Originally Posted by Flyhighfirst
(Post 11380225)
It would have been a gun run and not a missile they would have used.
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Again if I remember correctly from my discussions with the F-22 demo pilot in KOSH there are no guns on an F-22, but it can carry an underwing pod holding a large 20mm one. Not sure if a on high altitude intecept mission it would carry an underwing pod. Nevertheless the Pentagon said the F-22 used a "a single AIM-9X supersonic, heat-seeking, air-to-air missile" , the "heat seeking part" is somewhat ironinc here , and the supersoninc probably overdone too, but they got the job done at the exact location they wanted to , so congrats. If they missed and it was outisde the 22 Km sovereingn airspace limit it would have been shooting down an aircraft in international airspace, a totally different ball game politically....
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Originally Posted by Mostly Harmless
(Post 11380117)
Serious question but, would a missle even explode if it hit a balloon? Or did it just tear through it like tissue paper?
Seems like an expensive method to kill a balloon. Cost of an AIM-9 compared to a weather balloon... maybe I'm wrong there. |
Originally Posted by Flyhighfirst
(Post 11380225)
It would have been a gun run and not a missile they would have used.
A gun would only make pinprick holes in such a balloon that would have little effect on it for many hours if not days. It certainly wouldn't be possible to 'burst' it with a gun. Quite how an IR homing missile manages to 'see' the cold-soaked payload is strange, or does that version of Sidewinder have radar homing too? In any case it'll make sure there's nothing left to examine which sounds thoroughly counter-productive. Maybe they just aren't that bothered to find out what it was carrying, which suggests either they know already or son't consider it a credible threat to anyone (other than the miniscule possibility of it doing any damage falling to ground over the vast, empty midwest). |
Originally Posted by togsdragracing
(Post 11380271)
From a couple of the pictures available this morning it appears to me that the missile hit the instrument package.
It explodes in proximity to the target. |
In any case it'll make sure there's nothing left to examine which sounds thoroughly counter-productive. If it was collecting data for eventual retrieval by the owner, the owner can come and search for it. |
Originally Posted by meleagertoo
(Post 11380297)
Quite how an IR homing missile manages to 'see' the cold-soaked payload is strange, or does that version of Sidewinder have radar homing too?
The 9X (and some other modern heaters) uses some fancy technology to image the target in the IR (and anything with a temperature above absolute zero is emitting IR to some degree) and then the missile flies a suitable course towards the image....amongst other that increases the resistance to being decoyed by flares and perhaps (rumour) even the ability to select a vulnerable bit of structure to aim for. |
Here's a link to the weather blog of a University of Washington climatologist in which he analyzes the balloon path and how changing altitude into different wind directions could have steered it.
https://cliffmass.********.com/ |
Originally Posted by Mostly Harmless
(Post 11380117)
Serious question but, would a missle even explode if it hit a balloon? Or did it just tear through it like tissue paper?
Seems like an expensive method to kill a balloon. Cost of an AIM-9 compared to a weather balloon... maybe I'm wrong there. |
One reason the US did not bring it down over remote Montana could be that the wreckage would have revealed if the payload was benign.
Mjb |
Ah yes, thanks.
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Originally Posted by Chesty Morgan
(Post 11380354)
An air to air missile doesn't "hit" anything.
It explodes in proximity to the target. |
Originally Posted by twb3
(Post 11380473)
drop the payload where assets were deployed to recover it
Has the payload in fact been recovered? |
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