I doubt it. The nose cones break away long before the wind screen does.

For another poster

composite structures on aircraft don't break into small pieces on impact. They do give way and break along fracture lines and then may be finished off by the airstream or centrifugal forces in the case of engine nose spinners.

Whatever hit this one dented it but I don't see the typical crease and fracture at the bottom of a significant hit.

I'll allow that parts of a bird like bones may have left scuff marks directly in line with the flight path of the aircraft and not scattered.

Dont't think so, the cited source does not appear to be too reliable.

I've seen the traces of several bird strikes (including a large seagull that hit the side window of a 73' on takeoff, managed to squeeze it open about 2-3 milimetres, and then proceeded to enter the cockpit through that gap, flesh, beak, bones, feathers & all...). A bird strike leaves quite a bit of a mess... Also 8000 metres is very high, have heard of vultures getting up that high, but a bird of that size hitting at 500mph would do more than a dent. Based on info from more knowledgable posters on this thread, I'd vouch for a balloon till proven otherwise.

Well, I would not discount a birdstrike. I posted on another forum recently that I hit a fair sized bird over Northern Germany at night between cloud layers on the descent into CGN at 19,000 ft.

I am also sure that I have read of geese being up at 30,000 ft (without filing a flight plan).

Indeed. UPS hit a goose on the windscreen at FL310 over Colorado Springs a few years back. It was in the dark of night - must have scared the stuffing out of that crew.

Several years ago saw a similar failure due to delamination of the radome over time.The weakened structure had imploded under the air loads.
New radome please

I removed feathers jammed in a lap joint aft of the radome on an Iranair 727 that had a bird strike at 23000 feet over the Gulf at night - seemed to belong to some kind of raptor.

The birds going up above 20.000 ft are not that many (i.e. Condors, Vultures, Canadian Geese ) all fairly big an heavy ( Vultures around 4-5 Kg , Geese 5-9 Kgs and condors up to 15 Kg ) .
These kind of weights at 900 Km/h hitting the ( plastic) radome would end up on the knees of the crew I think.
I would also normally leaves some blood traces.

The radome probably just collapsed due internal structural failure..

Blood stains are usually evident on the airframe after a bird strike ...??

You bet.
just type " bird strike" on google images.

Amongst all the gore is this one:

Sutherland Shire Squadron - Photo Gallery - Bird Strike

Which bears some similarity, lacks gizzards and appears to be a confirmed bird strike.

China has plenty of UAV's, the Guizhou Soar Eagle ceiling is 59,000 feet.

The service ceiling on a Global Hawk is 60,000 feet, and routinely fly at 45,000.

B Fraser,
I don't know about the weather balloons which you are used to, but the one I had an encounter with over southern China a few years back was MANY times the size of the one pictured!:eek:

Jn14:6: The balloons expand as they climb (due to the low atmospheric pressure). At typical aircraft cruising altitudes they will be 50-100% larger than at sea level.

The typical National Weather Service radiosonde instrument looks like it would cause the damage...seems reasonable China would use something very similar..

http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/...-16_135538.jpg

It was the type where the hydrogen obeys the laws P1V1/T1 = P2V2/T2. The balloons did leak a bit and hydrogen does behave slightly oddly but the equation is a good enough analogy to show what happens when P reduces by a lot and T reduces by a little (in terms of Kelvin).

If you added a bit too much gas then the balloon would burst at a lower altitude so you could bunk off home sooner. Not that I ever did such a thing :E

Nemrytter:
Not just the balloon, but the VERY large object dangling beneath it!

No no no you have it all wrong it's a UFO:

Did Chinese plane have mid-air crash with UFO? | The Sun |News

Currently of course, for once, The Sun is 100% correct :D

Absolutely. It was an object, it was flying (after a fashion at least), and it's unidentified. Ergo UFO.