Airspace incursions

[Larry]

1 hour ago, NickyJ said:

These aren't UFOs, they're weather balloons.

Swamp gas from a weather balloon was trapped in a thermal pocket and reflected the light from Venus.

[Destino]

2 hours ago, abdcskins said:

Wonder what they were.

you and everyone else.  What we’re seeing and reading about isn’t normal:

 

Quote

In fact, NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said recent objects shot down were likely the first “kinetic action” that NORAD or the US Northern Command had taken against an airborne object over US airspace.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/unknown-objects-leaders-response
 

This is even new territory for NORAD.  They’ve never shot anything down and all of the sudden we’ve got several whatsits being shot down by warplanes in separate incidents over a short period of time.  The whole thing situation sounds like the opening of a bond movie.  Our hero meets with perplexed leaders and M tasks him with finding out “just what the hell is going on”.  lol
 

I’m guessing it’s going to be weather balloons or some hobbyists balloons that got away from them.  What else could it be?  

[tshile]

Aliens descending where they emerge as lizards, eventually they’re turn into people and run for political offices. 

[CousinsCowgirl84]

9 minutes ago, Destino said:

you and everyone else.  What we’re seeing and reading about isn’t normal:

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/politics/unknown-objects-leaders-response
 

This is even new territory for NORAD.  They’ve never shot anything down and all of the sudden we’ve got several whatsits being shot down by warplanes in separate incidents over a short period of time.  The whole thing situation sounds like the opening of a bond movie.  Our hero meets with perplexed leaders and M tasks him with finding out “just what the hell is going on”.  lol
 

I’m guessing it’s going to be weather balloons or some hobbyists balloons that got away from them.  What else could it be?  

They sad NORAD did recently update its defensive posture to include more smaller low speed high altitude objects so maybe this is it? It just feels like to me China did its balloon thing and now people are doing it themselves. It takes no special licenses to get all the stuff you need to reach the edge of space with a balloon (but you are supposed to ask permission/notify FAA. I guess the people doing this are ommiting that step.

 

https://www.overlookhorizon.com/how-to-launch-weather-balloons/

 

actually, you don’t even have to notify the FAA depending on how heavy your payload is.

Edited February 13 by CousinsCowgirl84

[Destino]

Speaking of China.  We went, in a weeks time, to never having heard of Chinese spy balloons to being told China’s sinister balloons had penetrated US skies multiple times in the past several years.  Now China is lobbing balloon accusations of its own

 

Quote

Hong KongCNN — 

China has accused the United States of “illegally” flying high-altitude balloons into its airspace more than 10 times since January 2022, claims that drew an immediate rebuttal from the White House, as bilateral tensions flare in the fallout from a Chinese balloon that was shot down by American fighter jets after traveling across the continental US.

 

The accusation, made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry without evidence, comes less than a day after China said it was preparing to shoot down an unidentified object flying near its eastern coast.

 

At a regular news conference Monday, ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin claimed it is “common for US balloons to illegally enter other countries’ airspace.”

 

“Since last year alone, American high-altitude balloons have illegally crossed China’s airspace more than 10 times without the approval of relevant Chinese authorities,” Wang said.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/china/china-unidentified-flying-object-intl-hnk-mic/index.html

 

Two weeks ago none of you had heard a single word about nefarious balloons casting their shadows upon our world, but that innocence is gone forever.  Our skies are filled with balloons so terrible that military fighter jets are firing missiles at them.  
 

Quote

An unidentified object shot down by the U.S. military on Sunday above Lake Huron was done using missiles costing over $450,000 each.

 

The Pentagon said in a statement Sunday that President Joe Biden, at the direction of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and other military leaders, ordered an F-16 to fire an AIM-9x Sidewinder missile to successfully shoot down the airborne object flying at approximately 20,000 feet altitude in U.S. airspace over Michigan.

 

https://www.newsweek.com/sidewinder-missile-biden-used-lake-huron-cost-450k-1780900
 

Must be one seriously mean balloon to spend half a million to shoot it down.  

[PokerPacker]

On 2/12/2023 at 3:32 PM, Fergasun said:

M Night Shalamaylan surely has some Blair Witch Project level marketing going on for his new project....

 

There was already a sequel to Independence Day, correct?

That reminded me of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign of basically lite-brite signs being mistaken for bombs.

 

Edit: Huh, even has its own wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

Edited February 13 by PokerPacker

[CousinsCowgirl84]

2 hours ago, Destino said:

Speaking of China.  We went, in a weeks time, to never having heard of Chinese spy balloons to being told China’s sinister balloons had penetrated US skies multiple times in the past several years.  Now China is lobbing balloon accusations of its own

 

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/13/china/china-unidentified-flying-object-intl-hnk-mic/index.html

 

Two weeks ago none of you had heard a single word about nefarious balloons casting their shadows upon our world, but that innocence is gone forever.  Our skies are filled with balloons so terrible that military fighter jets are firing missiles at them.  
 

https://www.newsweek.com/sidewinder-missile-biden-used-lake-huron-cost-450k-1780900
 

Must be one seriously mean balloon to spend half a million to shoot it down.  

Which is why we need to invest in lasers. 

[Destino]

1 hour ago, PokerPacker said:

That reminded me of the Aqua Teen Hunger Force ad campaign of basically lite-brite signs being mistaken for bombs.

 

Edit: Huh, even has its own wiki page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

You’re not alone, my wife and I were comparing it to that very thing yesterday.  People went crazy over those.  I remember thinking the whole thing was hilarious at the time.  

[Riggo-toni]

 

 

 

[PleaseBlitz]

In all the excitement and wonder of that first ballon, and then how the government killed it despite it’s peaceful nature, I was strongly considering making it my deity. Now that thee are like 10 others, I’m over it. 
 

Unless that first one rises from the dead. I guess we’ll wait and see. 

[Cooked Crack]

 

 

[China]

Yeah, no need to worry about aliens...

 

[NickyJ]

New theory: These really are weather balloons, but they're not made by man. Our galactic neighbors have finally come to Serve Man. Climate change is them turning the nobs on the oven, the balloons are the probe thermometers, and chemtrails are the sprinkling of seasoning.

[Destino]

never thought I’d see a tweet from Bobo that I’d agree with but here we are.  The idea that we can hit things with missiles but none of our impressive technology can get a clear picture is hard to believe.  I could have just gone with this Stephen King tweet

 

 

but agreeing with Bobo is a much more terrifying development.  

[Gurgeh]

The silence may just be plain embarrassment

 

Three objects shot down by US jets may be ‘benign’ balloons, White House says | US news | The Guardian

 

“We haven’t seen any indication or anything that points specifically to the idea that these three objects were part of the [People’s Republic of China’s] spying program, or that they were definitively involved in external intelligence collection efforts,” he said. Instead, a “leading explanation” may be that the objects were operated privately for commercial or research purposes, Kirby said, though no one has stepped forward to claim ownership.

 

The unidentified object shot down by a US fighter jet over northern Canada on Saturday was a “small, metallic balloon with a tethered payload below it”, according to a Pentagon memo to US lawmakers obtained by CNN.

 

...“These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon, and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a national security council spokesperson told CNN.

Also on Tuesday, Gen Mark Milley, the US’s highest ranking military official, acknowledged at a briefing in Brussels that the first attempt to shoot down the object over Lake Huron missed.

The first missile “landed harmlessly” in the water while a second missile successfully downed the object, Milley said.

[Bang]

Or it just might be they aren't telling us.

Not much better cover than to let everyone laugh and call them incompetent.

 

~Bang

[CousinsCowgirl84]

1 hour ago, Destino said:

never thought I’d see a tweet from Bobo that I’d agree with but here we are.  The idea that we can hit things with missiles but none of our impressive technology can get a clear picture is hard to believe.  I could have just gone with this Stephen King tweet

 

 

but agreeing with Bobo is a much more terrifying development.  

The f16 cruising speed is around 577mph, the wind speed at 40,000ft around the Great Lakes is (currently) around 70mph, which means the balloon was traveling at around that fast so the approach speed was somewhere between 507mph and 747mph. At the slowest speed, that is an approach speed of 743 feet per second. 
 

if the thing is 10ft wide, to be able to see any sort of detail you’d probably have close to it… probably within 500ft of it, so that’s less than a second at most for it to be in your field of few. Then you have to make sure you orient your camera and flight path so that you don’t crash into the balloon. Plus dont f16 have crappy cameras anyway?

[tshile]

2 hours ago, Destino said:

never thought I’d see a tweet from Bobo that I’d agree with but here we are.  The idea that we can hit things with missiles but none of our impressive technology can get a clear picture is hard to believe.  I could have just gone with this Stephen King tweet

We take pretty high quality details from space

 

and of space

 

but balloons are too much to handle. 

Also - there is not enough time dedicated to discussing the concept that we’re shooting down **** we don’t know what it is 

 

There’s a whole saying about why you’re supposed to shoot second and aim first or something or another 

[Bang]

So let me see.

Chinese threat in our airspace. 
3 other potential threats they are refusing to identify.

 

and Bobo wants a picture.

Odds she thinks "National Security" was that 'entitlement' thing McCarthy told her to vote against:
94%

 

~Bang

[Captain Wiggles]

Oh they have photos of these "balloons". From every and all angles. No reason to release them to the general public as of now. Like the general public could even handle such information at this point anyway. 🤣

[Bang]

7 minutes ago, tshile said:

We take pretty high quality details from space

 

and of space

 

but balloons are too much to handle. 

Also - there is not enough time dedicated to discussing the concept that we’re shooting down **** we don’t know what it is 

 

There’s a whole saying about why you’re supposed to shoot second and aim first or something or another 

well yeah.
Those jets may have good cameras, but they face down.  Cannon cameras are notoriously bad, they are low resolution, more for targeting and debriefing.
Not at all designed to pickup balloons as they close on them.

Now, there were other aircraft in the area, and you can bet hat whatever they snapped or recovered.. they are keeping it close to the vest.

China is playing the "oh, you did it too!" game, and giving away too much is not in our better interests.
From a civilian standpoint, nobody really needs to know what it is.

 

~Bang

Edited February 15 by Bang

[tshile]

3 minutes ago, Captain Wiggles said:

Like the general public could even handle such information at this point anyway. 🤣

They had to take reality away from the tide pod generation

 

This is a simulation

 

when the timeline wars begin…

Edited February 15 by tshile

[Bang]

6 minutes ago, tshile said:

 the tide pod generation

 

🤣🤣🤣

 

~Dang

 

Besides, it could actually be that this has exposed a weakness, maybe we were not aware of very small high altitude drone activity, maybe China used something that did manage to penetrate all the way to lake Huron. Maybe that balloon launched them? I don't know, just spit-balling.

If so, the last thing the military ought to do is let the chaos agents in our congress know it.

 

~Bang

Edited February 15 by Bang

[Larry]

38 minutes ago, tshile said:

There’s a whole saying about why you’re supposed to shoot second and aim first or something or another 

Recall a conversation from a book, between Han Solo the The Girl. (Of that book). 
 

Girl:  Do you always shoot first and ask questions later?  
 

Solo:  I prefer shooting first. As opposed to shooting second. 

[Cooked Crack]