I feel sorry for the pool soul who decided to send up their DIY weather balloon with gopro to get that space shot. Who knows he might even have a video of a F-22 sending a missile over.
I heard rumors that during the bosnian war they were making fake SAM sites using microwave ovens with the door taken off. Get them to fire an air-to-ground missile at a device you got from the junkyard and an extension cord.
> How much does a weather baloon cost? ...compared to a F22 flight, a missle + all the logistics?
If this is an actual spy object you also need to factor in the cost of the surveillance. How much money does the military lose due to the sensitive information being lost. Or how much does the military need to spend to regain strategic advantage? That probably costs more than a F22 flight and a missile.
Obviously this depends on the number of objects that one needs to respond to. Cheap surveillance devices can obviously overwhelm this and then you have a war of attrition.
In the example of the article we need to consider the cost of flights being downed (which they down when considering the cost of hitting an object and downing an aircraft. Quite expensive). Flights being canceled and/or delayed is expensive.
Early on in the whole balloon situation, there was discussion about how - having seen the US response - the most logical course of action would be to launch 10 balloons.
Then 100. Then 1000.
By all means, let the US military shoot as many as they want.
Let the propagandists call it "a great military display".
Then, just like the West is doing with Ukraine when it comes to artillery rounds, watch the Western arsenal of A2A missiles drop to critical levels that they won't be able to rebuild with any sort of expediency.
It should be a lesson the US learned a thousand times over, but we just saw them do it again: the aeronautical equivalent of bombing a farmer with an AK-47 and calling it a "victory".
A $400k missile and an F-22 sortie costing probably a similar amount. I really hope for their sake the government doesn't try to charge them that cost.
It does indeed sound like something like that. The size of a small car would mean a tiny payload as those balloons get huge in the stratosphere. One thing I wonder is why it didn't burst. Weather balloons are meant to burst as soon as they get that high.
If you're actually responsible you get appropriate approval for time and place for balloon launches. It's not hard and not doing so can get you just enormous fines.
I think anyone sending stuff into the sky with a go-pro has to be reconciled that the chance of loss is pretty high. And if they got footage of the F-22, it's probably worth a lot more than their go-pro.
They flew a F35 next to the object. "Unknown" is an overloaded term and it isn't binary (known vs unknown). Plus, they said it was the size of a small car (remember the other balloon's payload was the size of a bus). So while you don't know what exactly that payload is and is doing, you do know it isn't just a go pro. You also know it isn't a velociraptor or Felix Baumgartner.
Funny story: I was in Spain several years ago and was talking to a guy I met about sailboats. I mentioned I had a boat, and he asked how big. I thought for a second and said "7 meters" so as not to be an ignorant American. He thought for a second and said "huh, 21 feet".
it's ironic because as a little kid in the US in the late 1970s we all learned the metric system, but we see the "imperial" system everywhere still....like the conversion just never got around to happening. it's confusing.
The US was an original signatory of the Meter Convention. Our customary units have been based on metric units since 1893. Our food packaging features metric units. Our scientists use metric units. Our school children learn the metric system. Our military uses the metric system. Our cars are built with metric fasteners.
Changing informal habits takes decades and has questionable benefit. Canada tried it in the 70s and is going to take another generation at least to fully convert for informal use.
I could tell you the Curiosity rover is 2.9m × 2.7m × 2.2m and 899kg, but it's far more immediately evocative to say it's about the size and mass of a typical sedan.
"One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” directed at the mainland United States. Starting in 1944, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons, each loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives. Amazingly, these unmanned balloons originated from over 5,000 miles away in the Japanese home islands. After being launched, the specially designed hydrogen balloons would ascend to an altitude of 30,000 feet and ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. Their bombs were triggered to drop after the three-day journey was complete—hopefully over a city or wooded region that would catch fire.
Nearly 350 of the bombs actually made it across the Pacific, and several were intercepted or shot down by the U.S. military. From 1944 to 1945, balloon bombs were spotted in more than 15 states—some as far east as Michigan and Iowa. The only fatalities came from a single incident in Oregon, where a pregnant woman and five children were killed in an explosion after coming across one of the downed balloons. Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil during World War II."
Much like this story, many Japanese planners did not appreciate the vast size of the American west. A hundred random firebombs were basically irrelevant compared to the many thousands of yearly lighting strikes that also regularly cause fires. Who knows how many Japanese balloons are out there hanging from some tree undiscovered.
Hawaii was still an "incorporated territory" of the US though, surely it would have qualified as "US soil"? I gather at least some deaths did occur in Honolulu itself too.
Can't find anything remotely recent on a list of shoot-down incidents on Wikipedia (aside from these balloons), but I'd not be surprised if a few smuggling-related drones have been shot down in the last couple decades, depending on what we're counting.
John Kirby called it an object today during the White House press briefing. He also said it was the size of a small car, unlike the balloon from China that was the size of 2-3 buses. Finally, Kirby said that the object could not direct its own propulsion or direction and was at the whim of the wind.
Weather balloons are disposable, they rise and expand in the process until they burst - the maximum size is somewhere between 5 and 10 meters, between a large car and a white van. The payload tends to have a parachute and a phone number (the ones from the Weather Service do).
There was something about fear being the mind-killer. Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam to the Red Telephone please - paging the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam!
No, it is just as likely to be a reporter's garbled understanding of an explanation. In mysterious matters wait until you have 2 or 3 datapoints before using a heuristic.
That's an interesting catch. Still, it's known that the previous object was a balloon, so I'd say it makes more sense to expect those words are shorthand for "previous object (which was a balloon)". This new object may still be a balloon, but those words aren't admission of that.
I wondered about this too. But even balloons are maneuverable in some sense, by changing their altitude. So maybe the meaning is more like "didn't maneuver in response to our presence".
I think the main issue of an object being really high up in the air is the lack of air density which, to achieve equilibrium, will get pulled apart (think: the opposite of being smashed). It's also extremely cold.
I assume a weather balloon can handle those issues though. [0]
Pot calling kettle black. The US has been sending armed drones into several countries without coordination with local ATC or consent of the local government. Soleimani and a number of Iraqi military officers were taken out by a US drone.
Sure, but that was still a violation of sovreign airspace. It would be like having a foreign drone targeting George W.Bush. Both are war criminals, but I'm not sure it suddenly makes violating foreign countries ok.
Not, in fact is bad, because what is good for the geese is good for the gander.
This increases the risk of being killed by a drone for everybody, even if is as collateral damage. If international laws can be so easily violated for free, why do we need them? Do we really want a world without rules?
Why are they calling it an object. It seems like a huge deal what kind of "object" this was. Was it another balloon? Missile? Private plane? How could they not know, and if they do know, why would they not say?
Edit - this video isn't loading for me, but I've just watched what I assume is the same briefing on Twitter. They have a pilot assessment that the object was unmanned - but they can't tell us balloon, missile, drone? I'm not understanding how a pilot could see the thing, communicate ("I'm looking at an unmanned object, should I shoot?") and somehow not convey what the object was. I appreciate the speed of this briefing, but I would prefer they wait at least until they know what they are saying. In the briefing below the guy says NORAD has been tracking it for a day - and they still don't know what it is? I guess that rules out missile, at least.
"Object was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight" and "Object the size of a small car" [1] according to General Ryder
No details beyond this yet due to classification restrictions.
Damn, I guess everyone's job from here on out will be down at the laser cannon factory from here on out, but at least it will mean the government will finally pay off the national debt with the proceeds.
Readit News
We changed the url from https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/10/us/politics/unidentified-... to what appears to be the article with most recent updates (via https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34745940 - thanks yabones!).
If it's cheap enough, there will probably be youtubers and tiktokers buying them en-masse just "for the lulz".
If this is an actual spy object you also need to factor in the cost of the surveillance. How much money does the military lose due to the sensitive information being lost. Or how much does the military need to spend to regain strategic advantage? That probably costs more than a F22 flight and a missile.
Obviously this depends on the number of objects that one needs to respond to. Cheap surveillance devices can obviously overwhelm this and then you have a war of attrition.
In the example of the article we need to consider the cost of flights being downed (which they down when considering the cost of hitting an object and downing an aircraft. Quite expensive). Flights being canceled and/or delayed is expensive.
Then 100. Then 1000.
By all means, let the US military shoot as many as they want.
Let the propagandists call it "a great military display".
Then, just like the West is doing with Ukraine when it comes to artillery rounds, watch the Western arsenal of A2A missiles drop to critical levels that they won't be able to rebuild with any sort of expediency.
It should be a lesson the US learned a thousand times over, but we just saw them do it again: the aeronautical equivalent of bombing a farmer with an AK-47 and calling it a "victory".
Anyone stupid enough to do it without following FAA rules (assuming launched in the US) is going to find themselves in some serious trouble.
[1] https://www.highaltitudescience.com/collections/all
https://ham-tv.com/balloon/
Technically whoever launched this thing saved us money on the target. So the cost was negative.
Think about how much healthcare, food, housing, we are burning up with this nonsense.
It does indeed sound like something like that. The size of a small car would mean a tiny payload as those balloons get huge in the stratosphere. One thing I wonder is why it didn't burst. Weather balloons are meant to burst as soon as they get that high.
The chinese balloon, and I quote the article: "was like two or three buses". That thing was big.
Dead Comment
https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/36593/20220314/asteroi...
The US was an original signatory of the Meter Convention. Our customary units have been based on metric units since 1893. Our food packaging features metric units. Our scientists use metric units. Our school children learn the metric system. Our military uses the metric system. Our cars are built with metric fasteners.
Changing informal habits takes decades and has questionable benefit. Canada tried it in the 70s and is going to take another generation at least to fully convert for informal use.
If that unit causes you any pain, @throwaway4good, here is a translator perhaps to more native units:
https://www.converttobananas.com/
1 car == about 26 bananas.
Improvement?
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3103
"One of the most unusual military actions of World War II came in the form of Japanese balloon bombs, or “Fugos,” directed at the mainland United States. Starting in 1944, the Japanese military constructed and launched over 9,000 high-altitude balloons, each loaded with nearly 50 pounds of anti-personnel and incendiary explosives. Amazingly, these unmanned balloons originated from over 5,000 miles away in the Japanese home islands. After being launched, the specially designed hydrogen balloons would ascend to an altitude of 30,000 feet and ride the jet stream across the Pacific Ocean to the mainland United States. Their bombs were triggered to drop after the three-day journey was complete—hopefully over a city or wooded region that would catch fire.
Nearly 350 of the bombs actually made it across the Pacific, and several were intercepted or shot down by the U.S. military. From 1944 to 1945, balloon bombs were spotted in more than 15 states—some as far east as Michigan and Iowa. The only fatalities came from a single incident in Oregon, where a pregnant woman and five children were killed in an explosion after coming across one of the downed balloons. Their deaths are considered the only combat casualties to occur on U.S. soil during World War II."
https://www.history.com/news/5-attacks-on-u-s-soil-during-wo...
The airforce then bombed hydrogen generating facilities nearby the suspected launch sites.
Section offense and defense
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go_balloon_bomb
https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/battle-of-attu-60-years.htm
Much like this story, many Japanese planners did not appreciate the vast size of the American west. A hundred random firebombs were basically irrelevant compared to the many thousands of yearly lighting strikes that also regularly cause fires. Who knows how many Japanese balloons are out there hanging from some tree undiscovered.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2005-sep-11-me-then1...
The site of the people that found the remains of the plane is online and has a nice old-times look (with frames):
https://www.thexhunters.com/
https://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/f6f-5k_accident.html
https://www.thexhunters.com/xpeditions/f6f-5k_hunt.html
But who knows really, maybe the US govt is better at hiding its secrets than I give it credit for.
Dead Comment
Dead Comment
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"Not maneuverable" and "previous balloon" so is it fair to assume that it's a balloon as well?
Source: https://www.youtube.com/live/rHGWmyyb9nI?feature=share
There was something about fear being the mind-killer. Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam to the Red Telephone please - paging the Reverend Mother Gaius Helen Mohiam!
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User dTal is on the same train of thought as I was regarding the "not maneuverable" part.
What other type of object exists which can fly and yet does not have the ability to maneuver?
Most balloons are not equipped to actively change their bouyancy.
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I assume a weather balloon can handle those issues though. [0]
[0] https://youtu.be/jaUgTwKu6vs
Good. Right?
This increases the risk of being killed by a drone for everybody, even if is as collateral damage. If international laws can be so easily violated for free, why do we need them? Do we really want a world without rules?
Edit - this video isn't loading for me, but I've just watched what I assume is the same briefing on Twitter. They have a pilot assessment that the object was unmanned - but they can't tell us balloon, missile, drone? I'm not understanding how a pilot could see the thing, communicate ("I'm looking at an unmanned object, should I shoot?") and somehow not convey what the object was. I appreciate the speed of this briefing, but I would prefer they wait at least until they know what they are saying. In the briefing below the guy says NORAD has been tracking it for a day - and they still don't know what it is? I guess that rules out missile, at least.
No details beyond this yet due to classification restrictions.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=544hoprTeTw
Deleted Comment
Research med kit and laser too.