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United States The Military

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.
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Two Objects Shot Down By US May Never Be Identified. Search Called Off.

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  • According to this [pinimg.com].

  • 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?

    • 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 they just wanted to show off their jets and practice shooting things down with stinger missiles. Conservatives were "furious" Biden wasn't shooting first and asking questions later, so Biden ordered some random shoot downs to score political points. It only cost Americans a few million dollars, but the political payoff was priceless.
  • ...until the insurance claims start arriving from alpha centuri.

  • 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

  • They shot down a $12 hobby balloon! [popularmechanics.com]

  • by Anonymous Coward

    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

    • 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

  • by cstacy ( 534252 ) on Saturday February 18, 2023 @03:56PM (#63304143)

    Objects Shot Down May Never Be Identified.

    Meanwhile, back at Area 51....

  • They better get this figured out quick. It's almost bounce house season in Oklahoma...
  • It was a balloon launched by the Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade and it was on it's 8th circumnavigation of the globe when the USAF shot it down with a half million dollar missile. What a farce. NORAD knew exactly what those things were, but the government shot them down to distract from the fact that they rained chemical warfare down upon an innocent village in Appalachia.
  • Then I thought we were being clever and China was being dumb. Then I thought China was being clever and we were being dumb.

    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.
  • My name is Zarthor of Dilbork, you killed my father, prepare to die! zzzzap BOOM
  • 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

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