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It's not clear to me just HOW the balloon was "shot down". From the posted civilian videos, it LOOKS like just the balloon "bag" was hit and thereby rendered incapable of providing buoyancy (i.e., it was popped!). At that point, it was only 60000 ft high, so why wouldn't the vast bulk of the payload simply plummet in an arc to the ground, still mostly intact? Why would there have been debris scattered over a 7 mile radius (as per the news reports I've seen). Was the payload so fragile that it broke apart due to whatever terminal velocity it attained? I could maybe see the solar panels being somewhat fragile, but the rest of it too?
I also wonder why a more controlled descent couldn't have been achieved by simply putting enough holes in the balloon bag to cause it to leak and gradually descent. Calling all aeronauts who know more about balloons in general as well as meteorologists in particular who might have detailed knowledge about the workings of weather balloons (granting that this wasn't a weather balloon, but the balloon tech is probably the same).
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"It's not clear to me just HOW the balloon was "shot down". - g0177325
Based on my limited observations, the "balloon" (identified by China as an airship. Why you may ask, because it's altitude, speed and direction is controlled remotely, unlike a balloon). Anyways, there were two plumes of smoke when the airship was neutralized. The black/darker plume is consistent with what one would expect when a missile strikes a lithium battery bank (that was hanging below the balloon portion of the airship).
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Nice video, thanks for posting.
The video shows the missile striking at the base of the balloon, possibly even hitting the payload itself. If we were interested in examining the payload to gain intel on the ChiComs, it seem it would have been better to use a non-explosive missile and fly it through the upper portion of the balloon ripping it and leading to a slower descent of an intact payload.
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The video shows the missile striking at the base of the balloon, possibly even hitting the payload itself. If we were interested in examining the payload to gain intel on the ChiComs, it seem it would have been better to use a non-explosive missile and fly it through the upper portion of the balloon ripping it and leading to a slower descent of an intact payload.
I find it implausible the the US military is so completely incompetent they didn't consider the best way to bring down the balloon and recover the payload.
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I find it implausible the the US military is so completely incompetent they didn't consider the best way to bring down the balloon and recover the payload.
Right. They clearly DID look at the options and decided the best one was to do what they did and bring it down with as little damage as possible over water where it could be recovered and examined in detail. And they LET it continue to fly over land, not because they were incompetent or because Biden is a weak president "in the pocket" of China, but because they KNEW they had disabled it's ability to send further information to China. All these idiot politicians who think their ignorant theorizing is better than the top military experts are just playing politics.
I'm also tired of hearing various talking heads say that this was clearly a brazen thing for China to do and then being mystified about why. The obvious alternative is that China (i.e., some hapless and now jobless technician or official) made a grave MISTAKE in letting the airship descend so low and be so easily detected from the ground. But I would still be interested in knowing how many such surveillance airships fly over the U.S. every month at whatever height. Just how easy (or not) are they to track compared to airplanes and satellites?
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Updates, today, from the U.S. Department of Defense:
1. Initial assessment suggests the debris field to be of the rough order of magnitude of about 1,500 meters by 1,500, more than 15 football fields by 15 football fields.
2. A team was on site today to determine if there are potential threats such as explosives on board to destroy the balloon remotely or hazardous materials that could be in batteries in the debris.
3. Maximum precautions were taken to prevent any intel collection while the balloon transited across the United States.
4. Gen. VanHerck said NORAD tracked the balloon as it "approached Alaska. It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America, this is under my NORAD hat. And therefore, I could not take immediate action because it was not demonstrating hostile act or hostile intent."
5. Without getting into specifics, "we utilized multiple capabilities to ensure we collected and utilized the opportunity to close intel gaps."
6. Multiple options were considered and asked for at multiple levels on whether to try to capture the balloon and how to bring it down. The final decisions that were made were based on safety first.
complete transcript:
https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcrip...
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Gen. VanHerck said NORAD tracked the balloon as it "approached Alaska. It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America,
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Of course, he would have to say that.
How could the general possibly know the payload was not a simple compressed canister of the latest virus cooked up in the Wuhan Lab waiting on a radio command or arrival at a preset GPS position to release the aerosol as it drifted along. Maybe the military has some of those X-Ray specs that used to be advertised in the back of comic books in a bygone era.
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Me: Gen. VanHerck said NORAD tracked the balloon as it "approached Alaska. It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America...
bighairymake: Of course, he would have to say that.
How could the general possibly know the payload was not a simple compressed canister of the latest virus cooked up in the Wuhan Lab waiting on a radio command or arrival at a preset GPS position to release the aerosol as it drifted along.
The balloon was 10-12 miles above the Earth. Aerosol dispersed "as it drifted along" would have dissipated harmlessly. Besides, why did the Chinese need to do that when they had already conspired with Dr. Fauci to microchip the majority of the U.S. population and were just waiting for the signal to activate those chips and take control of all of us?
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it seem it would have been better to use a non-explosive missile and fly it through the upper portion of the balloon ripping it and leading to a slower descent of an intact payload.
In the dribs and drabs of this story, one thing pointed out was that the debris landed about 6 miles off shore, and that the US has a 12 mile 'international boundary' at the ocean edge. For some reason it is harder to collect remains outside that border than within? (Perhaps outside that border anybody can go after it, so we don't want to have to fight off, uh, the Lesser Antilles?)
Anyway, a slower descent would make it less predictable where the thing and/or its pieces would land. But it does seem a waste to have blown the whole thing up, especially since we had days and days as it transited the continental US to decide what to do.
OK, the thing is the size of 3 schoolbusses. Which is big, but not really so big that you couldn't bring it down over North Dakota. Or Iowa. Or pretty much anywhere.
Side question: Since we have agreed that we don't shoot down a satellite going over the country, but we do shoot down balloons at 60,000 feet, which by some measures is 'the edge of space.' So what's the border line that way? Is there an established standard? Will there ever be?
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How could the general possibly know the payload was not a simple compressed canister of the latest virus cooked up in the Wuhan Lab waiting on a radio command or arrival at a preset GPS position to release the aerosol as it drifted along.
I didn't go to Air Balloon Defense School like the entire MAGA wing did, but it seems to be that if the balloon was carrying a bioweapon, shooting it down and risk releasing the weapon would be the dumbest fucking thing you could possibly do.
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LMFAOROTF!
