I don't see what difference this makes. Just because this one might (he has not examined it himself) have indeed been carrying weather related sensors does not mean others are innocent. Nor does it entitled China to operate aircraft in US airspace without informing them, requesting permission and filing a flight plan. The US were right to force it down and I would expect the UK to do the same.

"Weather balloons" as was, back in the day.

Essentially two types, both Hydrogen, the gas was in a special brick shed away from risk.

The big ones carried a payload, and were lauched 0001 and 1200 as routine from about 10 UK sites to give wind [radar target tracked], temperature and humidy, the basis of the tephigram.
Supplementaries were flown, with radar target only, at 0600 and 1800, and "as required".

Every airfield with regular Met staff also had cloud base / low level wind-finder balloons, no payload, much smaller, and several colours chosen to maximise visibilty. These were tracked manually by theodolite and stopwatch, and the ace observers could compute winds in real time. Ace forecasters needed an hour.

One demo. at our college was regularly flown: three balloons, red, white, blue, from a known base line, and each tracked. The idea was to illustrate the large effect of low-level turbulence and dispersal ...... even after one minute, although all three were at the same height + / - a few feet, the horizontal scattering was huge.

And I won't begin to describe the naughties that can be achieved with hydrogen, candle or slow fuse, and various other ingenuities that should have got us a severe reprimand, if not the sack. I lost a set of eyebrows to H2 around 1970.

E & OE, it was a long time ago.

Blah blah blah. I’m pretty sure that once you lose control of a balloon in 120 kt jet steams your option are quite limited. Filling a fight plan? I guess you’re an MS Simmer?

You'd have thought on a balloon of that size, a telecommand to vent gas and drop out of the sky into the sea would have been a standard option ... assuming you actually were not intending to fly over the continental USA.

if you had no ill intent and were not a threat to air traffic, why? They admitted responsibility and apologised.

The only weather balloons I've ever seen were the ones that carried a dangling radiosonde and a radar reflector on a long string. Not large IIRC. Think they were launched by one or two people. This thing was reportedly 200ft across. The images of the wreckage being hauled aboard a ship support that. Who the hell needs a 200ft diameter weather balloon?

I can understand China playing the Putin game and just repeating lies endlessly.

Does anyone really believe that a 200ft balloon with a payload the size of a regional jet could have been anything other than surveillance kit?

Do any of the experts here support the view that a 200ft balloon carrying a few hundred kg of kit could be anything other than surveillance kit?

Surely if it was that big and legit it would carry a transponder. The absence of one, or ADS-B, is damning evidence that its purpose was nefarious.

Does make me wonder if this stuff has been going on for a while. If the balloon hadn't been spotted in very clear skies over Montana would we ever have known about it?

Interesting that the second device shot down today was said to not be a balloon.

how big do you think the ones you saw launched ended up at top of climb? They were huge!

Perhaps. The payload was tiny though. I remember seeing the bloke get it out the back of a Landrover. The radiosonde bit could be lifted by one bloke.

This thing that was shot down had a payload the size of a small regional jet. Estimated to be a couple of hundred kg or so. That's about 100 times more than the weather balloons I've seen. The thing will have needed a specialised launch site. No idea how many people needed. Not just one or two blokes in the Landrover I'm sure.

I don't think anyone worried about damage from weather balloons coming down. The payload was so light there can't have been much risk of harm to anyone.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-64605447

P.S., Agrajag, if something the size of a small car dropped on my house or head, I would be upset. The payload on the large balloon was supposedly 1500 kilos (a ton and a half.)

Effected indignation and outrage, the US is as bad or worse at information gathering and using it to gain markets.
Our Australian government uses spying in military in all sorts of ways and helps the US gathering of intelligence with the likes of Pine Gap.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austra...berra%20office.
Is an example of how Australia treats it's close neighbours. That was not a security issue but for pure greed, cheating East Timor out of gas and fuel deposits.
Governments fein indignity and insult, truth be known they are as bad.

Weather balloons are limited to 2kg payload as per the chicago convention the first was absolutely over that. If over 2kg you are required to file flight plan for any country you reasonably expect to cross

Thanks for that, tallies with what I remember from seeing them being launched years ago. 2kg is a hell of a lot smaller than this monstrous bit of Chinese kit. I've heard differing tales of its weight. Lowest is a couple of hundred kg, highest 1,500kg. Either way if that falls out of the sky it's a serious weapon.

Ignoring the surveillance aspect, what about the safety certification? Surely to god it's not legal to fly an uncertified potential weapon like this over any country. Ballistic missiles I can understand. I remember being told that shells were fired over the the A360 that crosses the range close to Larkhill. Safe as the ballistic trajectory meant they couldn't just drop out of the sky. Got to be a chance that a massive balloon could just drop out of the sky.

The consequences of this thing having a major failure over a populated area could be severe. Could it be seen as an act of war?

Can some boffin here calculate the volume of a H2 filled ballon with the buoyancy to support a 1500kg payload at 60,000ft.

It has to be some stupendous amount as would the surface are of fabric needed to co rain it.

Maverick meets the balloon…

Referencing "a small regional jet"

I suspect people are confusing the size of the payload and its weight - there are good reasons to make it BIG - especially if it has a camera onboard - but heavy - no

How long before we see the first 10 Balloon flying suit patch?

How light can you make a small nuclear weapon?

small enough to put under a balloon - but what's the point? You have no control over where it goes - you'd have to hope it went over a target - and then you'd HAVE to drop it - at a time and place you can't predict so you can't get all your other forces ready to strike - and the certainty that a whole lot of ICBM's will come back at you

It's a balloon - and there are many reasons why they aren't front line military weapons since 1918.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb

I did see one conspiracy theory that had these balloons spreading Covid!

The tin foil hat wearers have been having a field day!

Oh, the humanity….

Not so.
In WW II my father was on the front line with his barrage balloon ......... Coventry in the Blitz, Suez Canal attached to ships in canal transit, and attached to a warship for D Day. Very front line, very shot at.
Barrage Balloons were Fighter Command.

Barrage Balloons were Balloon Command.

Erm....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAF_Balloon_Command

Is your Great War history as accurate?

Peer reviews suggest it is rather better, thank goodness.

Every day's a school day ........... my father told a naughty to his little boy! {I told him some lies too].
Memo to self Check the facts. Fortunately he sent home lots of letters and photos so the Blitz, Suez and D Day are authenticated.

One hobby of mine for a few years has been learning about military history. I find it fascinating to try and better understand why decisions were made and why certain tactics were used. One consistent theme is that what people believe to be true is based more on propaganda than fact.

WWI is a good example. The generals (on all sides) were trained and familiar with tactics that had existed for a couple of centuries. Teaching at places like Sandhurst focussed on learning from experience. The same applied at other military training establishments in other countries. One consequence of this is that leaders are often living in the past. Sometimes this works just fine. Some tactics that are centuries old are still valid. Sometimes this tactic falls over. Badly.

An example from WWI would be Von Kluck. His failure to effectively implement the Schlieffen Plan resulted in the tragic development of long term trench warfare. None of the forces involved had experience of this. The British had an inkling of what it might involve from the South African War (the Second Boer War), but that was nothing at all like the WWI experience.

Generals of the time (especially Haig) were deeply wedded to the concept of the cavalry charge. Many (most) had been cavalry officers. They believed that the horse reigned supreme. That biased their thinking. Crimea should have taught them that the days of the cavalry charge were numbered. It didn't. Even without horses they still thought that big charges were the way forward. Their thinking was medieval.

With the advent of a long, dug in, trench warfare line these generals (all of them, but especially Niville, Haig and von Kluck) were faced with a scenario their training and experience had not prepared them for. Sadly there is a lot of inertia in miltary training. If we could learn from experience quickly, and, to use a modern term, be more agile, we could be more effective (see Ukraine as a fantastic example of being agile).

Easy to be critical after the event. At the time of things happening we make decisions based on our knowledge and experience. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We can now look back with the benefit from many scholars that have studied the events. With the benefit of this understanding we can put decisions made into the context of that time.

When I see the footage of low flying A-4s and Daggers in San Carlos Water, I sometimes think about the equivalent scenes from D-Day beaches and wonder if Barrage Balloons would’ve been useful in that context.

With respect I did ask for, and have not received, an example to support:

Sent tens of thousands "over the top" both to find out where the enemy defences were strongest and in the hope that a few might get through

This next quote is inaccurate:

Generals of the time (especially Haig) were deeply wedded to the concept of the cavalry charge. Many (most) had been cavalry officers.

At declaration of war the ratios of British cavalry generals to those from other arms were as follows:

Field marshals 2/ 8; Generals 1/ 18; Lt generals 3/ 27; Major generals 8/ 114

Source: the Army List and Terraine's: The smoke and the fire

Cavalry Training 1912 emphasizes scouting, reconnaissance, dismounted musketry and exploitation as major functions of cavalry. The charge as such gets scant attention in the index or indeed the content.

For further reading, see also Corrigan’s Mud Blood and Poppycock.
As there is no aviation content in this exchange, may I suggest that, if it were to be continued, it could be by PM?

One might mention that perhaps the most enthusiastic supporter of the RFC was one Douglas Haig; he arguably ensured, although not deliberately, that Trenchard was the only obvious candidate to be CAS when the RAF was formed (and that Trenchard's nemesis, Sykes (and no fan of Haig's either), almost certainly invented or misrepresented the supposed line of Haig's that he hoped the people he was speaking with didn't think aeroplanes would be any use in future war). Haig told his gunners after Neuve Chapelle that he wouldn't 'tolerate early Victorian methods' when it came to ranging the guns and he didn't care if they thought the RFC was an upstart organisation attempting to correct their fire - if they weren't prepared to take fire corrections, Haig wasn't prepared to have them holding command positions in First Army.

Dowding went from horse-drawn artillery to the RFC. Spirit of adventure, trying out something new?

Slow enough in those days to shoot a balloon, a blimp or an airship, though.

Meanwhile back on topic.


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64633705

Just seen a very funny comedy sketch where they suggested the Chinese should have written "THE MOON" on their balloon which would have confused many Americans.

Or perhaps "Wensleydale?"

Balloons are steerable. They steer by varying their height until they meed an airstream which is going their way. At different altitudes, the wind speed and direction are different.

Of course you have to have an air stream going where you want to go, at a suitable altitude to maintain a covert presence and you have to know where the airstream is. How feasible is that?

Do you remember this?

Was able to return precisely to his point of departure.
Not sure how much luck was involved.

The location and strength of jet streams has been remarkably accurately known since about 1980 and incredibly well forecast for substamtial periods ahead since about 2000. It is one of the nice uncomplicated aspects of Met., because no H2O enters the equations. Or, at least, it didn't back in the day.

iIf you want to manoeuvre and loiter, surely you would stay out of the jet stream?