losers to suck it. And no more coffee for you.]
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> I was proven right. IN YO FACE LOSERS.
"The balloon's first reporting sighting was on February 1, 2023, when civilians in a commercial airliner spotted it. On the same day, former Billings Gazette editor Chase Doak spotted the object above Billings, Montana, after seeing reports that the airspace around Billings was closed." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
What has followed seems like damage control taking on a life of its own.
Is it a good idea to shot them all down, should that have been the policy
Re: This is what they should have done all along (Score:2)
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> The explanation in this article is an admission that nobody knew these things were there until a civilian saw it and asked wtf it was.
There's lots of interesting stuff in the Wikipedia link. When I posted it, I'd only read the bit about how the current incident started.
Reading more of the link now, I noticed this bit "In the two years preceding the 2023 incident, U.S. officials had identified some of the incursions as Chinese spy balloons.[36][37] The commander of the United States Northern Command (US
As if shutting up is a big threat to anybody. (Score:2)
P.P.S. not reading further responses again because why would I want to read a bunch of words from people who were never right to begin with?
Because you're massively insecure.
Noise (Score:5, Interesting)
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It will be interesting to see if the numbers go down over time. Well, it will lead to more speculation at least. Did China stop trying this method of spying? Are weather balloon users fed up of having their equipment shot down? Are scientists now more careful to check where their balloons are likely to go?
It seems like an odd way of gathering intelligence. Even commercial operators can pick up cell phone signals from space, and you can be sure that money-is-no-object military gear is better than that.
OK. (Score:2)
I wonder... (Score:2)
I wonder if they were saying "ballon ball"...
https://youtu.be/3VtPgxPxiK0?t... [youtu.be]
JoshK.
Cheap targets, expensive missiles (Score:2)
99 red balloons go by (Score:3)
[Intro]
You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we've got
Set them free at the break of dawn
'Til one by one, they were gone
Back at base, bugs in the software
Flash the message, "Something's out there!"
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by
[Verse 1]
Ninety-nine 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
When ninety-nine red balloons go by
[Verse 2]
99 Decision Street
Ninety-nine ministers meet
To worry, worry, super-scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we've waited for
This is it, boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As ninety-nine red balloons go by
[Verse 3]
Ninety-nine knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a superhero
Everyone's a "Captain Kirk"
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by
As ninety-nine red balloons go by
[Outro]
Ninety-nine dreams I have had
In every one, a red balloon
It's all over and I'm standin' pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Re: 99 red balloons go by (Score:2)
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It is 99 Redluftballons. WTF?
Holy shit! =Time travel is real = (Score:2)
Wifi (Score:5, Interesting)
Car buyers, UNITE! (Score:2)
WHEW, I was worried that I was gonna be real confused by all that fangled terminology regarding "filters", but I'm glad they translated it into the car-buyer's language that simpletons like me can understand!
Miguel de Cervantes (Score:2)
A knight clad in armor seeks targets for his righteous inner anger in order to prolong his relevance in the modern world.
What is causing all these balloons to appear all o (Score:2)
99 spy ballons (Score:3)
Do spy balloons collect something spy satellites don't? Why advertise detection capabilities to your adversaries? Given cost of aircraft, fuel and missiles is this the best use of taxpayer dollars?
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'Sig Int" - signals intelligence. Details of radar and radio emissions, useful if you are trying to build stealth aircraft, or tap into someones radio comms
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'Sig Int" - signals intelligence. Details of radar and radio emissions, useful if you are trying to build stealth aircraft, or tap into someones radio comms
I'm asking what you need a balloon for that can't be done via satellite.
Re: 99 spy ballons (Score:2)
Signals propagate only so far, and resolution is better if you're you're closer. The altitude of the balloons is maybe ten miles up. By contrast a satellite will be more than ten times distant.
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1) We have sigint satellites. The Chinese may not, but i'm skeptical that it's wise to think they don't.
2) let's say they wanted sigint from USSTRATCOM (one of the "sensitive" sites the balloon overflew), why not just put a dude onto a domestic flight into Omaha with a fucking SDR and a few TB of storage space?
3) Open Skies treaty. Every square inch of the US has been overflown by actual spy planes, intentionally, by treaty. The Chinese know this, as they have almost certainly purchased the re
And releases what? (Score:2)
99 Luftballons (Score:2)
Fake news to make Biden look decisive? (Score:2)
So, Biden was heavily criticised for belated action over the Chinese "weather balloon".
Is it possible that this is largely made-up hokum to make it look like he is actually decisive?
Not concerned about this one. (Score:2)
The first 3 are of interest. Obviously the first one was one of China's spy balloons. The other 2 could be from China, but more likely n.korea or Russia.
So that is what we need to be afraid of now? (Score:2)
I was wondering what they would come up with after corona.
We're being trolled (Score:3)
The latest object was octagonal. The next one will be a pyramid. I would be surprised if we didn't start seeing blinking lights. Someone has seen Close Encounters of the Third Kind and is launching these things to cause panic in the U.S.
As a citizen of the United States... (Score:2)
it's not a ufo any more (Score:2)
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I'm glad they've finally fixed inflation, gas prices, unemployment, and right wing extremism. Now onto the real pressing issues, closely examining those photos of Hunter Biden's enormous penis.
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...but I don't really get leftist culture:
Or sarcasm apparently.
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Haha you seriously looked at it?
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lol- that adage about sexually closeted conservatives really does have some truth to it, doesn't it?
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House Republicans are honing in on Hunter and the Biden Family Corruption. MSM will eat up to pop the balloon everyday and will not cover the True Crime that is the Democrats.
Crime you say [imgur.com]?
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When you have literally only two options in a "winner takes all" package, they can and do get insanely dirty and corrupt.
Both the side you're cheering for and the opposite one are full of the most horrible and disgusting shit you can imagine, and more.
They rely on the "you voted for option A, so you consent with everything A does" to get away with everything.
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This truth is too truthful and probably has raised a flag somewhere.
Please be careful.
Oh, and mod this shit up.
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House Republicans are honing in on Hunter and the Biden Family Corruption. MSM will eat up to pop the balloon everyday and will not cover the True Crime that is the Democrats.
I'm amazed that after all these years and evidence to the contrary, you still think you're funny.
Re: This is all a DIRVERSION. (Score:2)
>At least Biden has not hired his whole family to taxpayer funded jobs, like Donald "Nepotism r' us" Trump.
It's yet another example of Trump's incompetence, evidenced by the decline in his net worth while in office. Even the jobs he got his family were unpaid!
He should have had a son out in the East, doing big deals, always ensuring a cut for 'the big guy'. It's also clear he did little to support Colombian coca growers.
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However, the former alleged president had befriended the Head Bozo of Saudi Arabia in the past by looking past the brutal murder an opposition figure, the former alleged president is now on the receiving end of millions of Saudi money for his silly golf courses and S.A.'s attempt at buying respectability by taking over the golf world. And his mini-me, Kushner, is also benefiting having signed a billion dollar deal with S.A. So now he really is S.A.'s pussy ass bitch.
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I'm happy our military finally found the trigger button. ... To all the people who made excuses for why the first "spy balloon" took so long to shoot down: How's that crow tasting? I've got a bottle of ketchup here if you need.
You mean shooting down this balloon with (apparently from TFS) no payload, over Lake Huron vs. the previous one with a payload the size of three buses over land, that ended up spreading debris over seven square miles of the Atlantic?
You should probably save that crow and bottle of ketchup for yourself.
Re: Trigger happy (Score:2)
Re: Trigger happy (Score:2)
We told Germany for years to stop funding Russian aggression. They continued to do it anyway, and then started decommissioning their nuclear plants. Pretty much the whole rest of Europe was on the same page. Germany had to get with the program. NATO exists for a reason.
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While it's possible Hillary Clinton's personal intel gopher published the report to fuck over Biden, this is unlikely.
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The Chinese have satellites and if they need to know anything important they send a bunch of students over to American universities and the professors tell them what they need to know.
Balloons are a stupid way of spying.
Re: Trigger happy (Score:3)
Or did you just assume it only had a camera on it?
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A satellite is a better choice for SIGINT.
You need to collect the signals, which means you need a massive antenna array. You need to power all the amplifiers. You also need a transmitter so you can send the captured data back for analysis, ideally in real-time, which means you need big batteries and solar panels.
Spy satellites can be up to 20 tonnes, that we know of. China's rockets can put 23 tonnes in orbit.
While being lower down does improve reception, it doesn't improve it by as much as having a massive
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The satellite will cross the country at Mach 17 or so, and the next orbit will be over somewhere else.
The balloon took days to cross the country giving a detailed look at long term communication patterns.
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That's why they have lots of satellites.
Elint on Stealth Plane emissions (Score:2)
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"much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website" what does that even mean?
It's like when you're on NewEgg looking at PC cases and you have all the options you want set on the left-hand side and you only get two results, which are cases from 2015, then you start unchecking boxes for things like "supports at least four 3.5" hard drives" and "has a 5 1/4" optical drive bay" and suddenly you get a lot more results.
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"much like a car buyer unchecking boxes on a website" what does that even mean?
Well, it’s a modern radar array with all the latest bells and whistles. So when you boot it up there’s a few main checkboxes of stuff already checked like “the bad guys” and “enemy missiles”, but one is left greyed out “floaty crap”. It’s got migrating birds, birthday bunches and weather balloons, really light foam, all kinds of stuff under it. They check that box now, ya can’t be too careful.
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Yeah, I understand what they were originally saying - these balloons were flying high with minimal metallic components and traveling quite slowly, so wouldn't show up on radar like, say, a SR71 would.
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I mean, sure, I hate Jeb Bush as much as the next guy, but what is he doing in Airforce 1?
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The lack of any information around this subject in particular is a matter of national security.
If it is a matter of national security, then the general public probably shouldn't be getting any details at all.
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How dare Biden be subject to any expectations whatsoever. I think Biden's achievements speak for themselves and he should not be criticized in anyway. The lack of any information around this subject in particular is a matter of national security.
https://thehill.com/homenews/h... [thehill.com]
Right, Go Reeee for us, widdle one, then do it again. You are an embarassment - but there I go repeating myself.
Your slippery sloping the idea that what I posted was some sort of "Untouchable Biden thing says it all about you.
Hey there Maga - remember that balloon that was shot down over the ocean? Ever wonder why? Because my dear MAGA, if it was shot down over land, it might have landed on a MAGA's house, and you and the others would whine about that.
One of t
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What is it with the car analogies tradition? Slashdotters might better understand unchecking filter checkboxes in Tinder....
I suspect some would need to uncheck outside the box, until they end up on Grindr or Christian Mingle, depending which way they lean.