""It IS BAALLOOON !!!"" Topic

I posted this on the other Chicom balloon thread :

NORAD, etc. started tracking it as soon as it left the PRC. Again we knew it was coming. The Military said they jammed the signal and was getting intel. If that is true, I can see why they waited to shoot it down. As any intel the Chicom balloon would have been getting was jammed. But it still maneuvered over many of our bases?

I posted this on Facebook – it may be germane :

It should have been shot down over water or in the wide open spaces of Alaska. Before it could float over many of our bases.

Who was going to get hurt but some fish if it was shoot down near the waters of the Aleutians. They are US territory. If is was shoot down over the open huge swaths of empty areas in Alaska. Maybe some trees or Bigfoot might have been hit. …

Also The F-22 can fly up to 65,000ft. And in many cases the balloon was flying lower than that, e.g. about 30,000.

The F-22 used one Sidewinder according to reports … pop goes the balloon ! How do you say that in Mandurian ?

SO they shot it down after it left the US and didn't matter, over the ocean where nobody can recover the wreckage – not at all suspicious!

Shot down right off Myrtle Beach I know very well, sad couldn't have been there

'Shrapnel' from proximity AA missile… well, there is a lot of it… that is what it does. Have always thought that Sidewinders, etc. aquired Heat from jet source… may be different, now, long time on! Not sure about about 'small explosion'… may have 'doctored' for occasion? No idea what might have been used. Note, Legion 4… from vid,TWO missiles.. and one missed… 'something' of that one will have landed somewhere. I am not 'in the know', but presume that there is some sort of 'destruction tech' in a missile. but there will be bits dropping somewhere.
Anyway, ONE down… seems to be another, from reports?But Over S Americas!
USA downed in possible place of 'recovery'. Wonder what will be found? Weather Balloon? Erm… but 'signal' Data interception… somebody will already have analysed. Probably never know… unless 'someone' wants to shout about it.

Right now, if someone asked me, I would say the number one power in the world is China. They have no fear of the US. They rob us blind of tech and military secrets. We are closing in on $35 USD Trillion in debt. We seem to hate ourselves and only push the narrative of how horrible and racist the US
as a country. Millions and millions of illegal aliens are pouring into the country, and we are most concern about making sure kids get a sex change operation.

I AM wrong. Lower contrail, probable Jet upon rewatching. There IS an object… and missile would not have been visible at range. Soz. What hit? Hmm. 'Pundit' stuff indicated that balloon was much higher than most fighters could engage except at extreme range… but close in! Unless it was aready dropping? Oh Blah! What do I know? :(

I mean, even an Imperial Probe Droid did not last as long on Hoth as that spy balloon did… ;-)

"An F-22 jet fighter engaged the high-altitude balloon with one missile – an AIM-9X Sidewinder – and it went down about six nautical miles off the US coast at 14:39 EST (19:39 GMT), a defence official told report."

Got me there! As said, not all that up on AAms, but, whwere the H are the HOT engines on a BALOON? Tech MUST have changed! They used to GO for engines! Used to be Heat Seekers? I thought!
Modded?

Used to 'chat' in pub with RAF missile 'techie'… V long time ago! Nothing detailed! 'Contracted', Many yrs ago. I am NOT a Spy!

I am very much 'behind' on modern tech! And.. if you are 'In the Know'… do not tell me! Or anyone else!2

The Aim-9 could have locked on heat from the balloon array not the balloon, exploding the array would shread the balloon but would do lots of damage on the electronics.
Would have tried 20mm cannon to shread the balloon saving the electronics

Seriously!?!?!?!

Oh Good Grief. US Military Fears China May Reach Balloon Wreckage Before They Can Get There – Proper Salvage Vessel Won't Be There For Days

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A hot air balloon is exactly that – no problem for heat seeker.

You shoot it down over water, not land because there is a better probability of recovering components after a splash than the almost certain destruction of a free fall crash from 60k feet on dry land.

Easier recovery in the relatively calm and shallow Atlantic coast than the deeper and rougher pacific.

Timing could depend on several competing variables; from assessing what is it up to and what are its capabilities, amount of intel to be gathered and exploited, timing and positioning of Chinese space resources to see or not see the event, availability of resources to execute the shoot down, plus the most important, having the right kind of cameras on hand to record it!

Ah….thanks Jock, I wondered about missiles before, was thinking about whether we could even launch a drone up there. But the heat signature seemed like it would be much so smaller than an aircraft. I guess it didn't matter.

The Canadians shot over a 1000 20mm rounds into one without effect in the 90s, as I said before. No expertise, but I did not think you could just let the air out for a slow descent.

Good points Militia Mike….

It is frustrating when we don't hear very much from the government about what's going on. This is not the first Chinese balloon incursion – another time during this admin, and three times during the last. I don't think I heard a thing about any of those. Not expecting to hear a ton of intel revelations, just some kind of reassurance.

It seems China has done this for a while all over the world and may have a fleet of these. Hopefully we have been gleaning a lot of info.

Tortorella: The Canadians shot over a 1000 20mm rounds into one without effect in the 90s, as I said before. No expertise, but I did not think you could just let the air out for a slow descent.

Just because they fired 1000 rounds at the balloon does not mean the balloon was hit 1000 times.

headless horseman .i was wondering too how a heatseeker missile locked onto that balloon, cold up there i think
scoutjack a hot air balloon is powered by hot air ,propane burner etc, this thing i think contained helium? i could be wrong
by any chance could it be a maverick type laser guided missile
carried on underwing pylons?

Wardog you're right it isn't hot air, it is hotter than the surrounding air. Having fired a couple of live heat seekers, it's amazing what they can lock onto.

Or sometimes won't for that matter!

OSCS- I have an old WW2 20mm shell that my dad got somehow. I keep looking at it and thinking how much they could rip up a B-17. But I have no first hand knowledge of shooting from an aircraft. Tech moves so fast I wonder now that they were still in use in the 90s.

"It is frustrating when we don't hear very much from the government about what's going on. This is not the first Chinese balloon incursion – another time during this admin, and three times during the last. I don't think I heard a thing about any of those. Not expecting to hear a ton of intel revelations, just some kind of reassurance."

Ahhh but this time they were caught because someone snapped a picture In Montana and the media got involved for a change.

They should have been shot down every time they penetrated our air space. As I've said, the Chinese had no problem ramming our spy plane over the water.

scoutjack
firing live heat seekers, sounds like great fun

Report says it was a First Fighter Wing F-22 that was used to bring down the balloon. No idea why 20mm couldn't have done the job.

Hope it was a 27th Fighter Squadron plane
If so Frank Luke could be smiling up there

This was just reported

"But on Sunday, a senior administration official told Fox News Digital that "U.S. intelligence, not the Biden administration" assesses that "PRC government surveillance balloons transited the continental U.S. briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time."

The official told Fox News that "this information was discovered after the [Trump] administration left."

"They went undetected," the official told Fox News Digital. "

Undetected, that's scary

Subject: Ratcliffe Shoots Down Claim That Three Chinese Balloons Crossed Over U.S. Under Trump


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Yes, scary. Do you remember that unexplained huge drone formation over Colorado in 2019? Seen by many including LEO's, but the government did not explain, seemed to not be sure. Lots of things get classified, but people need at least some sense of things being handled when they are worried.

Sorrow don't remember that one. I will have to look it up.

Want to complicate shooting it down? The next phase is that the Chinese will send *manned* balloons…

I wouldn't be so quick believing this administration who obviously has a big screw up that it's not so bad because it happened before.

I am not quick to believe one bunch over the other. Politics. We don't really know exactly what happened. And we may not find out.

Well, that drone question in CO appears to have been solved. Forget I mentioned it…

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Tortorella: good find about the CO drones!!! Thanks.

Thanks for the article Tort.

Best write up I have found on the "oh yeah! It happened 3 times under the previous guy!".

Sounds like either the Pentagon is not informing administrations, those excursions were not the same, or they never happened.

some of theinteresting statements in it:

(
"This information was discovered after the prior administration left. The intelligence community is prepared to offer key officials from the Trump administration briefings on [China's] surveillance program," one of the officials said. The official, along with several others, asked not to be named in order to discuss sensitive information.

Briefers would also be willing to discuss Beijing's similar operations in East Asia, South Asia and Europe over the last several years, the official said.
—-
But the difference between past instances and the one from last week, Defense Department officials said, is that those balloons never stayed above U.S. territory for a significant period of time. When pressed for specifics, such as the date, location and duration of those instances, Biden administration officials refused to provide them to POLITICO, citing the classified nature of that information.

Some officials did speak in generalities, however. DoD tracks "hundreds" of balloons every day, but they are typically not deemed a threat. Their presence close to or over the United States would not be brought to the attention of senior leaders unless their behavior was "completely out of the ordinary, like this one," said one senior Pentagon official.

At lower levels, officials have tracked multiple instances of balloon activity over U.S. territories in recent years. One of the Trump-era balloons hovered over Guam, according to two U.S. officials. And in 2020, the intelligence community assessed that much smaller balloons detected off the coast of Virginia were Chinese radar-jamming devices, according to a former senior DoD official.

—
Biden's team has given no indication it will downgrade intelligence to make a public case that there were past examples of Chinese spy balloons above the U.S. from 2017 to 2021. At this point, all briefings will apparently take place behind closed doors.
)

So it still looks like we would have been kept in the dark, unless Montana had not reported it.

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I agree with that last sentence! My opinion, I think the Chinese leaders, who seem to be a spy crazy bunch, lost control of this balloon somehow. They lost their coveted meeting with Blinken, which they really wanted and had worked hard to set up.

And they apologized, which they never do, instead of blaming us, which they always do. They are as embarrassed in their own way about getting caught as we are about getting spied on and this point gets no attention. Again my opinion.

Whatever has happened before is not likely to be declassified. And if you think about it, what else are the last admin people gonna say? We screwed up too?They want to score points here, understandably, and they know nobody will spill any beans from DOD except these vague little leaks. And the current admin wants to use whatever happened before for cover, but cannot and/or will not give details about earlier events.

I guess the important thing now is, what will we learn about the gear we recovered, and how will we respond in the future. Even if the balloon's capabilities were neutralized as it crossed the US, people are not gonna take this kind of incursion with no credible explanation.

Could be, but if nobody even knew or was informed by the military…
Bolton was not around for long…but he would not want to look bad.
Pompeo especially would look pretty foolish and would never admit to anything if he is running for office. Big egos at work here, nobody wants to be part of a team that missed this, if they did. I am not inclined to believe either side on this, too political, media doing its thing, the usual.

My opinion is that this has happened any number of times before, but this time the Chinese lost control of this one. US military neutralized it, then found a way to hack and track how it works, then brought it down where they could recover it intact, which would not have been the hard ground in Montana.

At that point, the unusual Chinese apology went out the window and they went back to verbal attacks. And our government officials somehow could not figure out how to inform and reassure the public during the whole thing.

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Oh. Just maybe they did/did not… but something THAT BIG would have had to come down somewhere? So… ?
Smaller, maybe.
IMHO, this is new. What its actual purpose… not yet known. USN recovering…fabric so far… but probably array soon.

Think a tactic to probe response and attitude…working.

Aside. 'F Troop'! Watched in B/W… when I was 5? Good… I think! lol.

Well while in the DH I watched a lot of News[and painted up my toy soldiers, etc. From what I had heard in the media, the balloon was not jammed ? The Pentagon said they mitigated the risk … ? So they let it cross the US West to East. Over 21 US Military Bases, etc. So the US could get some intel … but so were the Chicoms ?

Then of course, they finally shot it down off the coast of South Carolina. After both the US & the PRC gathered intel. It is easier to recover the debris in the warmer shallower waters then of the coast of the Aleutians/Alaska. Of course it would have been easier to shot it down over the open wilderness over Alaska.

Also the former Cdr of SEAL Tm 6 on FOX, said what I had already thought. At a higher altitude when something hits the water is it like hitting concrete. Ouch !!!!

And yes, it is now being reported that during the previous Admin. 3-4 Chicom balloons had crossed into our airspace?

The former SecDef-Esper, CIA Chief/Sec/Ste-Pompeo plus the DNI Ratcliff and many other there, said they or the former POTUS was never informed of this ? If currently some pilot or photographer, etc. had not spotted this balloon, would the public be told ?

Did the Pentagon Not know what they were ? So ID'd them as UFOs/UAPs ? And yes, the Pentagon has been tracking UFOs/UAPs for decades. As they should, anything unidentified in our airspace, needs to be seen at a threat, etc.

If our assets had not ID'd them but still picked them up … call it a UFO/UAP. That is nothing new.

If the JCS ID them, then decided to not tell the SecDef, etc, etc. about them ?

Or ?

I don't know which is worse ?

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'F Troop'!

Yeah it was funny ! 😎

Legion +1

Also, even if jammed for military targets, how much private correspondence of individuals could have been tapped. Your payment transactions, 401k, passwords and logins. One has to assume this a possibility and future use for blackmailing or $. USD

Well as I have said before, the PRC/CCP are monitoring pretty much everything here or worldwide. Hell ! They are probably reading our TMP Posts now ! 😱

Well as we know the USA shot down another balloon yesterday over Alaska. Now just heard on the news NORAD, etc. spotted another one at high altitude over Canada … Three balloons … I'm sensing a trend … 🎈🎈🎈

Just heard that.

NORAD said this one is manned.

Looks to be a man in some sort of red and white suit.

Possibly 8 brownish looking animals in front of it.

Possible images below
🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌🦌 🎅

They just said the Canadians shot it down.

It will be a bleak Christmas now for us all.

Opps now they say our F22 shot it down over Canada.

Well, I think the jolly plump old man in the red suit coordinates his flights with NORAD.

Subject: Chinese spy balloon gathered intelligence from sensitive U.S. military sites, despite U.S. efforts to block it


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Saw that in the media today … it just keeps getting worse and worse …

Subject: Chinese spy balloon was equipped with tech from at least 5 US firms: report

For some of us, no surprise at all.


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…which is why perhaps the Biden Admin waited to shoot it down until AFTER it had crossed the US and transmitted its spy data and was over the Ocean where only the US Navy could recover the debris…

The Chinese Ballon incident just demonstrated that POTUS and Admin did not have "the right stuff" … And that opinion was just reinforced every time they tried to do something effective(?), it failed, which happened often. The list is long … They had "the wrong stuff" …