Two Objects Shot Down By US May Never Be Identified. Search Called Off. (nbcnews.com) 57
"The United States on Friday called off the search for two of the unidentified flying objects that the military shot out of the sky this month," reports the New York Times.
NBC News adds that "The end of recovery efforts could mean the country may never know what, exactly, the objects were, how they were propelled, and where they came from." The conclusion applies to airborne objects shot down by U.S. fighter jets Feb. 10 near Deadhorse, Alaska, and Feb. 12 over Lake Huron, off the coast of Michigan. "The U.S. military, federal agencies, and Canadian partners conducted systematic searches of each area using a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans, and did not locate debris," the command said. Efforts in Deadhorse were hampered by Arctic conditions and sea ice instability, it said.
The recommendation does not cover the Feb. 4 takedown of what the United States has described as a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina. Military officials said recovery efforts in the Atlantic, which ended Thursday, were successful, and recovered items were taken to an FBI lab "for counterintelligence exploitation," according to the statement Friday.... One other incident involving the takedown of an airborne object took place in Canadian airspace Feb. 11 and is the purview of Canadian authorities.
The Biden administration announced Monday it was forming an interagency group to address the recent cluster and future unidentified objects.
The New York Times includes this response from National Security Council spokesman John F. Kirby: Asked if the Biden administration overreacted in shooting down the objects or had any regrets, Mr. Kirby said the craft were at altitudes that could affect civilian aircraft and could have flown over military spaces.
NBC News adds that "The end of recovery efforts could mean the country may never know what, exactly, the objects were, how they were propelled, and where they came from." The conclusion applies to airborne objects shot down by U.S. fighter jets Feb. 10 near Deadhorse, Alaska, and Feb. 12 over Lake Huron, off the coast of Michigan. "The U.S. military, federal agencies, and Canadian partners conducted systematic searches of each area using a variety of capabilities, including airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans, and did not locate debris," the command said. Efforts in Deadhorse were hampered by Arctic conditions and sea ice instability, it said.
The recommendation does not cover the Feb. 4 takedown of what the United States has described as a Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina. Military officials said recovery efforts in the Atlantic, which ended Thursday, were successful, and recovered items were taken to an FBI lab "for counterintelligence exploitation," according to the statement Friday.... One other incident involving the takedown of an airborne object took place in Canadian airspace Feb. 11 and is the purview of Canadian authorities.
The Biden administration announced Monday it was forming an interagency group to address the recent cluster and future unidentified objects.
The New York Times includes this response from National Security Council spokesman John F. Kirby: Asked if the Biden administration overreacted in shooting down the objects or had any regrets, Mr. Kirby said the craft were at altitudes that could affect civilian aircraft and could have flown over military spaces.
Re:Whoopdie-doo (Score:4, Insightful)
There was never any real reason to worry about them in the first place.
The bigger, higher one that actually was a spyplane is a different story. Though mainly on principle, since whatever intel it collected can't be very much more valuable than from a satellite. But, we don't have to make it cheap or easy for them.
That's assuming these things were even collection intelligence at all. Russia, and especially China, can afford to launch satellite constellations to gather intel. There is no reason they would be pissing about with WWI tech like balloons for intel gathering. China want's to project an image of itself as a high tech military powerhouse and using WWI tech is downright humiliating PR & propaganda wise.
Re:Whoopdie-doo (Score:5, Informative)
Russia?
China?
How about hobbyists from America? [aviationweek.com]
A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10.
The club—the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade (NIBBB)—is not pointing fingers yet.
But the circumstantial evidence is at least intriguing. The club’s silver-coated, party-style, “pico balloon” reported its last position on Feb. 10 at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska, and a popular forecasting tool—the HYSPLIT model provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)—projected the cylindrically shaped object would be floating high over the central part of the Yukon Territory on Feb. 11. That is the same day a Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same general area.
imo, if people are operating anything in commercial flight space, then they had better be licensed to do that and report their positions in a manner that prevents the US from wasting millions of dollars taking them down
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Russia?
China?
How about hobbyists from America? [aviationweek.com]
A small, globe-trotting balloon declared “missing in action” by an Illinois-based hobbyist club on Feb. 15 has emerged as a candidate to explain one of the three mystery objects shot down by four heat-seeking missiles launched by U.S. Air Force fighters since Feb. 10.
The fact that it's probably not Russia and probably not China either was kind of my point.
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It's perfectly legal to operate small balloons below a certain weight limit (I think it's 4 pounds or something like that) in the airspace system. Check youtube for the videos of high school students launching GoPro's high enough to confuse the flat earthers. What I haven't seen yet on youtube is a GoPro recording of a high-school balloon taken out by an F-22, from the balloon's perspective. That would be cool.
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> Though mainly on principle, since whatever intel it collected can't be very much more valuable than from a satellite.
What if it was delivering an aerosol payload?
Re:Whoopdie-doo (Score:5, Interesting)
False, a balloon at 60,000 feet gathers a lot more valuable intel than a satellite. First, it's only around 12 miles up in the sky. Low earth orbit is anywhere from 100-400 miles. You're an order of magnitude closer, and you can get far more detailed information from a photo taken at 12 miles than one at 200 miles. Classified satellite photos have s pixel around 6 inches or so, and likely better. You can get far better resolution with a balloon - that's why many "satellite imagery" map views are often augmented with drone and aircraft obtained images.
Second, even at 60,000 feet, you're often below the weather. Satellites still have a really hard time imaging through clouds in the visible spectrum (because clouds are white and puffy and well, not transparent).
Third, EM surveillance is much easier since many radio signals can traverse the short distance to the balloon than the farther distance to a satellite.
Surveillance has always been a risk/reward compromise. A low flying aircraft provides the most detail, but is often the most difficult to hide the fact that you're there - even the FBI ran small aircraft a few years ago which got discovered by people. Fly higher up and you can avoid radar and missiles, which is where the U2 and SR-71 operate at - both designed to fly high to avoid detection and to fly higher than missiles, or with the SR-71, fly faster than the missiles. In-between, you can try balloons but you risk capture.
And if you really can't send anything, you have spy satellites which are the last resort. They're not going to be detected, but the imaging and payloads are limited. And many satellites have multiple uses - GPS satellites for example carry EM detectors which go off in the event of a nuclear test.
As for the rest, well, they are interfering with commercial traffic - they were hanging around 30,000 feet, so even if they were innocent hobbyist balloons, they are actually interfering with commercial flights
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There is one huge problem with balloons - getting the data.
If it transmits the data it will be easily visible to SIGINT satellites and ground stations. If you plan to physically collect it then you need the balloon to end up somewhere you can quietly get it, which is far from easy. Balloons can only "steer" by charging altitude to ride winds, and they can only change altitude by either releasing ballast or releasing gas. Meaning they are pretty limited and at the mercy of the weather, with a good probabilit
Re:Whoopdie-doo (Score:5, Interesting)
Frickin' Lasers
They offer a tight beam for communications, with low observability and a high data rate [mit.edu]
The atmosphere does not act as a serious impediment because the balloon is above most of it, and they can still support direct transfer to a ground station if needed. [google.com]
The second option is admittedly more dangerous, but there are tens of thousands of PRC operatives in America who can gain access to the needed equipment [nasa.gov]
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Only a few kilometers downward would be needed to transmit to an Earth station for backup data feed (it is also limited in range downward by atmosphere which can play havoc with light/laser comms), while the curvature of the Earth would actually aid in transmitting to satellites because at that altitude (and minimal atmospheric interference) you could send messages to satellites at a distant Earth horizon.
FYI, most Earth based satellite comms have issues with short horizon, that is why they require so many
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Would be great if it wasn't for the fact that you have a massive balloon blocking much of the sky, and would need extremely precise positioning data. Satellites have highly predictable orbits, balloons do not.
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What?
From an altitude of 50,000 ft, with the almost non-existent atmospheric interference, you could transmit well off from the vertical axis, completely avoid the balloon shadow and reach any satellite between about 30 deg and 60 deg off vertical axis.
Don't tell me, you did not bother to read my links about Google, MIT and NASA doing exactly what I am suggesting the Chinese could have done
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There is one huge problem with balloons - getting the data.
Just give it a Starlink terminal.
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Umm, what weather is going on above 60kft? You might get some cirrus up there or some overshooting tops and cirrus outflow from a mesoscale convective system, but otherwise the bulk of clouds are far below 60kft.
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His idea is right but the numbers are wrong.
Above 60K is relatively calm, but in the 40-60K range you have the Tropopause and that shit gets hectic becuase of the boundary interactions.
The problem is balloons have a tendency to loiter between 40K to 60K at that troposphere (again, beceause of the steep preasure gradient).
Resolution (Score:2)
I was at a lecture on the glaciers in the Himalayas and Karakoram recently.
They are getting their data from declassified satellite images, with horizontal resolutions down to 50cm or so.
One has to wonder if one can get information as good as this from satellites, then what additional information, if any, can you get from balloons?
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Electronically? Every single cell phone call within a 100 square miles is one example, you can imagine what else may be allowed to project upwards at relatively low energy levels.
Photographically? I have purchased high altitude aerial photography where you can see the curb lines on streets, so 1ft resolution commercially, perhaps better at the nation/state level. They can also loiter over an area for longer and use image enhancement on overlapped data.
There are also interesting things like thermal imagining
They did, no undoing that now. (Score:2, Insightful)
What they can do is declare that "we'll never know" what they actually were. Which might be true, but is bad, because it means they shot down most likely innocent and harmless balloons for no other reason than their fevered imaginations.
They might also have figured out what the objects must've been by now, and... just don't want to admit that they massively over-reacted.
Either way, I say again, fucking cowboys.
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The news media was in a frenzy and the GOP was screaming about the objects, so there was no downside to shooting them down.
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Using the gun would have unloaded dozens of rounds onto the target even in the briefest pull of the trigger.
So what? The balloons being that high would be very large, the shell so thin that the holes made would not be very large in comparison.
Even if the descent were rapid it would still be vastly better than a raid of debris caused by blowing whatever it was up with a Sidewinder... never mind what happens to the missiles that miss! They don't fly forever you know...
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So what? The balloons being that high would be very large, the shell so thin that the holes made would not be very large in comparison.
You do understand these are 20mm rounds [wikipedia.org]? These are not tiny bullets. They are also most likely a mixture of armor piercing, high explosive, and high explosive incendiary (HEI) rounds. By "not very large in comparison", compared to what? The fire rate of the Gatling is 6,000 rounds per minute so dozens of rounds would open up dozens of very large holes.
Even if the descent were rapid it would still be vastly better than a raid of debris caused by blowing whatever it was up with a Sidewinder... never mind what happens to the missiles that miss! They don't fly forever you know...
You do understand the principle of gravity, right? The balloon would fall to the Earth at the speed until terminal velocity. Into a body of water. Then quickl
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For the last 15 years or so the M61 combat loadout has been 100% semi armor piercing high explosive incendiary. A balloon skin is not going to create near enough resistance to cause the zirconium component to ignite the explosive / incendiary compound, so you're just punching (kinda big) holes.
The main problem with using that kind of ammo over the continental US is it does not have a self destruct function, as do some 20mm rounds, and so you're going to spray potentially dozens of bullets which if fired fro
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F-16s like many fighter jets do not have a single bullet selector.
So put just one bullet in. Problem solved.
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Swamp gas (Score:2)
According to this [pinimg.com].
Have we no way to seize these? (Score:2)
Like using a navigable balloon drone that has a pistol and an arm or something like that? How hard is it to damage, puncture, and seize/navigate these things.
Let me guess, the Air Force will soon put out an RFP for this and the minimum bid will be like $10 billion, am I right?
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You're funny. Actually, very hard, as in impossible, to bring down big balloon like the first one with a pistol, useless.
There was 100-meter weather balloon that drifted for six more days after being riddled with a thousand rounds by Canadian fighter jets in 1998. That has to do with the pressure difference between inside and outside.... it's damn near zero.
If you're talking about spending tens of thousands of dollars to make your device and shoot down $20 hobbyist balloons, like two of the recent ones
Probably embarrassed (Score:2, Troll)
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I feel like this is a good demonstration of how racing to the bottom works.
Just wait... (Score:2)
...until the insurance claims start arriving from alpha centuri.
Not surprised (Score:2)
There are many incidents of actual passenger-carrying aircraft disappearing in Alaska, the search being called off and the occupants presumed dead. I bet there's a list of those that still haven't been recovered. This can even happen in the lower 48, although the odds of recovering a body are greater. There's a video out there on YouTube that's a tape recovered from such a plane in Colorado. It was randomly found by a hiker years after the crash. They literally taped their last moments. The plane could
We know what the Alaskan object was... (Score:2)
They shot down a $12 hobby balloon! [popularmechanics.com]
Hype, duh (Score:1)
This is a whole bunch of hype. There are literally thousands of small balloons launcher EVERY DAY. Ham radio, weather stations, enthusiasts, etc.
Nobody ever batted an eye until the FUD started spreading because of that giant Chinese or whatever-it-was thing.
When the FUD hit they removed the filters from radar stations and now all of a sudden they can see many of the harmless LEGAL things that has always been there... and they spend millions to blow them up.
A panicked population is a population you can contr
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Don't know why you annon-d this. Are people really that afraid of putting forth their opinion on this site?
I personally know and understand there are 1000's of these ballons released everyday. The initial balloon was actually a high-altitude balloon. So when people were claiming it was a 'weather balloon', others were saying that was disinfo and "weather balloons" just go up and pop in a few hours. Which is mostly right IF thats what you want for your balloon. But a simple search on google shows that even a
I'm Not Saying It's Aliens (Score:4, Funny)
Objects Shot Down May Never Be Identified.
Meanwhile, back at Area 51....
Bounce Houses (Score:2)
The Alaska UFO has been identified. (Score:1)
First I thought everyone was being clever. (Score:2)
Now I realize that everyone is incredibly stupid.
A balloon? A balloon???
China really did send a balloon, and then we really did go apeshit looking for more balloons.
picked the wrong UFO, guys (Score:2)
Because... (Score:2)
Because it would be too embarrassing to identify them. One of them was almost certainly a hobbyist balloon that cost no more than like $100.
Poor Pilots (Score:2, Insightful)
Do F-22 pilots not even have iPhones? Maybe we should start a GoFundMe.
Watching two Top Gun movies has left me expecting/demanding very high resolution, close range, photographs of objects at unimpressive flight levels like 200 and 400. Especially when those objects are about to be smoked. Even more so, when the target is not an enemy fighter, but rather an innocuous balloon in wide-ass-open airspace.
Also, is it really necessary to waste four $350-400k Sidewinder missiles on balloons? Would a strafing run w