It is just China testing America's resolve and appetite for taking direct action. They're just trying to get a handle on how America will respond when they hit Taiwan.

Looks like the answer is "too chicken to do anything".

This does not bode well.

I think most people have assumed the US will talk big but no action will ever be taken when China does invade Taiwan. Unlike Russia and Ukraine that will be resolved faster than the US could react.

Shame this old Girl is not still serviceable.


https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....03ac93906f.jpg

The USAF don't have much that will get up to meet it at 60,000+ Maybe the old F15? F22 won't make it up there. No point sending a drone I guess, it needs somone to pop a few holes in the canopy with a bang stick. Quite a sizeable envelop though, might need a fair few holes ... I suspect it will have helium supplies onboard so can probably compensate ...

Ahh .. maybe it got zapped!

Having been born here in the Good Ole USA in 1949, I remember 4 October, 1957. It was my mother's thirty-seventh birthday. It was the day the USSR launched Sputnik. My father took me out to our driveway and lofted me on to his broad, strong shoulders. "There it is!", he shouted, and pointed, as a small pinpoint of light traversed the deep night Connecticut sky.

We were all frightened. The Russkies could launch a satellite. It meant they could launch an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile full of fissile Uranium, or fusionable Plutonium. They might be able to put a warhead on target. All of us, all one-hundred-seventy million, were scared to death. We all know what happened next. MADD. So far.

The Chinese "meteorological" balloon is nothing more than an intrusion on the sovereign airspace of the United States of America. Nothing less. That the assclowns who comprise the current administration have failed to act against such trespasses in a timely fashion is the reason that the rest of the Free World laugh at us. I don't blame them at all, but I do wonder who shall come to our defense when the time comes.

- Ed

Billings Montana, wrong location?

Montana, Wyoming? Who cares? It’s all pretty much the same in the Empty Quarter! ;)

Meanwhile at FR24, they've put the aircraft type for a US weather balloon that everyone was confusing it with the Chinese one as "This is not as Chinese balloon."
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....af0b290225.png

99 Red Balloons
 

Pentagon now saying second balloon over Latin America -- will we get to 99 Red Balloons -- 99 Red Balloons," a protest song. In the lyrics, a boy and girl innocently release a batch of balloons into the air; confused by these flying objects, international governments panic, triggering a nuclear holocaust.

NENA 1984 song.

The song will now probably chart again!
mikeoneflying is online now Report Post

And it's now clear how prescient Nena was - while we all thought at the time that "red balloons" was a reference to their colour, she really meant their origin. :O

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...

The US authorities are saying it’s at about 60,000’ - 9.9nm, or 18.3km. F-15 territory

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.

Would not wonder if there are only cheap Alibaba style atmospheric measuring devices in or a Vaisala kit for weather ballons. The US should have L_A_S_E_R technology which could make a sufficient hole to get it down slowly.

Astute move calling it a weather balloon really....thoughtfully prevents Roswell V.2 being revived.

However, watched some clips on the news of US news and yep, no point in missing a potential conspiracy theory opportunity after all....somewhere called Wuhan was mentioned as a possible launch site....now where have we heard that name before ?

But it does beg a question...why, with the resources available, wasn't it quietly removed with no publicity....... before it gained the prominence it has ?

Second Balloon sighted over Costa Rica then Venezuela.- according to UK Daily Mail.

Washington Post --China is Latin America’s second-largest trading partner, just behind the United States, according to a 2022 report from the Council on Foreign Relations. According to the report, 20 Latin American countries have signed on to be a part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project led by Beijing.

Belt and Road or stranglehold.

Interesting to see where the next balloon will be sighted.

Shooting down shouldn't be necessary. Statistically, the runaway Chinese weather-balloon will shortly be hit by a falling piece of Chinese rocket-debris.

Because the public panic re China you can observe even partly here might be deemed useful?!
Fascinating what a friggin' balloon can trigger....

In contrast to this funny balloon Belt and Road is a very real threat to the West.

WHAT IF
China want to know if USA has a laser weapon capable of shooting down satellites etc. Also more generally wish to portray USA as the hostile one.

Brainstorming meeting comes up with an annoying flotilla of 'peacefully lost' weather balloons just out of reach of standard air defence weapons and loaded with sensors to track any response/action

Hmmm, but if it really is at 60k it is not out of reach of 'standard' A2A Equipment. In any case if someone really feels the urge to shoot it down it might be a good idea to do it as KISS (and thereby as little revealing) as possible, e.g.. gun of a fighter. I would not try a Patriot and then not hitting it thereby giving away limitations of current relevant systems. That is about the only useful information i can conceive which China could take from this.

I can’t really understand what the problem is. How is floating a weather balloon/surveillance balloon over someones airspace any different to having surveillance satellite in a LEO?

I’m pretty sure that if it is >FL600, the there is very little risk. After all, i’d have a guess that the US overflies many other countries >FL600 with both manned and unmanned surveillance systems.

Now, if sovereign airspace had a internationally recognised vertical limit, then this incident would be different.

I thought the Navy was going to arm U2 aircraft with anti shipping missiles during the cold war.

Launch the U2 from a carrier.

Maybe could use a U2 to launch an attack or at least get a closer look at the balloon -- bit extreme -- I am sure script writers are already at work on the next movie of the week.

What if it is just a high altitude research balloon gone astray after all? Better to leave it up there and claim it is a spy balloon, thereby generating rage and frustration against the PRC, than bring it down only to find it wasn't a surveillance balloon after all. :bored:

Most likely the US knows by their ELINT that it is only a weather ballon, with a simpel TX for temp, altitude and humidity. If they had an high data rate encrypted stream transmitted from the ballon it would be down already.

The timing is too much of a co-incidence to me. The US has finally started to call China out over Taiwan and the South China Sea. Called it a bigger threat than Russia, and has just struck a deal for bases in the Phillipines. Resistance to the slow coiling Chinese Dragon is growing.

This balloon, with its considerable payload hovering over the continental US, capable or not...is a message.

Pilot identified.


https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....3ff978a6fb.jpg

I am somewhat confused. I am reading and hearing on the news that this balloon is steerable, and is currently ‘hovering’ over Montana.

This is simply not possible if this is indeed a balloon. Balloons, by definition, have no form of propulsion, they drift with the wind and always have zero airspeed, with their groundspeed being the wind speed at their location and altitude. They therefore cannot steer - it is physically impossible to steer something with zero airspeed. I know hot air balloons can be ‘guided’ by changing altitude to take advantage of varying wind speed and direction, but they are still just drifting with the wind.

If this device is indeed steerable, and is now hovering over Montana despite prevailing westerlies at it’s location, it is not a balloon, it is an airship. This then directly contradicts China’s assertion that is a balloon that has drifted off course.

First the bomber gap, then the missile gap so now does the West have a balloon gap!?!

When I was a U.S. Naval Aviator flying fighters I did a lot of air-to-air gunnery practice, but I never started a run at 80,000 feet, that's for sure. What aircraft to you recommend for ultra-ultra-high altitude gun attacks?

The package suspended below the balloon is reported to be the size, and presumably the weight, of 3 buses.

That’s a very big balloon, as it would have to be to be visible from the ground at 60K feet.

I'm going to get my shovel. Gotta get a head start on the mine gap. Also getting some jars to store the precious bodily fluids.

Watching the US NBC news last evening.
Talk about a “Headline in Search of a Story”
Laughable.

Lots of daft theories in the R&N thread about how it's being remotely controlled from Beijing so that it overflies as many secret military installations as possible.

After all, drones can be piloted from halfway across the world - ignoring the fact that the latter have wings, flying controls and an engine. :ugh:

Space is a lie
 

The flat earthers will have a field day: To them this will prove their claim that all satellites are actually balloons and there is no such thing as space.

With a proper breeding techniques and a ratio of, say, ten females to each male, I would guess that we could be back to the present gross national product within, say, 20 years.:)

Time to pull the SR-71 out of the Smithsonian and fire her up one last time. Get the old guys back out of retirement.
"We're getting the band back to together!".

Ram the sucker!

A Mach 3 pass oughta upset the apple cart.

Or...


Just ask the Chinese nicely if they'll happily share the probably very useful weather reports over the US at that altitude as it might actually be a weather balloon?

it would be nice to see but I guess it would cost a lot, it costed a lot flying them when they weren't retired and I couldn't imagine now

More likely total mass 100kg or so, mostly the fabric envelope. The payload is probably just some solar panels on a carbon fibre spar, with a polystyrene crate in the middle housing the electronics and a few valves and a wee pump. Launching these things without mishandling them and damaging them at launch is not so simple.They are very fragile.

This thing is probably not dissimilar to the Loon ones, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loon_LLC . I had discussions with Loon at the very beginning of their project as they were looking for a energy solution.

If you read that link you'll begin to understand the control strategies so as to get these things to go (or stay) where you want them. Very approximately !