Originally Posted by
DodgyGeezer
How hard is it going to be to shoot this object down?
It's going to be 50+ km high, on the edge of space, at a FL where only balloons can navigate. It is made out of latex, and may well be difficult to get a radar lock on - it seems that it was only found visually. And it's travelling slowly, which often makes it hard to target from a fast moving platform...
I suspect that the US authorities may not be shooting it down because they can't...
We don't really know how it was found.
I think 50 km (160,000 feet) plus is a stretch for any balloon carrying a decent payload, but that's an IMO and open to correction.
In any event at a Pentagon press conference yesterday the senior officer doing the briefing said the balloon was at about 60,000 feet.... With a bit of a team effort that number would be fairly easy for some of the general public to confirm/deny, so I suspect that altitude would have to be credible.
I know there might be issues with radar cross section etc, but 60k would be inside the envelope (SWIDT) for a lot of kit in the US inventory, not just fast moving fighters.