Originally Posted by
ATC Watcher
But if it was I think surely the Chinese would have said it already., so a bit of mystery. remains.
As to shooting it down , I know you Americans guys love to shoot at things , but how ? A helium gas ballon can go up to 170.000 ft , as far as I know the US only has a F-22 today that could go up to 70.000 ft max. , still a long way to go if the baloon is above 100.000 ft. Funny enough ,( just looked it upt) the last altitude world records , up to 120.000 ft are held by good old MIG 25s. .
The Chinese have claimed ownership as a “civilian” R&D asset.
All the way back in 1985, the U.S. demonstrated the capability to destroy a target hundreds of miles above Earth using a missile launched from an F-15. More recently, Operation Burnt Frost knocked down another satellite, using a ship-based missile defense system. And as I noted in another post, the Patriot system is available for altitudes up to around 80K ft. Ironically, all the U.S. air-defense and missile-defense systems are optimized for the technically-challenging fast-moving target. A balloon is certainly not that.