They took out the balloon with a missile. If they wanted to recover it couldn't they have taken it out with guns? Or is that an impossible target?

btw lots of theories, conspiracy theories on social media about this but has anyone considered it might actually be a weather balloon?

I hope the US govt sends the PRC the bill for clearing up Chinese trash!

I spent 28 years as an airline jock flying into and over China on a regular basis. Observations:

Convoluted air routes to avoid their military bases (not that you could see much as the country is 99% smog).

Sometimes threatening or actually having to declare an emergency in order to get clearance to deviate to avoid thunderstorms.

Narrow, crowded corridors for civvies to fly in with the military controlling the rest of their airspace.

A general impression of a paranoid regime.

My point? I can imagine the squealing from the ChiComms if a huge American ‘weather balloon’ ever overflew their neck of the woods.

Chinese spy balloon over US
 

No doubt there will be lots of wailing from the Chinese about bringing it down. Remember China shot down a Cathay Pacific airliner over the sea near Hainan Island in 1954.

However...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...istration.html

It's started.

Why not, The city of Esperance, Western Australia, sent NASA a fine for littering when Skylab broke up there. Some reports say the fine was payed by NASA, others by a DJ who raised funds from listeners. I suspect it was all dtreated in a more light-hearted spirit than this event will be.

Uneducated question but if the payload module was very large, could it hold a small crew?

IG

Sad...
 

But experience has led me to distrust most anything the Pentagon says, or more precisely, what the news media say/says that the Pentagon said.

Reminds me of how Thomas Jefferson wrote in various letters at various times, that in his day, the news media of that time, newspapers, pamphlets and public speeches, were on one day the best defense for a democracy and on the next day, the worst enemy.

Some times some things seldom change.

But it's US that broke this in the first place. Invoice incoming for property damage?

In either case (assuming that hitting it with a gun was feasible), it might well only have been the envelope that was damaged - at least until it hit the sea ...


Where's the fun in that ? :O

Shoot it down earlier?
 

those who popped up and said how "empty" Alaska was, obviously do not live there nor have family living there.

With lawyers ready to jump out from behind every tree, I thought it quite sensible to wait until it was past the coast before it was shot down.

Sod's law is alive and thriving.

Regarding the comparison to the regret of the radar observers at Pearl Harbor, I suspect the technology and its applications are a tad more developed and advanced than then. On the other hand, there is an ongoing undercurrent of suspicion that "they" knew exactly what was happening and let it happen due to the rules of democracy which limited the actions of that current US government.

Then again, many documents are still kept out of public view.

The one thing I'm relatively confident of, is that there is more that our government does not tell us and actively misleads us about than what they are honest about.

Hopefully everyone will reveal more evidence it was actually a spy balloon than they did with WMD in Iraq few years ago.

Thank you Gums - always appreciate your contribution.
You were flying fast jets before I was born!

If it did carry any equipment of a sensitive nature would it not have some self destruct mechanism? or have I watched too much fifties American TV?

Looks like Yemen, Japan and India have had similar visits in recent years.

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Like Dr Evil's mini me? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Me

The good thing is it will be much more intact than if they had shot it down over land. Which might be -besides collateral damage- the reason they waited for it to be over sea. They shot it down close to shore so I'm sure they want to have a closer look at it. Chances are there will be not much to see, though. It was surely clear to the Chinese that it would be shot down and retrieved.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....0de0b1a31.jpeg

Just shows how many military sites there are in the US.

I'm waiting for it to be reported that it narrowly missed a school. At least the finale provides plenty of opportunity for news editors to use their favourites, "plunged" and "plummeted".

Or worse still, a puppy farm.

Of fish? I'm sure it did! :p

A question occurs to me - one that is unlikely to be answered by those who know - Does an F-22 have an auto-target for the gun?

That is, can the pilot pick a target on the radar, have the computer analyze the ballistics, and then the pilot hits the go-button and goes hand's off for the aircraft to let the plane take over and fire the shot? No need to "walk in" the rounds on an airborne target.

I've seen similar systems for rifles where the operator makes an initial target point selection, then uses cursor controls to fine tune the aiming point, and finally pulls the trigger. However the gun doesn't fire until the sight system detects the gun is correctly aimed. The gun bobs about as the user breaths and their heart beats so the user just needs to ensure on some sweep that the alignment, even momentary, occurs.

If they claimed ownership and it is a civilian asset is there any evidence that the PRC gave any advance warning to the US?

Educate me, please.

It’s been reported the balloon was downed using an AIM-9x Sidewinder air to air missile.

As that missile uses passive IR technology to acquire and track the target, why use that missile instead of an AIM-120 AMRAAM?

My question is obviously based on wondering how much heat is produced by that balloon and its payload at 60k feet such that the Sidewinder could lock on and track it?

Cost aside, wouldn’t the AIM-120 have been a more logical choice, i.e., radar guided versus IR guided?

Tech log entry after failed strafing run...."Gun NOT FITTED" :ugh:

F-22A cannot fly without the gun fitted, so an unlikely entry in the tech log...

I know - think external pod.

Apparently, the gun port on the F-22 can’t be opened above 50k & the shot was taken at 58k which explains why an AIM-9 was used.

Why was it not forced down over Montana? Was it not feasible to put a few holes in it to bring it down slowly?
Was it bought down over water because the US knew it had no spying capabilities?

Mjb

I think they only come down slowly in movies

this. Once the fabric is damaged the rupture will propagate.

We all know that the Chinese play the long game. I doubt anything of value would be found in the wreckage. The balloon could have served many functions, but perhaps one of them is merely a trial to test the potential of future Balloon raids using prevailing winds. The Japanese ineffective fire raids are well known, but what is less well known is the successful British Balloon raids on Germany during World War ii. Certainly the most cost effective bombing campaign of the war. Balloons with wire attachments, sometimes with a small charge. They caused a lot of damage to crops during the summer as well as bringing down power and telephone lines and even destroying a power station on one occasion. There were numerous German forces (civilian and military) tied down in trying to contain and mitigate the damage. They were dispatched by WAAF's (I may be incorrect on this but it was certainly women from one of the Forces) of whom I think at least one died. The damage caused was out of all proportion to the effort and cost involved. They simply used prevailing winds. I think Churchill urged caution in case the Germans retaliated, but it would be very rare indeed for this to occur simply because there were few, if any, prevailing winds toward the U.K. from Germany. Even the Germans were surprised that Britain did not make more use of them. Obviously they could not be directed and many found their way to neutral Switzerland and beyond who complained bitterly. But if China were to use them on a widespread campaign, for example releasing a million simultaneously, then I am sure it would cause chaos and yet be comparatively cheap to undertake without the need of modern weaponry. Just speculation of course, but it is a possibility. Would any country be prepared for that?

Presumably, being a balloon, then like any other balloon it just went where the wind took it?

Balloon pilots are able to use varying winds at different altitudes for directional control (clearly within limitations and not an exact science) and even high-up using Jetstream’s, so for me, the balloons incursion of US airspace was no accident.

Whether it be public/press or government/DoD response to this overfly, there can be no doubt, China will have learnt plenty from this episode.

"Frank One, Splash One, TOI One..." "That is a (inaudible) kill, the balloon is completely destroyed." What's the inaudible fragment?

There's audio, tweeted by a user thenewarea51....

I would surmise that the attack run was made from the west, and we know it was from below the balloon.
Hence the balloon envelope would be reflecting the afternoon sun (it was ~14:40 local) and would be relatively warm against the easterly sky, also the only such object in view. Presumably the temperature difference was enough for the AIM-9X imaging infra-red sensor to resolve a 'target'

From a R&N post:

PPRuNe doesn't like the "spotted blog" site, for some unknown reason. Here's the Tiny URL:

https://tinyurl.com/5erpsb7a

Yes, that fact has been mentioned several times already in the thread. AFAIK, nobody has disputed it.

But of course that doesn't actually prove that the balloon was under such control. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

See above post, for example.

What a load of tosh. 99% of the country is amazing beautiful. 1% is smog. I guess on all those layovers you did nothing else but stay in your hotel and…. Can leave that to the imagination. Taking the politics out of it, China is an absolutely amazing country with great, friendly people. The government might be messed up, but then so are the UK, US, Russian… and quite a few others.

The messed-up government is what 99% of my post was aimed at :rolleyes: