3236

World’s greatest cable repairman.

3237

F-22 went from 0 lifetime kills to 3 in a week! Over North America!

3238

image

Could it be?

3239

+1?

and

context: the detector filters have been adjusted for more sensitivity, so expect false positive “contacts” as they tune things

3240

I commented over on the unserious thread but will relay my trepidation with the quick escalation of force against something we have no idea who owns it or where it came from, and I’m strongly insinuating it is terrestrial. Since they are very different profiles from the previous balloon are these some sort of zeppelin-like devices? A new form of spy platform? A lighter than air based drone of some sort?

And what in the fuck are they doing in controlled airspace populated by civilian craft?

We’ve gone from zero to a hundred on shooting down strange objects in a week and I don’t know how this bodes for posture against whomever controls these is, be it Russia or China or whomever. I can’t remember prior to this we just blatantly shot down things that were in US airspace unless they were over military targets or very controlled air zones.

And we have alerts again today but no indication of anything else shot down, yet:

There’s no indication at this point that the unidentified objects have any connection to China’s surveillance balloon but it seems that national security officials across the continent remain on edge.

On Sunday, the Federal Aviation Administration briefly restricted some airspace over Lake Michigan near Wisconsin for “national defense airspace.” The FAA made similar flight restrictions ahead of the operations to shoot down the spy balloon and the unidentified object over Alaska.

“The FAA briefly closed some airspace over Lake Michigan to support Department of Defense activities. The airspace has been reopened,” the FAA said in a statement Sunday afternoon.

Neither the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) nor the FAA said whether an object had been detected over Lake Michigan during the operation.

Airspace was also briefly closed over Montana on Saturday evening before being quickly reopened after a radar anomaly prompted a jet to investigate before the all-clear was given.

3241

It may be that we haven’t shot things down because we haven’t detected anything like these before, or if we did, we didn’t have the means to engage them at the time. I don’t recall any stories of unidentified objects flying overhead and us not engaging, but my memory is far from inclusive.

I am guessing there is something beyond the political motives at work here, though. Some bit of info or pieces of intel we as the general public don’t have, or whatever.

3242

Schumer says White House/US Intel thinks they are balloons.

3243

I’m guessing the same. Comments from the pilots are also a bit baffling:

The mention of messing with sensors on one aircraft might lead to this being a new LTA based drone that has equipment that could do that. If there are enough of these in the air that we’ve shot down two in a week (plus the balloon based object, that’s very concerning, no matter how we missed them before or with wider filters, are seeing them now. That suggests purposeful intent nearby. Should this be a spy platform from another nation, it doesn’t bode well for political discussions with that nation.

3244

I can’t find it now, but last week after they shot down the last one, I saw something about how they have seen these balloons before, but usually they have been around Hawaii. I also don’t think we would know how often this kind of thing happens, it usually just doesn’t make the news because they don’t advertise it. Someone decided they wanted this to be public.

3245

Excellent point, and that it was a joint operation between US/Canada. This implies that yes, they want whomever to know they shot them down but also some pragmatic assessment that there were a lot of people involved in the operation and it’s easier to treat this as a public event.

3246

Canada and US close airspace over Lake Huron now.

Just saw a rumor that they shot this object down as well, but I don’t see any reliable sources yet.

3247

Is this the predication of an invasion of some sort? Why would there be this many spy platforms within this proximity of time and location to each other? This is getting a bit conspiratorial beyond where it was on the first one shot down.

Now confirmed shot down:

3248

This is clearly a Chinese strategy to bankrupt the US military by forcing us to use billions of dollars worth of radar, man-hours, flight hours and missiles, to shoot down a series of hundreds of random mylar and nylon balloons.

3249

With the intel capabilities we have there’s no way any invasion force (from Earth) wouldn’t be absolutely telegraphed and taken care of well before they reached our shores.

If I had to guess I’d say this is China trying to push their boundaries and perhaps trying to test out recon / jamming tech as cheaply and politically-expediently as possible without causing a massive international incident (which is what would happen if they sent manned or un-manned planes into our airspace).

And @sillhouette’s tongue-in-cheek suggestion may actually have merit as well. If you want to probe your enemy and see what their response and capabilities are as cheaply as humanly possible…float cheap mystery balloons over their airspace and see what happens.

Or maybe it’s aliens or beings from another dimension!

Exciting times.

3250

If they are balloons, seems to make sense to saturate the air space to try to ensure broad coverage and maybe some don’t get detected.

3251

Honestly it feels like a one-off that turned into a media sensation and not much more. The original balloon certainly seemed like the real deal, and if it was, as they said, the size of three semi trucks for the sensor package, it probably cost China several million and shooting it down was a net positive money wise and rattling saber wise. Everything since then sounds like the usual freakout when we the electorate learn about something that has been going on quietly for decades and now the politicians have to make the right moves on the face of things to be seen as doing something, even over nothing.

3252

This seems likely to me. It’s weird enough that the press the is running with it and people are eating it up. My coworker who doesn’t follow politics or the news, but believes Biden is destroying the country is enthralled by this. She thinks it’s a sign of a coming Chinese attack.

I went to a generic intel briefing in the last couple of years of my AF career. The gist of it was that there is all sorts of shit going down between countries every day (especially in the cyber realm) and no one ever hears about it. The public doesn’t need to know. So stuff like this that makes the news just seems like political games to me.

3253

I’ve been on hospital duty so I consumed five hours of cable news, four of which were devoted to breathless speculation about Balloon Crisis 2023. it’s ridiculous, and this was MSNBC.

3254

The truth they don’t want you to know

3255

Pretty much. It’s all about blowing shit out of proportion these days.